The George Bell-Alphons Koechlin Correspondence

George Bell was one of the most significant British church leaders of the mid-20th century and in many ways he came to define the involvement of British church people with the issues which arose from the Third Reich. The George Bell-Alphons Koechlin Correspondence, 1933-54 presents the extensive correspondence between Bell and a leading Swiss pastor and President of the Basel Church Council, Alphons Koechlin.

The letters of Bell and Koechlin make an important contribution to our understanding of ways in which the unfolding history of the Hitler regime was interpreted in an international context from its earliest months in 1933 to its final destruction in 1945. In presenting the letters, this book captures a sustained meeting of European minds, thinking together in the midst of a crisis that was altering the conventional perimeters of politics and religion, and by degrees changing the life of the whole European continent – and drawing British politics into its vortex.

This volume provides for the first time all the letters exchanged between Bell and Koechlin in their original English, with full scholarly apparatus and connected material. It contributes valuably to the historiography of the Third Reich and develops our understanding of Nazism not simply as an episode in German history, but as a fundamental crisis in international politics, religion and society.

Author Biography

Andrew Chandler is Director of the George Bell Institute and Reader in Modern History at the University of Chichester, UK. He is the author of several books, including The Church and Humanity: The Life and Work of George Bell, 1883-1958 (2012), The Church of England in the Twentieth Century (2005) and Brethren in Adversity: George Bell and the Crisis of German Protestantism (1997).

Gerhard Ringshausen is Professor Emeritus at the University of Lüneburg, Germany. He is the author of a succession of studies of German church history and has specialized for many years in questions relating to religion and resistance in the Third Reich. He is a longstanding member of the board of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History.