a. The northern perspective by the Rev. A. Cotter
The international political transition from the Second World War to the Cold War and its influence on church relations is revealed by a British at-tempt to re-establish relations between the German and Nordic churches.
The impetus for this attempt came from Dr. Hans Asmussen, the Chief of the Chancellery of the Evangelical Church in Germany, who wanted closer contacts with the sister Lutheran churches in northern Europe, and whose wish was supported by the British Controller General of the Religious Af-fairs Branch.94
This led to the sending of the Rev. A. Cotter, an officer of the Religious Affairs Branch in Germany, for discussions with the Nordic church leaders to explore the possibility of such closer co-operation. The choice was well made: he already had an extensive knowledge of the Nordic countries and
KA AL 35 Headlam to Lehtonen 25.8.1946.
Jasper 1960, 349-351.
LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.); Pajunen 2004, 115.
their culture, having taught English in Helsinki before 1920 and speaking fluent Finnish, Swedish and Russian.95 Cotter visited the Nordic Lutheran Churches of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland in August and Sep-tember 1946 and reported back to his superiors in Germany. His informa-tion was in turn quickly passed to the CFR, which received the document on 11 October 1946.96
Cotter went first to Copenhagen, where he was unable to meet the Bish-op, but where he did meet some influential clergy. Among these was the Rev. Alfred Jörgensen, who seemed to be well informed about the situation in both Germany and the other Nordic countries. According to Jörgensen, the best way to establish links with Germany was through the Church of Sweden, given the level of hatred for the Germans in Denmark and Nor-way. Cotter recorded Jörgensen’s view of the Nordic churches:
Dr. Jörgensen considered that the most important man to be contacted was Arch-bishop Eidem of Uppsala. He was very much interested in the whole matter of the part to be played by the German Church in the reconstruction of the country and of the part which the Swedish Church could take also, another country which he was glad to see that the British were not neglecting was Finland. He considered Archbishop Lehtonen as a very fine man who was not so “envious” as some of his countrymen were. He saw the only hope for Finland in its being brought into the Scandinavian orbit and facing west.
Thus Cotter’s first Danish contact offered great encouragement for the re-establishment of closer relations between the German and Nordic churches.
Jörgensen considered Lehtonen more broadminded and capable of seeing the broader picture than were most of the Finnish clergy, who, being for the most part unable to see beyond the immediate suffering around them were thus “envious” of what they considered the better fortune of their Nordic brothers and sisters.
Jörgensen also proposed that as “all the Churches entertained great re-spect for the Bishop of Chichester and admired his ecumenical relations”, the Danes should send a representative “to enter into contact with the
LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.); LPL CFR LR file 28 Harjunpää to Douglas 8.2.1945.
LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.); Pajunen 2004, 115-116.
LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 2.
man Churchmen”, to accompany Bell who was leading a British ecumenical delegation to Germany.98 He felt that this would be “a veritable breaking of the ice and would pave the way for further relations.”99 Cotter saw the wisdom of this and brought it to the attention of the churchmen he subse-quently met. The plan was supported by, among others, Dr. Paul Bredersen, the Dean of Copenhagen, whom Cotter met a few days later.100
From Denmark Cotter continued to Norway, where he stayed for a few days. He was unable to meet the ailing Bishop Berggrav of Oslo. Instead, he was met by the Bishop’s Chaplain, the Rev. Henrik Hauge, who assured him that the Bishop had “the welfare of the German Church very much at heart”.101 Hauge supported visits and discussions as a means to break down Germany’s sense of isolation, and thought that “the Germans would be im-pressed by the fact that Scandinavians had joined with their British fellow Christians to show their interest in and desire to help the German Church in every possible way. The Scandinavians, as Lutherans, stood closer to the German Church.”102 Hauge evidently wished to set an example to the Ger-man Lutherans of Nordic Lutheran support for wider ecumenical co-opera-tion.
However, the Nordic people had their own worries as well:
Pastor Hauge told me that the Scandinavians were very much exercised over Rus-sia, particularly so in Northern Norway where the Norwegian frontier was again contiguous with that of Russia. Finland was coming more and more under Russian influence and had lost its only ice-free port. Its economy was ruined by Russian exactions, while Norway was rapidly building up again.0
The Norwegians had realised that the onset of the Cold War had brought a new threat to their very borders. Before the Second World War, Norway
LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 1; Jasper 1967, 302.
LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 2.
00 LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 2.
0 LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 3.
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A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 2-3.
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A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 3.
had been separated from the Soviet Union by Petsamo, a strip of Finnish territory. Now, however, Petsamo was occupied by the Soviet Union, with serious potential consequences for Norwegian security. Fear of the Soviet Union was a constant theme of Cotter’s discussions with the Norwegians.
Cotter now continued to Sweden, where he was met in Stockholm by the Rev. C.H. Jones, the Anglican Chaplain in Stockholm, who arranged meetings with both Swedish clergy and local British diplomats including the British Minister and Military Attaché.104 Everything suggests that Cot-ter was held in high esteem by both the churches and the embassy.
On 10 September, Cotter had an audience with Archbishop Erling Ei-dem of Uppsala, whom he had already met in London in 1935. The con-versation dealt mainly with issues related to Germany, about which Eidem was well informed. However, the Archbishop was less enthusiastic about sending a joint delegation of British and Nordic clergy to Germany, fearing that it might be interpreted as suggesting that “the Scandinavian Churches were acting at the behest of England. That of course was not true, but it might be so interpreted.”105 He therefore suggested that the Nordic Church-es send their own delegation after the British. This delegation should con-sist of one representative from each of the Lutheran Churches of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. He had a clear view of the important places and people the delegation should visit, and promised to discuss this with the Bishop of Chichester, who was to be his guest during his forthcoming lecture series.106
Before leaving for Finland, Cotter discussed the situation there with Jones, who felt that the future of Finland was very uncertain. Even if the presence of “the Russians” was discreet, their influence was silently mak-ing itself felt. Jones also brought up the situation of the Baltic states and churches, and also of Baltic refugees in Sweden.107 As Anglican Chaplain in Stockholm, Jones was acutely aware of the developments throughout the Nordic and Baltic region. He was in constant touch with the personnel of
0 LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 5-8.
0 LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 7.
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A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 7.
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A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 7-8.
the British Embassy in Stockholm and his other parishioners from Sweden and Finland, which was then without a chaplain.
Cotter arrived in Turku on 12 September and was welcomed by Har-junpää, who took him first to lunch and then to meet the Archbishop. At lunch they met by chance two representatives of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), A. L. Haig, Secretary for Europe, who was in Finland to discuss international Bible work, and Pimenoff, the head of the BFBS office in Finland. The latter recalled having joined Cotter’s classes when he had taught English in Helsinki. This, however, Cotter could not remember, even if his report betrayed a degree of nostalgia concerning familiar places and renewed friendships.108
After lunch everyone went on to meet Archbishop Lehtonen, who re-ceived them, as Cotter recorded,
-- with great cordiality and with evident pleasure, pleasure at renewing an acquain-tance with myself, because to my surprise he reminded me that years ago, he and I were fellow passengers on the S.S. Arcturus from Helsingfors [Helsinki] to Hull in the month of December. He was going to some conference and I was going home for my winter holidays. The Archbishop recognised me the moment I came in and declared that I had not changed much during these years. I had not remembered this and it was a real pleasure to renew our acquaintanceship. The Archbishop welcomed me back to Finland and said that he hoped to see me Anglican Chaplain in Finland for he felt that I could do much for relations between the Church of Finland and the Church of England.0
The compliment was not merely polite: Harjunpää had already asked the Rev. J.A. Douglas, then Secretary of the CFR, to ask the Bishop of Fulham to consider sending Cotter to Finland in February 1945.110
Lehtonen had no doubt been helped by Harjunpää’s briefing to remem-ber Cotter. Two days before the visit he had written to Bishop Gulin that the “English Professor Cotter, now an Anglican priest” was coming and that the Bishop’s wife, Mrs. Helmi Gulin might know him.111 Lehtonen’s
recol-0 LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 8.
0 LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 8.
0 LPL CFR LR file 28 Harjunpää to Douglas 8.2.1945.
KA EG Lehtonen to Gulin 10.9.1946.
lection of Cotter is the more important given that his health was in gradual decline after the war.112
After coffee, Lehtonen took Cotter into his garden for a private dis-cussion about the German situation. Lehtonen’s approach to helping the German Church affords an illustration of one of the basic dilemmas of the Finnish situation stemming from the interim peace with the Soviet Union in 1944, which was to endure throughout the Cold War. While it was “a Christian duty to assist the sister Church in Germany in its present difficul-ties”, “Finland however was not officially at peace with Germany and the Russian had to be taken into consideration.”113 Nevertheless, Lehtonen ap-proved Eidem’s suggestion that the Nordic Churches should send their own delegations after the British and hoped that the plan would progress and that relations would be re-established. Lehtonen proposed to send Bishop von Bonsdorff of Porvoo with the Nordic delegation, but he wanted to dis-cuss the matter with his colleagues.114
As Lehtonen said, the Finnish political situation made it difficult to have relations of any kind with Germany: not only was there as yet no perma-nent peace treaty; the existing treaty more or less denied all interaction with Germany. Furthermore, sending Bishop von Bonsdorff would have been quite controversial. Although von Bonsdorff’s many previous contacts with Germany did not make him a Nazi sympathizer, less sympathetic quarters might have interpreted his support for Germany during the war as a sign that he was.115 However, this appears not to have troubled the Archbish-op, who probably considered the position von Bonsdorff had adopted as a means to survive the travails of the war by accepting any help against the Soviet enemy.
The meeting concluded with vespers in English in the Archbishop’s private chapel. The following morning Pimenoff visited Cotter. The dis-cussion turned to Russia and Finnish attitudes towards it. Pimenoff said that, in spite of his Russian name, he was a Finnish-speaking Finn born in Tavastland in Central-Western Finland. Pimenoff went on to say that he had “a great regard for and liking of the Russians” and that he “was greatly
Interview of the Rt Revd Samuel Lehtonen 11.5.2000.
LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 8.
LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 8.
Ripatti 1990, 115.
perturbed by Finnish relations with their powerful Eastern neighbour.” Ac-cording to Pimenoff, “all the relations of the Finns with the Russians were dominated by their anti-Russian bias”, of which he provided many exam-ples, repeating in large measure what he had said to Waddams little less than two years earlier.116
However, whereas Waddams had largely agreed with Pimenoff, Cotter simply summarised what he said without comment. Two factors, the first political, the second personal, explain this. During Waddams’ visit the Al-lied cause had still been high on the agenda, whereas during Cotter’s visit the Cold War was in its early stages and the need for Soviet sympathy in the western camp no longer existed.117 Perhaps a more compelling factor in Cot-ter’s cool approach to Pimenoff’s pro-Soviet talk was the fact that he knew Finland and the Finnish view of the Soviet Union from personal experience before the war. The origins of the Anglican Chaplaincy in Helsinki, Cotter’s parish while in Finland, had owed much to the influx of refugees from the St Petersburg Chaplaincy during the Russian Revolution. Cotter also spoke Russian, but it is likely his knowledge predated the Revolution, which he is unlikely to have welcomed.
Cotter left Finland on 14 September, returning first to Stockholm, where he met the Bishop, and then to Norway.118 On 17 September, he had a meeting in Oslo with Bishops Bell and Berggrav, accompanied by Hauge.
He reported about his meetings with Archbishops Eidem and Lehtonen and informed them of the Danish, Swedish and Finnish reactions. Bell wel-comed the proposal of a Danish representative meeting him in Berlin to break the first ice with the Germans.119
Berggrav’s response, however, revealed the political tension underlying the sending of a joint delegation of any kind. He opposed a visit to Ger-many by a Nordic delegation after the British, because that could awaken criticism:
LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 9.
Kirby 1999, 100-106; Varsori 2004, 282-288, 294-296.
LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 9.
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A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 9-10.
There were he said, political aspects to the question which had to be taken into consideration. The first was that the Norwegians and the Danes must work with the Allies and a delegation which included the Swedes might give rise to misinter-pretations which were not intended. The second was that he did not think that the Swedes understood their political position. During the war they had been neutral, whereas the allies had conquered Germany and were now not only occupying it but governing it, opinion in their own countries had to be considered and no false step made at this juncture. He was sure that Archbishop Eidem would understand the position if it were laid before him and the Bishop of Chichester said he would discuss with the Swedish Archbishop when he saw him. Bishop Berggrav said that neither Norwegians nor Danes would have any difficulty in cooperating with the Finns if they were able to send someone. He felt it important that the allied Scandinavians first contact the Germans and then later have a joint Scandinavian delegation. They could not then be accused of acting on the behest of England or Sweden.0
It was important for Berggrav to ensure that no one thought the Norwe-gians were following foreign orders. On the contrary, he wanted to em-phasize the independence of Norway and Denmark as Allied nations, even at the expense of excluding the Swedes. It is thus notable that he did not have a problem with sending a Finnish representative. Berggrav may have calculated that the Finns were less likely than the Swedes to claim leader-ship over others. Be that as it may, his wish to punish the Swedes for their neutrality scuppered any thought of a common delegation. He was much more interested in another plan to send a Norwegian Lutheran religious affairs officer to Germany.121
However, Berggrav’s attempt to create an Allied bloc inside the Nordic churches gained no support from the Norwegian and Danish clergy Cotter met on his way to Germany. In Denmark Jörgensen assured Cotter that
“Archbishop Eidem had no idea of the Swedish Church’s securing a position of leadership over the other Scandinavian Churches” and that “they were all on an equal footing”.122 Ultimately, whether Berggrav’s analysis was correct or not, it made it clear that sending a joint delegation was impossible, and the plan was soon forgotten. In the case of Finland it is doubtful whether Lehtonen ever consulted any of his episcopal colleagues about the matter.
0 LPL CFR LR file 113/1 Report on a visit to Scandinavian Church leaders by the Rev.
A. Cotter of Religious Affairs Branch C.C.G. (B.E.), 10.
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