Paul Schneider

Paul Robert Schneider (August 29, 1897 – July 18, 1939) was a German pastor of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union who was the first Protestant minister to be martyred by the Nazis. He was murdered with a strophanthin injection at the concentration camp of Buchenwald. Early life Schneider was born in Pferdsfeld near Bad Sobernheim, Germany in 1897, the second of three sons born to Gustav-Adolf Schneider and Elisabeth Schnorr. He had a strong love for his mother and a great respect for his father, who was a pastor and an ardent patriot. Following military service in World War I, Schneider studied theology at the universities of Giessen, Marburg and Tübingen. He was ordained in Hochelheim near Wetzlar in 1925. The following year, he married Margarete Dieterich (1904-2002), the daughter of a pastor. In 1927, the couple had their first son, followed by a daughter and four more sons. Nazi opposition When President Paul von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler Chancellor in 1933, Schneider was the pastor of the Hochelheim congregation, having succeeded his father who died in 1926. Initially, Pastor Schneider believed that the new Chancellor, with the help of divine guidance, would lead Germany into a bright future. It did not take long for him to perceive the true character of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Schneider did not stand by idly as Nazi leaders ridiculed the morality of the Church. In writing and in preaching, he protested against the vitriol directed against the Church by Nazi officials. Pastor Schneider received no backing from his consistory of the old-Prussian Ecclesiastical Province of the Rhineland, then seated in Koblenz. On the contrary, in order to placate Nazi officials who complained about Pastor Schneider, the consistory transferred him to a remote region of Germany.