There are thousands in Germany, hundreds in Bavaria: bullets on church towers. But what few people know is that they often contain centuries-old treasures and secrets – valuable coins, dead animals, critical comments about Nazis. A historian examines this largely unexplored phenomenon.
The theologian Otfried Sperl took a big risk. In 1936 he placed a time capsule with a letter in the church tower of his community in Roßtal, Central Franconia. In it, the pastor’s son expressed his concern about the role of the Protestant church during the Nazi era. He asked himself how the Protestant faith could continue under the “Reich Bishop” and Hitler confidant Ludwig Müller. Sperl wrote of Müller’s “unchurched measures” and the “destruction” and “confusion” he caused within the German Protestant Church. It wasn’t just risky because the man was opposing the Nazi system. But also because in 1936 another time capsule was placed in the church tower ball. The local group of the NSDAP included ten postcards from Roßtal. It was not until 1982, many years after the end of the Nazi dictatorship, that the man’s message was discovered.