Helmuth Hübener
Jan 19th, 2008 by jeremy
Helmuth Hübener is an interesting figure in Mormon history (his birthday was a couple of days ago, which is what led me to write this post). He was a third generation member of the LDS church growing up in Germany while the Nazi Party came to power. He started listening to illegal radio broadcasts from outside the country, and used information from those sources (including the BBC) to start producing pamphlets denouncing the Nazis as well as calling some of their leaders war criminals. He and a few friends wrote these pamphlets, then posted them in public places, including menus in restaurants that were popular with Nazi officers.
He was eventually discovered, imprisoned, and beheaded for his crime.
It sounds like a story you would hear during church lessons all the time. A real honest to goodness hero, a LDS teen taking on the Nazis with nothing but a pen and a few friends (he even expressed sadness that they might force him to drink wine before he was beheaded in a letter to a fellow church member, inspirational story for the thirteen-year-olds during the WOW lesson). He wrote to a fellow Mormon that
““My Father in Heaven knows that I have done nothing wrong…. I know that God lives and He will be the Just Judge in this matter. I look forward to seeing you in a better world!”.
Bravery!, Word of Wisdom!, Faith till the end!, A final testimony! Shouldn’t his face be on lesson manuals? Shouldn’t we be hearing talks about him in General Conference?
Here’s the problem. He was excommunicated by his Branch President when his crimes were revealed. I guess it’s hard to make a hero of someone that you kicked out of your church. They tried to make up for it, he was posthumously reinstated in 1946 with the note “excommunicated by mistake.” But maybe it’s too embarrassing to make a big deal of now. It’s a shame though, there are so few heroes, even even fewer LDS teenage heroes that we can hold up as good examples to our children.
So here’s the question, is it ever possible to take the 12th Article of Faith too far? Will we support anything and everything if it’s done by the leader of our country, even if we’d consider it wrong when done by someone else?
More information on Helmuth here. A book about him is available on Amazon. And a blog post about him from Times and Seasons in 2004.
Um, would you mind explaining some of this for those of us that aren’t mormon? Is excommunicated getting kicked out? Is a bracnh president the leader of your church?
[...] commenter asked me to translate my Helmuth Hübener post for readers who aren’t Mormon. I’ll comment some translation and post it [...]
I read the Three Against Hitler book last year and was amazed at the courage he and his friends had in standing up for what they thought was right. I guess it could be a spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law conflict.
I believe the letter of the law should never repress the spirit of the law. When, on the extremely rare occasion, I see a conflict between the two, I choose the spirit of the law.
Brother Hubener was correct. He had done nothing wrong. His “excommunication” is what happens when people get really, really scared and feel they need to cover themselves or disassociate themselves from that which will attract unwanted attention. Peter did the same thing once. I suspect those who criticized Brother Hubener probably feel the same way about their criticisms that Peter felt about his denials of our Savior.
note for those unfamiliar with mormonspeak:
A Branch President is a local ecclesiastical authority, answerable to regional authorities of different levels, with the chain of earthly command eventually leading to the Prophet. Excommunication means having your membership revoked in the Church in records in both this world and the next. The primary purpose of this is for the welfare of the Church’s members, to limit or nullify the influence one might have on them who teaches or promotes doctrines that are at variance with the laws of God.