19. Despite claiming Hitler to be the new messiah, Ernst Bergmann committed suicide rather than defend his beliefs at Nuremberg
Ernst Bergmann (b. 1881) was a philosophy and passionate proponent of Nazism as a political ideology. Studying philosophy and German language at the University of Leipzig, Bergmann attained his doctorate in 1905 and continued his studies in Berlin. Returning to his alma mater in a teaching capacity in 1911, he was further awarded a professorship in 1916. Subsequently embracing the doctrine of the Nazi Party, and officially joining the movement in 1930, Bergmann became one of the Germany’s leading academic proponents of National Socialism.
Developing an interest with abstract religious and mystical philosophy, Bergmann was central to the Nazi effort to adapt and manipulate existing religious sentiment within Germany to be more compatible with the racialist political ideology of the Party. Many of Bergmann’s works, including “Die deutsche Nationalkirche” (the German National Church) and “Die natürliche Geistlehre” (The Natural Doctrine of the Spirit), were and remain banned by the Roman Catholic Church. In one such theological exercise, “Die 25 Thesen der Deutschreligion” (Twenty-five Points of the German Religion), Bergmann contended Jesus was of Aryan descent, not a Jew, and that Adolf Hitler was the new messiah and God’s chosen servant. Captured by Allied forces during the occupation of Leipzig in 1945, Bergmann committed suicide rather than face the Nuremberg Courts.