Kittel was born on 23 September 1888 in
Breslau, Poland. The son of
Old Testament scholar
Rudolf Kittel, he married Hanna Untermeier in 1914, but there were no children from the union. In May 1933, he joined the
Nazi Party. He had had no previous involvement in politics but called the party "a
völkisch renewal movement on a Christian, moral foundation". On 3 May 1945, after
Nazi Germany capitulated to the Allies, Kittel was arrested by the French occupying forces. He was subsequently removed from office and interned at
Balingen. In his own defence, Kittel maintained his work was "scientific in method" and motivated by Christianity, although it may have appeared
antisemitic to some. He attempted to distinguish his work from the "vulgar antisemitism of Nazi propaganda" like
Der Stürmer and
Alfred Rosenberg, who was known for his anti-Christian rhetoric,
völkisch arguments and emphasis on
Lebensraum. Kittel characterized his work as an "attempt to grapple with the problem of Jewry and the
Jewish question".
Martin Dibelius, a German
Protestant theologian at
Heidelberg, wrote that Kittel's works related to ancient
Judaism "are of purely scientific character" and "do not serve the Party interpretation of Judaism". He said further that Kittel deserved "the thanks of all who are interested in the scientific study of Judaism".
Claus Schedl, who attended Kittel's lectures on the Jewish Question in the winter of 1941–1942 in Vienna, said that "one heard not a single word of malice" and that "Professor Kittel truly did not collaborate". Schedl says that Kittel was one of very few scholars who promoted an opinion on the Jewish Question other than the official one. Kittel himself said his goal was to combat the myths and distortions of extremist members of the Nazi Party. Annemarie Tugendhat was a Christian Jew whose father had been taken to the concentration camp
Welzheim in 1938. She testified that Kittel had strongly objected against the actions being taken against Jews, with his work on the Jewish Question not based on the racial theories of Nazism but upon theology. In 1946, Kittel was released pending his trial, but was forbidden to enter
Tübingen until 1948. From 1946 to 1948 he was a
pastor () in
Beuron. In 1948, he was allowed back into Tübingen, but died that year before the criminal proceedings against him could be resumed. He died on 11 July 1948.
Nazi Germany A Professor of Evangelical Theology and
New Testament at the
University of Tübingen, he published studies depicting the Jewish people as the historical enemy of Germany,
Christianity, and
European culture in general. In a lecture of June 1933 (
The Jewish Question), that soon appeared in print, he spoke for the stripping of citizenship from German Jews, their removal from medicine, law, teaching, and journalism, and to forbid marriage or sexual relations with non-Jews – thus anticipating by two years the Nazi government, which introduced its
Nuremberg Racial Laws and took away Jewish rights of German citizenship in 1935. A close friend of
Walter Frank, Kittel joined Frank's , upon its foundation in 1935. Within this institute he was attached to . From 1940 to 1943 Kittel held an Evangelical Theology chair at the university of Vienna. He was replaced at the university of Tübingen by Otto Michel (1903-1993). In March 1943 Kittel suddenly returned to Tübingen to reclaim his theology chair at its university, while still holding his chair at the university of Vienna. This forced Michel to be drafted into the
Wehrmacht as a lowly private and caused him traumatic humiliations. (See Otto Michel,
Anpassung oder Widerstand: eine Autobiographie, Wuppertal & Zurich, Brockhaus Verlag, 1989, pp. 88-98).
William F. Albright wrote that, "In view of the terrible viciousness of his attacks on Judaism and the Jews, which continues at least until 1943, Gerhard Kittel must bear the guilt of having contributed more, perhaps, than any other Christian theologian to the mass murder of Jews by Nazis." ==Literary works==