Hans Meiser

Hardly any other church leader from the time of Nazi rule is as controversial as the former regional bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, Hans Meiser. In the 1950s / 60s he was respected as a courageous opponent of National Socialism and honored in Bavaria with the naming of streets. In recent debates on culture of memory, he fell under the verdict of being a "Nazi bishop" and an anti-Semite scientific biography of Hans Meiser shows that such one-dimensional judgments do not do justice to the historical person. Beyond the polarized debates on the culture of remembrance about the streets named after Meiser, she comprehensively examines and differentiates his church activities in the fundamental political upheavals of the 20th century from the Empire to the Weimar Republic and the Nazi regime to the young Federal Republic.