appointed Reich's minister for ecclesiastical affairs, a newly created department. He started negotiations to find a compromise. Therefore, he dropped the extreme German Christians and tried to win moderate Confessing Christians and respected neutrals. On 24 September 1935, a new law empowered Kerrl to legislate by way of ordinances within the Protestant church bodies, circumventing any synodal autonomy. On 10 September 1935 the old-Prussian brethren council convened preparing the upcoming third old-Prussian Synod of Confession (also Steglitz Synod). The brethren decided not to unite with the official Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union, unless the heretic German Christians would quit it. Supt. Albertz urged the brethren council to discuss the terrible situation of Jewish Germans and Gentile Germans of Jewish descent, as it turned by the Nuremberg Laws and all the other anti-Semitic discriminations. But the Westphalian Praeses Koch threatened he would secede the old-Prussian brethren council, if – in the synod – the council would advocate to pass a solidarity address to the Jews. On 26 September, Confessing synodals from all over the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union convened for the third old-Prussian Synod of Confession in the parish hall of Berlin's Steglitz Congregation in Albrechtstraße No. 81, organised by congregants of . , since 1932 director of the Evangelical Welfare Office for Berlin's borough of Zehlendorf (a part of today's borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf), appealed to the synodals to take action for the persecuted Jews and Christians of Jewish descent. In her memorandum she explained – among other things – that a third of the so-called non-Aryan Protestants was unemployed due to the ever-growing number of jobs prohibited for Jews as defined by the Nuremberg Laws. She found clear words, calling the systematical impoverishment a Cold Pogrom, aiming for and resulting in – as shown by the demographic development of German Jewry under Nazi persecution so far – the extinction of the German Jewry. She quoted a criticism from the Church of Sweden, saying the new god of the Germans was the Race, to which they would offer human sacrifices. While Supt. Albertz and Niemöller argued to discuss the memorandum, a majority of synodals refused and the memorandum was then laid ad acta. The synodals could only gain common sense about the fact, that persons of Jewish religion, were to be baptised, if they wished so. This was completely denied by the German Christians since 1932, reserving Christianity