Wilhelm Stapel

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Otto Friedrich Wilhelm Stapel (27 October 1882 – 1 June 1954) was a German Protestant essayist and nationalist. He edited the antisemitic monthly Deutsches Volkstum from 1919 to 1938, a magazine that promoted a “folk” based politics. His antisemitism was cultural rather than purely racial, and he worked with many Nazi institutions and leaders, even as he opposed some church resistances.

Stapel spoke out against the anti‑Nazi Confessing Church of Martin Niemöller and Karl Barth and defended Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller. He also advised Hanns Kerrl, the Reich Minister of Church Affairs. In 1938, under Nazi pressure, his magazine was shut down. After World War II, he rejected the new West German state and in 1949 urged a boycott of Bundestag elections. He died in Hamburg in 1954 at age 71.

Born in Kalbe, the son of a Prussian watchmaker, Stapel began as a journalist and earned a PhD in art history from the University of Göttingen in 1911; his thesis was supervised by Edmund Husserl. He moved from liberal-nationalist views before World War I to strong nationalist ideas after the war. In 1930 he published Six Chapters on Christianity and National Socialism, welcoming the Nazi movement. He joined the Deutsche Christen in 1933 and remained loyal even as many others left. He argued for limiting Jewish influence in Germany, including proposals such as removing Jewish journalists, barring Jews from the armed forces, and creating separate Jewish educational and legal institutions.