Niemöller, Martin

Niemöller, (Friedrich Gustav Emil) Martin

(born Jan. 14, 1892, Lippstadt, Ger.—died March 6, 1984, Wiesbaden, W.Ger.) German theologian. A war hero as a submarine commander in World War I, he became a minister in 1924. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, he protested their interference in church affairs and helped combat discrimination against Christians of Jewish background. As founder of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church, he worked to oppose Adolf Hitler. Arrested in 1937, he was interned until 1945. After the war he helped rebuild the Evangelical Church. Increasingly disillusioned with prospects for demilitarization, he became a controversial pacifist; for his efforts to extend friendship ties to Soviet-bloc countries, he received the Lenin Peace Prize (1967) and West Germany's Grand Cross of Merit (1971).