ecclesiastical committees on the level of the deaneries, if assumed necessary. This was the case in the deanery of Berlin-Spandau. As a gesture of reconciliation the state ecclesiastical committee for the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union legitimised all ordinations and examinations of the Confessing Church retroactively for the time from 1 January 1934 to 30 November 1935. Nevertheless, the Confessing Church refused to accept the new examination office of the state ecclesiastical committee. But Künneth (Inner Mission) and a number of renowned professors of the Frederick William University of Berlin, who worked for the Confessing Church before, declared their readiness to collaborate with the committee, to wit Prof. Alfred Bertholet, Gustav Adolf Deissmann (Volkskirchlich-Evangelische Vereinigung; VEV.), Hans Lietzmann, Wilhelm Lütgert, and . Thus Kerrl successfully wedged the Confessing Church. On 4 December 1935 the March of Brandenburg provincial Synod of Confession agreed to split in two provincial subsections, one for Greater Berlin and one comprising the political Province of Brandenburg with two provincial brethren councils, led by Gerhard Jacobi (Berlin, resigned in 1939, but quarrels between the moderate and the Dahlemites continued) and by Scharf (Brandenburg), who followed the Dahlemite guidelines. At the fourth Reich's Synod of Confession in Bad Oeynhausen (17–22 February 1936) the Dahlemites fell out with most of the Lutheran Confessing Christians. The first Preliminary Church Executive resigned, since its members, representing intact churches, wanted to co-operate with the committees, while its members from destroyed churches, especially the Dahlemites did not. The minority of moderate, mostly Lutheran Confessing Christians quit the Reich's Brethren Council. Also the different provincial brethren councils within the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union were dissented. While most brethren councillors of Berlin wanted to co-operate, the brethren council of Brandenburg (without Berlin), of the Rhineland and the overall old-Prussian brethren council strictly opposed any compromises. On 12 March the remaining members of the Reich's Brethren Council, presided by Niemöller, appointed the second Preliminary Church Executive, consisting of Supt. Albertz, Bernhard Heinrich Forck (St. Trinity in Hamm, Hamburg), Paul Fricke (Frankfurt-Bockenheim), Hans Böhm (Berlin), and Fritz Müller. This body was recognised by the brethren councils of the destroyed churches of the old-Prussian Union, of Bremen, of Nassau-Hesse and of Oldenburg as well as by a covenant of pastors from Württemberg (the so-called Württembergische Sozietät). On 18 March the three Lutheran intact churches announced the foundation of the Council of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of