Background
Heinrich Grüber was born in Stolberg, Rhineland, on 24 June 1891.
Heinrich Grüber was born in Stolberg, Rhineland, on 24 June 1891.
He studied theology in Bonn, Berlin and Utrecht.
Studied theology at different universities both in Germany and abroad before becoming an active social worker and the director of a home for retarded boys. Staunchly opposed to Hitler, he came into contact with Pastor Niemöller and the Confessional Church who entrusted him with setting up an organization, the Büro Grüber', at his vicarage in Kaulsdorf, near Berlin, to help save Christians of Jewish descent.
Gruber constantly negotiated with the Nazi authorities, including Eichmann’s Gestapo office, on behalf of Jewish organizations and sometimes found secret helpers in the Wehrmacht and different Reich ministries. After the outbreak of war he w as frequently harassed by Gestapo threats and in December 1940 he was arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, then transferred to Dachau. He suffered from a heart complaint, had his teeth knocked out and most of his helpers were murdered by the Nazis.
Released in 1943 he resumed contact w ith Evangelical Church clergymen in exile. In 1945 he became Dean of St Mary's Church in Berlin and founded the Evangelische Hilfsstelle für Ehemals Rassisch Verfolgte (Evangelical Aid Society for former Victims of Racial Persecution).
From 1949 to 1958 Gruber was the chief representative of the Evangelical Church in East Berlin, resigning his position in protest against anti-Christian smears in the DDR. He was also unpopular in West Germany for his advocacy of nuclear disarmament and his attacks on West German militarism, not to mention his insistence on the collective guilt of the German nation for Nazi crimes. Grüber argued that every German ‘who glosses over his past failings is a potential criminal of tomorrow’ and denounced the official whitewashing of the German people in the post-war period. He was the only German witness to come to Jerusalem in 1961 to testify in the Eichmann trail to the existence of ‘another Germany’.
Dean Gruber continued to emphasize the moral obligation of the Germans to the Jewish people and to warn the authorities against minimizing periodic outbursts of neo-Nazi activity in the Federal Republic. His memoirs, Erinnerungen aus Sieben Jahrzehnten, were published in 1968.
He died of a heart attack seven years later at the age of eighty-four.