The Hour to Speak

No German churchman jangled the Nazis' nerves more successfully than bald, goateed little Dr. Friedrich Otto Dibelius, a Lutheran. Since the war, as Bishop of Berlin and Brandenburg, Dr. Dibelius' alert, twinkling-eyed integrity has proved almost equally galling to the Russian occupation authorities, in whose zone his church is located. To register their tacit support of his undercover battle, the Evangelical Church in Germany in its first official meeting this year elected him chairman (TIME, Jan. 24).

The Worry. Last week Bishop Dibelius delivered the most ringing condemnation of the Soviet zone's Communist regime that had been made by any churchman in eastern Germany since the war. Wrote he in a Whitsuntide pastoral letter:

"In the four years that have just passed, the church leaders have withheld criticism . . . From now on, the responsibility for what happens in Germany will fall more & more on German shoulders. A

German government is in the making. With this the hour has come to speak where I had to keep silent before . . .

"At the present time we are burdened above all by the worry that the government which is forming about us shows the tendencies which awoke resistance in National Socialist days: force which goes beyond all rights, internal deception and enmity against the Christian Evangel.

"In the division KS of so-called People's Police, we see the resurrection of the Gestapo of unsavory remembrance. They operate with the same methods ... It will not be necessary to give details . . . Were the ballots for the election of the Volkskongress not made exactly according to the pattern of the former National Socialists? There was a question printed in bold type which was difficult to be answered except in one way: 'yes.' . . . The whole election was based on internal dishonesty . . .

"We ask all concerned: do not fall into the illusion that a government of violence and dishonesty is a necessary channel for the scientific view of the world, to which the future supposedly belongs. Such a future could only be a future in which man can no longer be man."

No Split. The Communists responded with a radio whoosh of sound & fury to which Berliners have long since become accustomed. Stormed the Red-controlled Berlin Radio: "Clerical quarters" had reported that "a man with such an unsteady character as Bishop Dibelius can no longer remain the head of the [Evangelical] Church."

In actual fact, the Russians can do nothing about Bishop Dibelius short of using naked force; he can only be legally deposed by those who elected him--his fellow churchmen. His fellows lost no time last week making their own position clear. At a meeting of all Evangelical priests of Berlin and Brandenburg province, they voted their support of their Bishop to the last syllable. Said an official announcement: "As Dr. Dibelius intends to remain head of the Evangelical Church of Berlin and Brandenburg, he is hardly likely to discharge himself, and today's meeting shows that there is no split and no opposition within his church."

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