Kurt Aland is remembered today as a German scholar whose name is inseparable from Münster, the INTF, and the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (NTG). That connection now seems so firmly established that it is difficult to imagine the story unfolding any other way. Yet one of the more intriguing discoveries from my work on the history of the NTG points to a different possibility. Just as the INTF in Münster was beginning to take shape, Aland’s own future remained unsettled. For a brief time, it seemed possible that his career—and perhaps the future center of work on the NTG itself—might develop not in Münster, but across the Atlantic in the American Midwest.1
The Background in East Germany
Born in Berlin on March 28, 1915, Aland first established himself not as a New Testament textual critic but as a church historian, with particular interests in Pietism, the Reformation, and early Christianity. His preparation for textual criticism, however, reached back to his student years under Hans Lietzmann, whose specialties in philology, church history, and research on manuscripts deeply influenced him. Aland became Lietzmann’s personal assistant, and their friendship extended beyond the university: Lietzmann was even the godfather to Aland’s first child. Thus, when the Württemberg Bible Society asked Aland in the late 1940s to check the accuracy of witness citations in the NTG apparatus, he was entering a field for which he had already been exceptionally well prepared.
From there, his role and expertise grew. The Württemberg Bible Society liked Aland’s vision of basing the edition on manuscripts themselves rather than printed editions and, in July of 1952, it planned that Aland would succeed Erwin Nestle as editor of the NTG. This was carried out in incremental stages: in the NTG21 (1952), Aland was first mentioned as an “associate” of the edition; in the NTG22 (1956), he appeared on the title page as a “collaborator”; and by the NTG23 (1957), he was named “co-editor,” although the title “Nestle-Aland” would not appear on the edition itself until NTG25 in 1963.
Around the same time, Aland also assumed responsibility for the official list of Greek New Testament manuscripts, which became known as the Kurzgefasste Liste. In fact, he quickly became well known in the US as an authority in this field. For example, his work, including a precise manuscript count, was featured in a June 10, 1957 Christianity Today article.
This research was deeply connected with the future of the NTG. From the beginning, Aland’s revisions of the edition were tied directly to manuscript evidence: checking witness citations, undertaking expeditions to microfilm them, making collations, and preparing for a more thorough revision of the text and apparatus. He would later describe this work on the Liste as “the path that led directly to the INTF.”2 The groundwork for the Institute had already been laid over years through his painstaking research and tracking of manuscripts.
But the path that would bring him to Münster was anything but straightforward.
Aland was carrying out this work against the backdrop of an increasingly fraught situation in East Germany. Until 1958, he was a full professor at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg while also serving as an associate professor at Humboldt University in Berlin—an arrangement that was still possible before the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.
During this time, he faced repeated persecution by communist authorities, who, in 1953, accused him of “anti-state statements” and alleged links to Western organizations. These charges could not be substantiated, and he was released after ten weeks in detention under inhumane conditions. An article published in the New York Times in 1953 reported that Aland had gone missing.
Just a few weeks later, the Times mentioned Aland again in a broader report on the arrests and prosecutions of Protestant clergy and theologians in East Germany, showing that his detention had already attracted international attention.
The situation deteriorated sharply in 1958. In the spring, Aland was denounced by one of his assistants, Ingrid Schulze, and on April 24, 1958, Neues Deutschland published a polemical article against him.
After returning from a manuscript expedition to the Soviet Union, he was placed under house arrest.
The university opened disciplinary proceedings and, on July 14, 1958, Aland was dismissed from Halle, without notice, for “maliciously obstructing the socialist transformation of the universities.”3 The Stasi were watching him closely. Within days, Aland made the decision to flee.
A Cold War Escape
The escape itself is almost like a scene from a Cold War film. Aland had told his coworkers in Halle and Berlin that he intended to flee and that anyone who wanted to go west with him should contact him. Klaus Junack and Ernst-Otto Reichert joined him. They helped prepare the escape and, at great personal risk, repeatedly brought valuable material west that would later be indispensable for the work of his Institute.4
On Sunday, July 20, 1958, Aland and his family drove from Halle to East Berlin in a car full of holiday luggage, supposedly on their way to the Baltic Sea. After a church service in East Berlin, they met Dr. Cram, the head of the de Gruyter publishing house, and his wife. Cram took Aland’s children, sitting obediently in the back seat with hymnbooks in their hands, and crossed into West Berlin as his “grandchildren.” Aland and his wife crossed separately by U-Bahn to Berlin-Steglitz, in the American sector of West Berlin, where the Crams and the children were already waiting. Aland then flew almost immediately to the United States for a UBS Greek New Testament editorial meeting, while his wife remained with the children in a church retreat home near Berlin. A few weeks later, the family flew to Hannover and from there went directly to Münster. The family had to leave all their belongings behind, including Aland’s 8,000-volume library, which was later absorbed into the university library in Halle.5
A Tentative Beginning in Münster
Aland found a place at the University of Münster, where the Protestant Faculty of Theology offered him a gesamtdeutsche Assistentenstelle.6 This was a special position shaped by the politics of divided Germany and intended for scholars from the East whose academic careers had been disrupted by political circumstances. For Aland, Münster offered a place to begin again, but certainly not on the same footing he had held before. In Halle, he had been an Ordinarius—roughly, a senior full professor with a chair. In Münster, by contrast, he entered through a much more provisional academic position. Although it brought him into the university, it did not restore the rank he had lost in Halle. He arrived as a scholar displaced by political pressure, entering a new university through a temporary and politically charged arrangement. And his role in Münster was still uncertain since he did not have a secure professorship.
Nevertheless, Aland proved himself once again very industrious.
An Institute without a Table and Chair
While at the University of Münster, Aland submitted a proposal to the Kultusministerium in Düsseldorf to establish an institute for New Testament textual criticism. The scale of the proposal was ambitious and the task was enormous: to find and catalog all Greek New Testament manuscripts and prepare a critical edition of the Greek New Testament. What was actually approved was more modest than what he had requested, but still remarkable: one academic assistant, one research assistant, and at least a half-time secretary. In addition, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung provided funds, for the time being, for an academic co-worker, another research assistant, and necessary material expenses. The proposal was accepted, and only eight months after he had fled from East Germany, the Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung (INTF) was officially founded on April 1, 1959.
The Institute’s beginning was anything but grand. Its work began in a basement room of the Protestant Faculty’s seminary building “without a table and a chair,” let alone “books or similar luxuries.”7 Despite this promising start, Aland’s tenure in Münster was still not secure.
In my archival research, I have discovered material indicating that, just as Aland was beginning to build an institution around him in Münster, American universities were starting to imagine a very different future for him across the Atlantic.
A Career Across the Atlantic?
The first trace of American interest in recruiting Aland appears before the INTF had officially been founded. On January 23, 1959, Franklin H. Littell of Emory University asked whether Aland was entirely satisfied in Münster and whether he might consider relocating to the United States.
Aland’s reply two weeks later shows how unsettled his life still was. Even assembling his publications was difficult: many of his offprints had been left behind when he fled East Germany, and his papers were still being moved from East Berlin to West Berlin little by little. He was not yet writing as a settled Münster professor, but as someone still piecing his academic life back together after fleeing. He was, however, clear about the work he most wanted to continue: New Testament textual criticism. For Aland, this was never merely an academic specialty; the New Testament was, in his words, the “Grundurkunde des Glaubens” (the foundational document of faith), and editing and studying it was therefore an “eminently theological and ecclesial task.”8
His description of Münster was just as revealing. The faculty had received him with “great friendliness and courtesy,” but his situation was still far from secure. Münster’s library conditions were not ideal because of how badly the city had been destroyed in the war. His salary was only transitional, and it seemed that a regular chair would not be possible for some time.9
So, when Littell asked whether he was “satisfactorily located at Münster,” Aland answered plainly that, for the time being, he had to say no. This is perhaps the clearest indication that he had not yet decided that Münster would be his permanent home.
His letter to Littell then becomes even more candid. Aland admitted that he had become “Germany-weary,” even almost “Europe-weary.” He wrote that, since beginning his studies in 1933, he had only rarely been able to work in outward and inward peace. First came the church struggle, then the war, and then the postwar period. In each of these phases, he said, he had stood on the “wrong side” and had faced the consequences. He was not convinced that Germany had learned enough from these events.
America, by contrast, was not unknown to him. He had already visited for extended stays and had long been in lively personal contact with American colleagues. He wrote he had come to value the American way of working and living. A move across the Atlantic would not be a small matter, especially for his family, but he was willing to consider it if the working possibilities, library conditions, financial terms, and broader circumstances were right. At the end of his letter, he asked Littell to explore possibilities in the United States on his behalf but requested that the matter be handled quietly, so that it would not become public too soon, especially in Germany.
Although there is no further record of correspondence with Littell on the matter, the exchange is quite revealing. Almost immediately after Aland’s move to Münster, he was considering the possibility of settling overseas in the US.
Later that same year, another possibility arose for Aland. In December 1959, he traveled to the University of Chicago, as he was invited to deliver the prestigious Haskell Lectures (which were later published as Über den Glaubenswechsel in der Geschichte des Christentums). In the wake of that visit, discussion began to shift from the lectures themselves to the possibility that Aland might take up a professorship at Chicago, setting off months of uncertainty about his future in Germany.
Why the United States Made Sense
Chicago offered several compelling advantages. In the late 1950s, Münster had not yet grown into the center of New Testament textual criticism that it would eventually become. German textual criticism in general was still recovering after the war, and the large-scale work once associated with figures such as Tischendorf, Gregory, von Soden, and von Dobschütz no longer had the same support or momentum. Theologian Werner Kümmel gave a bleak assessment of the situation in 1955:
Textual criticism has virtually ceased to be a subject of active research in present day Germany, that is to say so far as the investigation of textual families, relationships between texts, etc. are concerned. This kind of research requires a great deal of time and money, so that it has almost entirely been transferred to America. At the same time, however, manuscripts and texts are still being edited and editions revised.10
In the US, by contrast, New Testament textual criticism had a much stronger institutional base. Chicago possessed one of the most substantial collections of biblical manuscripts in the US (the Goodspeed collection) and had an established tradition of text-critical research associated with scholars such as Edgar J. Goodspeed and E.C. Colwell. By 1959, Allen Wikgren was Professor of New Testament at Chicago and oversaw the lectionary project. Beyond Chicago, Bruce Metzger was active at Princeton, and other scholars, such as Merrill Parvis and Kenneth W. Clark, were already part of a wider American network of text-critics.
The International Greek New Testament Project was also underway, with strong American involvement and institutional support, while Eugene Nida, through the American Bible Society, understood how closely textual criticism was tied to the future of Bible translation. Aland was already very familiar with the US and the many possibilities there. From a career perspective, America, and especially Chicago, offered not only prestige but a field with money, projects, collaborators, and infrastructure.11
The INTF without Kurt Aland?
Minutes of the April 20, 1960 board meeting of the University of Chicago preserve the recommendation that Aland be appointed full professor of Church History.
This document reveals just how far the process had advanced. An extensive search had been made for a church historian and the Committee had discussed Aland’s appointment. The minutes contain several formal recommendations and the Board of Trustees voted to approve Aland’s appointment.
What most impressed the Chicago faculty was the unusual breadth of Aland’s scholarship. They were seeking someone capable of teaching church history from Constantine to the Reformation and regarded him as one of the few scholars with the necessary range. They valued his expertise in the early church, the Reformation, and German Pietism, particularly his work on Philipp Jakob Spener. His knowledge of New Testament manuscripts and textual criticism further strengthened his candidacy, although the proposed appointment was formally in Church History. The Haskell Lectures allowed the faculty to hear him lecture and meet him personally, convincing them that he could teach students, lead advanced seminars, supervise doctoral research, and adapt to an English-speaking environment. His command of several languages, international reputation, productivity, and resilience after persecution under both the Nazi and East German regimes reinforced their view of him as an exceptionally versatile scholar.
Matthew Black, a longtime friend and collaborator of Aland’s, wrote to him on January 4, 1960, calling Chicago “an excellent offer” and suggested that America might provide security “in the event of any further trouble in Europe.” For someone who had only recently fled East Germany, the United States could appear not only as an enticing professional opportunity but also as a place of distance and safety.
Black also understood the personal cost of a transatlantic move. Was Aland ready, he asked, to be “transplanted” into an American setting? From his own experience as an expat, Black knew the difficult decisions such a move involved for family, career, language, and everyday life. These concerns were not merely abstract. The possibility had advanced far enough that the Alands were even shown prospective houses in Chicago.12 This brought the practical implications of the move into sharper focus, particularly the question of where they wanted to live and raise their children.
Black was also deeply concerned about the consequences for the INTF, writing:
It also would be a great pity for the Institute of New Testament Research in Münster, which you have so recently established. It is quite clear that [it] cannot be transplanted…I do not imagine that the Institute would be likely to have a very long life if you left it to its own resources in Münster.
Black understood that the newly founded INTF was not yet secure enough to survive without Aland. Its future remained closely bound to its founder and was, in many respects, difficult to imagine without him.
The implications for the NTG were just as far-reaching. If Aland went to Chicago, the question was not simply whether the work would continue, but where it would be centered. Would the manuscript research already underway—the Liste, collations, microfilm collections, scholarly networks, and plans for future revisions—remain anchored in Münster, or would it somehow follow Aland across the Atlantic?
On March 1, 1960, Aland told Bruce Metzger about the call from Chicago. Aland’s primary concern was the future of his Institute. Chicago would not be inclined to take responsibility for the INTF, and so he asked Metzger whether the continuation of its work might be financed, at least in part, through American resources, perhaps with support from the American Bible Society by way of Eugene Nida.
The archival correspondence shows that uncertainty over Aland’s decision continued for months. On March 4, Black reported that Nida and other mutual friends were asking whether Aland had accepted the Chicago chair, while Paul Kahle in Oxford had noticed that Aland’s name no longer appeared in Münster’s latest teaching schedule. Did this mean, Black asked, that Aland had accepted Chicago after all? A further inquiry from Black followed on April 22.
At the same time, Aland had not given up on Münster. On May 9, 1960, while the Chicago question remained unresolved, he wrote to Neville Birdsall about the INTF’s plans for its own publication series, Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Textforschung (ANTF). He asked whether Birdsall’s larger work might be suitable for the series and explained the logic behind it: “It would be useful if work in New Testament textual criticism did not appear scattered everywhere, but as far as possible in one place.”
This statement shows that Aland envisioned the future of textual criticism not as the scattered work of individual scholars, as it had often been in the past, but as a coordinated international enterprise centered on an institution. Yet at that very moment, it remained uncertain on which continent that work would take place. His decision therefore concerned more than his own career: it would help determine where the momentum surrounding his work—and perhaps the future of New Testament textual criticism—would be concentrated.
Closing
Ultimately, after months of deliberation, Aland decided to remain in Münster. I am struck by how difficult that decision must have been. His life had been shadowed by the upheavals of two world wars, and he now found himself in the middle of the Cold War—though in 1959 and 1960 no one could have known that the conflict would remain “cold.” By his own admission, he had rarely been able to work in peace in Germany and had repeatedly found himself in opposition to its political developments. Münster had given him a new beginning, but not a secure one. He had a fledgling institute with meager resources, in a city still marred by wartime destruction. He occupied a position created for displaced scholars, with no guarantee of long-term academic success. America, by contrast, offered security far from Europe’s crises, a university with a strong history of textual criticism, a stable infrastructure, better funding, and a full professorship.
In light of all these details, it is truly remarkable that he chose to stay. We may never know exactly what moved Aland to remain in Münster, but his decision likely reflected both the practical difficulties of moving his family to Chicago and his deep commitment to the Institute he had founded, together with his conviction that its work on the text of the New Testament—an “eminently theological and ecclesial task”—could and should continue there.
Because he stayed, the work of the Institute remained in Münster, which would soon become the center of research behind the NTG. The edition itself would soon bear his name: the Nestle-Aland. To us today, that outcome may seem self-evident, but in 1959 and 1960 it was anything but. Had Aland gone to Chicago, the history of the NTG would almost certainly have taken a very different course. For a brief moment, before “Nestle-Aland” and “Münster” became almost synonymous, it remained uncertain how and where the next chapter in the history of the NTG would unfold.
- Much of this research is based on my findings in the Landeskirchliches Archiv Stuttgart and the Universitätsarchiv in Münster, as well as personal correspondence with Beate von Tschischwitz (Köster), Kurt Aland’s PhD student and longtime colleague, and Tobias Aland, the grandson of Kurt Aland. Translations of the original German are my own. ↩︎
- Kurt Aland, “Die Grundurkunde des Glaubens: Ein Bericht über 40 Jahre Arbeit an ihrem Text,” in Bericht der Hermann Kunst-Stiftung zur Förderung der neutestamentlichen Textforschung für die Jahre 1982 bis 1984 (Münster: Hermann Kunst-Stiftung, 1985), 28. ↩︎
- “Kurt Aland,” Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, https://www.catalogus-professorum-halensis.de/alandkurt.html ↩︎
- Thus, the Institute not only marked Aland’s new beginning but also gathered others whose lives had been disrupted by the division of Germany. In Münster, they too found “their home, their work, and a task.” Erdmann Sturm, “Grußwort,” in Kurt Aland: In Memoriam (Münster: Hermann Kunst-Stiftung, 1995), 15. ↩︎
- “Kurt Aland,” Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, https://www.catalogus-professorum-halensis.de/alandkurt.html ↩︎
- Robert Stubberich, “Die evangelisch-theologische Fakultät der Universität Münster,” in Die Universität Münster 1780–1980, ed. Heinz Dollinger (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980), 250. ↩︎
- Beate von Tschischwitz, pers. comm. ↩︎
- Friedemann Merkel, “Predigt im Trauergottesdienst für Prof. D. Kurt Aland am 21. April 1994,” in Kurt Aland: In Memoriam, 9. ↩︎
- Although he eventually attained a full professorship earlier, on February 29, 1960. Cf. Stubberich, “Die evangelisch-theologische Fakultät,” 250. ↩︎
- Werner Kümmel, “New Testament Research and Teaching in Present-Day Germany,” NTS 1.3 (1955), 231. ↩︎
- See, for example, Jennifer Knust’s account of active American IGNTP work during the Cold War: “The New Testament Apparatus and the Rise of the American Cold War,” Philological Encounters 11, nos. 1–2 (2026): 147–181. ↩︎
- Tobias Aland, pers. comm. ↩︎