collected money. The number of imprisoned dignitaries of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, mostly only temporarily, amounted to 765 in the whole year of 1937. On 10–13 May 1937 synodals convened in Halle upon Saale to discuss denominational questions of the Reformed, Lutheran and united congregations within the old-Prussian Confessing Church. The Halle Synod also delivered the basis for the multi-denominational Protestant Arnoldshain Conference (1957) and its theses on the Lord's Supper. Soon after, on 1 July Niemöller was arrested and after months in detention he was released – the court sentenced him and regarded the term served by the time in detention, but the Gestapo took him right away into custody and imprisoned him in the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen and later in Dachau. The fifth old-Prussian Synod of Confession (also Lippstadt Synod) convened its synodals in Lippstadt on 21–27 August 1937 debating financial matters. After the toughening of financial control the synodals decided to keep up collections, but more in hiding, and restarted regular rogations for the imprisoned, reading their names from the pulpit. In autumn 1937 the Gestapo further suppressed the underground theological education (KiHo) and systematically fought any examinations within the Confessing Church. On 10 December 1937 the ministry of church affairs appointed Werner as president of the Evangelical Supreme Church Council. Werner then restaffed the March of Brandenburg consistory, newly appointing Johannes Heinrich as consistorial president (after almost a year of vacancy) and three further members of German Christian affiliation: Siegfried Nobiling, Fritz Loerzer (formerly also Provost of Kurmark) and Pastor Karl Themel (Luisenstadt Congregation, Berlin). The remaining prior members were the German Christian Walter Herrmann (), Friedrich Riehm (German Christian), Helmut Engelhardt and von Arnim-Kröchlendorff (Confessing Church), Ernst Bender, and Friedrich Wendtlandt. In February 1938 Werner divested von Arnim-Kröchlendorff as chief of the financial department of Berlin, and replaced him by the Nazi official Erhard von Schmidt, who then severed the financial drainage of Berlin's Confessing Church. For Hitler's birthday (20 April 1938) Werner developed a special gift. All pastors of the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union should swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler. In May the seventh Synod of Confession of the Rhenish ecclesiastical province refused to comply, since it was not the state, which demanded the oath. The sixth old-Prussian Synod of Confession convened twice in Berlin, once in the Nikolassee Church (11–13 June 1938) and a second