One Nazi opponent was Friedrich Middendorff, who was made pastor of the Evangelical-Reformed parish in Schüttorf in 1926. Even before the "Machtergreifung", he had been openly disagreeing with National Socialist Ideology in the "Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt", and he was also known through his work in the "Christlich-Sozialer Volksdienst", and he quickly became a target for the Nazis. What followed was surveillance by the Gestapo and state reprisals. The disagreement reached its apex on 18 April 1937 when several hundred Schüttorfers gathered before the town hall after Middendorff had been arrested and “sang him free”, standing there for hours singing chorales until he was released. His article "Ein Weniges zur Judenfrage" (“A Little About the Jewish Question”), which was seized and banned, had become well known. Middendorff had to flee town in 1937, and so did his family the following year. Only after the war, when the Third Reich had been defeated, in 1946, did he come back to Schüttorf. He later held many offices, and became from 1946 to 1953 the ecclesiastical president of the Evangelical-Reformed Church. Later he was the lead candidate for the in the Lower Saxony elections. In 1973, however, he lost his life in a traffic accident. A square in Schüttorf, "Friedrich-Middendorff-Platz", is named after him. (see 5)