The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt () was a declaration issued on October 19, 1945, by the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (', EKD), in which it confessed guilt for its inadequacies in opposition to the Nazis and the Third Reich.
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He associated with the resistance movements that centered on Carl Goerdeler and Ludwig Beck. He was admired by his fellow churchmen and in 1945 (in connection with the Allies' de-nazification efforts) he was elected chairman of the Council of the newly created Protestant umbrella Evangelical Church in Germany. He was a signatory of the October 1945 Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt.
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The Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, was a declaration issued on 19 October 1945 by the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland or EKD), in which it confessed guilt for its inadequacies in opposition to the Nazis and the Third Reich. It was written mainly by former members of Confessing Church. The Nazi policy of interference in Protestantism did not achieve its aims. A majority of German Protestants sided neither with Deutsche Christen, nor with the Confessing Church.
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From 1936 to 1950, Heinemann was head of the YMCA in Essen. Heinemann, at the general synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany, 1949 In August 1945, he was elected as a member of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany. The Council issued the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt in October 1945 in which it confessed guilt for the failure of the Protestant church not to oppose the Nazis and the Third Reich. Heinemann regarded the declaration as a "linchpin" in his work for the church.
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Waldman, Albany: The Crisis in Government, p. 43. The battle culminated in a highly publicized trial in the Assembly, which dominated the body's activity from its opening on January 20, 1920 until its conclusion on March 11. Socialist Party leader and former 1917 New York City mayoral candidate Morris Hillquit served as chief counsel for the suspended Socialists, aided by party founder and future Socialist vice presidential candidate, Seymour Stedman. At the trial, Hillquit charged that Speaker Sweet had made a "specific, concrete, definite, affirmative declaration of guilt" of the five Assemblymen before they were ever charged with any offense.
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The theologian Martin Niemöller and other churchmen accepted shared guilt in the Stuttgarter Schuldbekenntnis (Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt) of 1945. The philosopher and psychologist Karl Jaspers delivered lectures to students in 1946 which were published under the title The Question of German Guilt. In this published work, Jaspers describes how “an acknowledgment of national guilt was a necessary condition for the moral and political rebirth of Germany”. Additionally, Jaspers believed that no one could escape this collective guilt, and taking responsibility for it might enable the German people to transform their society from its state of collapse into a more highly developed and morally responsible democracy.
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Several leading Church figures however, published substantial anti-Semitic publications, such as the Thuringian bishop Martin Sasse who distributed thirty-seven thousand copies of "Martin Luther uber die Juden: Weg mit Ihnen!" ("Martin Luther on the Jews: Away with Them!"). As the Nazi Party gained power, it actively destroyed the institutional structures of the Protestant church itself. After the fall of Nazi power post-1945, the wider Church conducted a de-Nazification effort. At the conclusion of World War II, leading Church clergy issued the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt, which acknowledged the inadequacy of Church opposition to Nazism and their culpability in regime’s power.
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Other Protestant churches aligned themselves with one of these groups, or stayed neutral in this church strife. The postwar church council issued the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt on October 19, 1945, confessing guilt and declaring remorse for indifference and inaction of German Protestants in the face of atrocities committed by Hitler's regime as means to address the German collective guilt. In 1948, the Evangelical Church in Germany was organized in the aftermath of World War II to function as a new umbrella organization for German Protestant churches. As a result of tensions between West and East Germany, the regional churches in East Germany broke away from the EKD in 1969.
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In English law, a special verdict is a verdict by a jury that makes specific factual conclusions rather than (or in addition to) the jury's declaration of guilt or liability. For example, jurors may write down a specific monetary amount of damages, or a finding of proportionality, in addition to the jury's ultimate finding of liability. A special jury verdict form may be used to have the jury answer directed questions as to the required elements for a cause of action or special issues, and to demarcate monetary awards of damages by economic and non-economic damages, beneficiary and/or specific categories of damages (lost earning capacity, funeral expenses, loss of consortium, pain and suffering, etc.). In the words of William Blackstone, "The jury state the naked facts, as they find them to be proved, and pray the advice of the court thereon".
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