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).

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Niemöller, Martin 

Born Jan. 14, 1892, in Lippstadt. Public figure of the German Federal Republic, antifascist, participant in the Partisans of Peace movement, pastor of the Evangelical Church.

During World War I, Niemöller was a submarine officer. In 1919 he took up the study of theology in Münster. In 1924 he became a clergyman. In 1937, Niemöller was arrested for his opposition to Nazism. He was held in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp until 1941, when he was transferred to Dachau. He was later moved to the southern Tirol and remained there until he was liberated in 1945. From 1947 to 1964 he was the head of the Evangelical Church in Hessen and Nassau. From 1961 to 1968 he was one of the presidents of the World Council of Churches. He has visited the USSR a number of times. Since 1957 he has been president of the German Peace Society (War Resisters’ International). Since 1969, Niemöller has been a member of the Presidium of the World Peace Council. He was awarded the Joliot-Curie Gold Medal of Peace in 1965. In 1966 he received the Lenin Prize for Strengthening Peace Between Nations.