On 12 March 1940 Charlotte Wollermann from Düsseldorf denounces the Protestant pastor Gottfried Hötzel for having given a pro-Jewish sermon1LAV NRW R, RW 58/3911. This document has been translated from German.
Note by Detective Constable Eisel,2Werner Eisel (1910–1947), police officer; joined the SS in 1933; was employed at the Düsseldorf Gestapo from 1933; joined the NSDAP in 1937; with the commander of the Security Police (KdS) in Cracow in 1941, then in the Einsatzkommando for Special Assignment Lemberg; head of the counter-intelligence section of the KdS in Galicia; SS-Obersturmführer in 1942; head of the Security Police in Czortków after Oct. 1943; with the Senior Commander of the Security Police (BdS) in Hungary; returned to the Düsseldorf Gestapo in Sept. 1944. Düsseldorf, dated 12 March 1940
Re: Pastor Hötzel, Düsseldorf-Oberkassel.3Hugo Karl Gottfried Hötzel (1880–1940), Protestant theologian and pastor; missionary and teacher in China, 1906–1914; pastor in Düsseldorf-Heerdt-Oberkassel after 1917; member of the Confessing Church from 1933; took part in public protests after the November pogroms in 1938; provided support for Protestant non-Aryans in the Grüber Office in 1939; imprisoned from Feb. 1940 to 9 April 1940, and released upon the condition that he was to be banned from Rhineland and West- phalia and from public speaking; died following a stroke.
The wife of Hans Wollermann, Charlotte, née Marten, born 5 April 1902 in Braunsberg, residing in Düsseldorf-Oberkassel, 7 Achillesstr., communicated the following:
Around April 1939, together with her husband, Senior Consistory Councillor Dr Hans Wollermann,4Dr Hans (Johannes) Wollermann (b. 1895), lawyer; at the Protestant Consistory in Königsberg, 1927–1933; consistory councillor in the Higher Church Council in Berlin, 1933–1937; at the consistory in Düsseldorf, 1937–1946; served in the war, 1940–1945; prisoner of war, 1945; later worked in schools in Düsseldorf. she attended a service at the Protestant church in Düsseldorf- Oberkassel. There Pastor Hötzel gave the sermon.
Throughout his sermon Pastor Hötzel discussed the Jewish question. He began with a Bible passage according to which Christ once said that the Jews are the children of the Devil.
Pastor Hötzel explained in his comments that this remark has been abused by many. Pastor Hötzel essentially said the following: ‘It is not the Jews who are the children of Satan, but those who are persecuting the Jews.’
Pastor Hötzel championed the Jews in his sermon to such a degree that she was extremely incensed about his sermon.
The statements of Mrs Wollermann seem entirely credible.
She is a Party member and in the National Socialist Women’s League.5The complaint was made to the police only after Hötzel had been arrested following a lecture he gave to the German Protestant Women’s League.