the rather loose annual convention called Church General Assembly (Kirchentag), which was composed of the members of the various regional churches. The League was governed and administered by a 36-member Executive Committee (Kirchenausschuss) which was responsible for ongoing governance between the annual conventions of the Kirchentag. Save for the organizational matters under the jurisdiction of the national League, the regional churches remained independent in other matters, including theology, and the federal system allowed for a great deal of regional autonomy. Nazi Germany Ideology The Deutsche Christen were, for the most part, a "group of fanatically Nazi Protestants." They began as an interest group and eventually came to represent one of the schismatic factions of German Protestantism. Their movement was sustained and encouraged by factors such as: the 400th anniversary (in 1917) of Martin Luther's publication of the Ninety-five Theses in 1517, an event which endorsed German nationalism, stoked hostility toward foreign peoples, granted Germany a preferred place in the Protestant tradition, and legitimized antisemitism; the antisemitic writings of Martin Luther; cf. On the Jews and Their Lies; the Luther Renaissance Movement of Professor Emmanuel Hirsch; supported by publications by Guida Diehl, the first speaker of the National Socialist Women's League; the revival of völkisch traditions; the de-emphasis of the Old Testament in Lutheran theology, and the partial or total removal of Jewishness from the Bible; the respect for temporal (secular) authority, which had been emphasized by Luther. The movement used scriptural support (Romans 13) to justify this position. The Deutsche Christen were sympathetic to the Nazi regime's goal of "co-ordinating" (see Gleichschaltung) the individual Protestant churches into a single and uniform Reich church, consistent with the Volk ethos and the Führerprinzip. The editor Prof. Wilhelm Knevels of the journal Christentum und Leben (i.e. Christianity and Life) also worked for the "Institute for Research and the Elimination of Jewish influence on German Church Life"—and his journal published articles like "Heroic Christianity" ("Heroisches Christentum", 1935) and "Why not only God? Why Jesus?" ("Warum nicht nur Gott? Warum Jesus?", April 1942). The "Martin Luther Memorial Church" (Martin-Luther-Gedächtniskirche), which was built in Berlin from 1933 to 1935 included a pulpit that showed the Sermon on the Mount with a Stahlhelm-wearing Wehrmacht soldier listening to Jesus and a baptismal font which featured an SA stormtrooper. The swastikas were removed after the war and the former church has been reconstructed as a memorial to Nazi crimes