August Hlond

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August Cardinal Hlond (oil painting by Józef Męcina-Krzesz, 1934)
Coat of arms of August Cardinal Hlonds as Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw (1946–1948)
Coat of arms of August Cardinal Hlonds as Archbishop of Gniezno and Posen (1926–1946)
Coat of arms of August Hlonds as Bishop of Katowice (1925–1926)

August Cardinal Hlond SDB (born July 5, 1881 in Brzęczkowice ( Brzenskowitz ) near Myslowitz in Upper Silesia , German Empire ; †  October 22,  1948 in Warsaw ) was Bishop of Katowice in 1925 , Archbishop of Gnesen and Poznan since 1926 , and of Warsaw since 1946 as well as primates of Poland .

Life

August Hlond came from a Polish working-class family. After attending the Salesian School, he joined the Order of the Salesians of Don Bosco in 1896 , which sent him to Rome as a scholarship holder . In 1899 he graduated from the Pontifical Gregorian University with a doctorate in philosophy .

From 1900 to 1909, Hlond, who was ordained priestly on September 23, 1905 by Auxiliary Bishop Anatol Nowak in Kraków , worked as a teacher and director of the Salesian schools in Auschwitz , Kraków , Przemyśl and Lemberg . In 1909 he became director of the Salesianerhaus in Vienna, which was under construction . In 1914 he organized the establishment of the religious establishment with the Don-Bosco-Gymnasium in Unterwaltersdorf in Lower Austria . In 1916 he was involved in the negotiations that led to the establishment of a Salesian branch in Würzburg - the order's first branch in what is now Germany.

After he was appointed Provincial of the Order of Germany-Austria-Hungary in 1919, he met Achille Ratti, who later became Pope Pius XI. who should contribute a lot to Hond's ecclesiastical career.

After the annexation of East - Upper Silesia to the resurgent avowed Poland Hlond was 1922 apostolic administrator of the newly established Governorship of the later diocese Katowice , whose first bishop he was on 14 December 1925th He received the episcopal ordination on January 3, 1926 by Aleksander Cardinal Kakowski , the Archbishop of Warsaw ; Co- consecrators were the bishop of Przemyśl , Anatol Nowak, and the auxiliary bishop of Gnesen-Posen, Stanisław Kostka Łukomski .

As the episcopal motto he adopted the coat of arms of the Salesian religious order : “Da mihi animas, cetera great” (“Give me souls, take everything else”).

On June 24, 1926, Pope Pius XI appointed him . to the Archbishop of Poznan and Gniezno, whereby he also became Primate of Poland. Just one year later, on June 20, 1927 the Pope appointed him cardinal priest with the titular church of Santa Maria della Pace in the College of Cardinals .

As a Primate of Poland, Hlond was committed to the development of the Polish Catholic Action founded in 1930 .

After the outbreak of war in 1939 , Hlond fled via Romania to the Vatican City , where he campaigned for his homeland, which was occupied by the German and Soviet armies. His reports on the persecution and genocide by the National Socialists were broadcast on Vatican Radio and are included in the reports of the Polish government for the Nuremberg Tribunal .

Under pressure from the Italian government under Mussolini , which was allied with National Socialist Germany , Hlond was soon deported from Rome and spent the years 1940 to 1944 in Lourdes , Vichy France . Finally he was interned by the Gestapo in a monastery in Wiedenbrück , Westphalia , where he was liberated by the US Army on April 1, 1945. On April 24, 1945 he reached Rome via Paris. On July 20, 1945 he returned to Poznan .

After the archdiocese of Gniezno-Poznan was divided, Hlond was appointed Archbishop of Gniezno-Warsaw in 1946. From his posthumously published records during the war years it is clear that he was striving for a "Catholic monarchy" as a form of government for a future Poland. The new Poland should “not repeat the mistake of the political parties ( upartyjnienia polityki ) being taken over”.

Controversy

Anti-Judaism

In a pastoral letter entitled “On Catholic moral principles” ( O katolickie zasady moralne ), Hlond stated in 1936: “It is a fact that the Jews are fighting the Catholic Church, they indulge in Freemasonry, they are the avant-garde of godlessness and the Bolshevik movement and subversive actions. It is a fact that the Jewish influence on general morality is negative, and their publishers promote pornography . It is true that Jews commit fraud, usury and human trafficking ( handel żywym towarem ). ”The pastoral letter continued:“ But let us be just! Not all Jews are like that. "

In the opinion of Polish historians, however, Hlond clearly distanced himself from the Nuremberg race laws of the German National Socialists in the pastoral letter : "The clearly anti-Semitic attitude imported from abroad (...) is incompatible with Catholic ethics." However, he called on his compatriots to “ Avoid Jewish shops and stands at the fair” ( omijać żydowskie sklepy i stragany żydowskie na jarmarku ). But it is forbidden to "attack Jews, beat them, mutilate and blacken them". ( Never wolno na żydów napadać, bić ich, kaleczyć, oczerniać. )

Together with the Warsaw Archbishop Aleksander Kakowski, Hlond wrote a memorandum in which it is described as the task of the Church to protect Polish youth from being “Jewish” ( zżydziało ). In a joint letter to the Ministry of Religious Confessions and Public Education, both bishops complained that “Jewish teachers do not have a positive effect on the child in the spirit of Catholic morality”.

In 1946, Hlond wrote in a letter to Pius XII. the new Polish authorities in Wroclaw as "the redest and most heavily Jewish in all of Poland". In the same year he refused to condemn the Kielce pogrom .

Oder-Neisse areas

On July 8, 1945, Domenico Tardini Hlond handed over a power of attorney from the Holy Congregation for Extraordinary Affairs in the Vatican , according to which he was instructed to appoint administrators for vacant episcopal seats "in all Polish territory" ( in tutto il territorio polacco ). Citing this power of attorney, Hlond, escorted by the Polish military, toured the German eastern territories at the beginning of August 1945 to urge the bishops and their representatives who had stayed behind to abdicate .

For example, the German bishops Maximilian Kaller of Ermland , Carl Maria Splett of Danzig and Joseph Martin Nathan , who held the office of commissioner for the Prussian part of the Archdiocese of Olomouc in Silesia , were removed from their dioceses by Hlond . Arbitrarily he appointed also in the canon law still before German Polish dioceses administrators and demanded the selected Breslauer Capitular Ferdinand Piontek voluntary resignation ( resignation ). Hlond untruthfully claimed to the German clergy that the letters of resignation had been drawn up in the Vatican.

The priest Johannes Kaps, who came to Rome a little later on behalf of the Wroclaw Cathedral Chapter, reported to Pope Pius XII. of the situation of the German Catholics in Breslau, which is under Polish administration. According to Kaps' report, the Pope did not hide his astonishment that Hlond had appointed Polish priests as apostolic administrators for the German eastern territories, which were still part of the German Empire under international law and whose diocesan borders were secured by concordats. In 1946, Hlond wrote to Pius XII. admitted that he had mistakenly interpreted his powers too broadly. Given the situation, he had no choice but to use Polish administrators. Because the German clergy had "sunk in the act of incapacity", the new Polish authorities, consisting "mostly of communists, uneducated people and vengeful Jews," prevented the German priests from performing their pastoral duties. Hlond emphasized that with his decisions he had put an end to “heresy” and “Germanic Protestantism” in the Oder-Neisse regions.

According to German historians, Hond's letter did not convince the Pope. The administrators appointed by him were not mentioned in the papal yearbooks until the ratification of the Warsaw Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the People's Republic of Poland in 1972. Pius XII. spoke out in 1948 for a return of the German expellees to their hometowns. Thereupon Hlond felt compelled to reassure the Polish new settlers: “Do not be deceived and do not give room to doubt in your soul, the Church could question a Polish future of the regained territories. There is no reason why the Church should speak out in favor of downsizing Poland. "

Beatification process

In 1992 the diocesan beatification process was opened, which was criticized by German Catholic publicists. Franz Scholz , lecturer in Catholic theology in Fulda , published a “Hlondheft” in which he spoke out vehemently against the beatification of August Hlond on behalf of the German Catholics. In a sermon to expellees, the Jesuit Lothar Groppe even spoke of an "endeavor by Polish circles to want to push one of the most repulsive figures in the Church in Poland [...] in honor of the altars". In 1995 the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference , Bishop Karl Lehmann of Mainz , protested against efforts to beat Hlond. In order to settle the controversy, a "German-Polish commission of historians to clarify open questions regarding Cardinal Hlonds" was founded. On March 6, 1998, the diocesan records were closed and sent to Rome.

In March 2017, the responsible commission of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints announced that it had examined and approved the Positio super vita et virtutibus (German: Explanation of Life and Virtues ), the documentation required for the recognition of a heroic degree of virtue . Pope Francis awarded him the heroic degree of virtue on May 19, 2018 .

In 2018, the Committee of American Jews and the British Rabbi David Rosen protested against the beatification process in a letter to Kurt Cardinal Koch , chairman of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity.

Hlond is venerated as a "servant of God" by the German province of the Salesians of Don Bosco.

literature

  • Antoni Baraniak : Misja opatrznościowa Kardynała Prymasa Hlonda w okresie wojny światowej 1939–1945. Krakow 1974.
  • Dieter Albrecht : Catholic Church in the Third Reich. A collection of essays on the relationship between the papacy, episcopate and German Catholics to National Socialism 1933–1945. Mainz 1976.
  • Hans-Jürgen Karp : Cardinal Hlond and the difficult German-Polish relationship. At the beginning of Franz Scholz (= magazine for history and antiquity of Warmia. Vol. 45). 1989, pp. 140-164.
  • Wojciech Necel: Kardynał August Hlond - Prymas Polski. Poznań 1993.
  • Józef Pater: The resettlement of Lower Silesia in the context of the re-establishment of the diocese of Wroclaw in the years 1945 to 1951. In: Cultures in encounter . Collegium Pontes, Wrocław / Görlitz 2004, ISBN 83-7432-018-4 .
  • Franz Scholz : Between reasons of state and the gospel. Cardinal Hlond and the Tragedy of the East German Dioceses. Verlag Josef Knecht, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-7820-0571-6 .
  • Jerzy Pietrzak: Pełnia prymasostwa. 2009, ISBN 978-83-7177-657-1 (on the years 1945–1948).
  • Tim Buchen: Hlond, August , in: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 2/1, 2009, pp. 371f.

Web links

Commons : August Hlond  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ August kard. Hlond . Archidiecezja Gnieźnieńska. Retrieved July 5, 2013.
  2. ↑ quoted from: Prymas Hlond bez retuszu , in: Tygodnik Powszechny , June 17, 2018, p. 33.
  3. ↑ quoted from: Prymas Hlond bez retuszu , in: Tygodnik Powszechny , June 17, 2018, p. 33.
  4. ↑ Maciej Müller, Prymas Hlond bez retuszu , in: Tygodnik Powszechny , June 17, 2018, p. 31.
  5. ↑ quoted from: Prymas Hlond bez retuszu , in: Tygodnik Powszechny , June 17, 2018, p. 32.
  6. ↑ quoted from: Dariusz Libionka: Polska hierarchia kościelna wobec eksterminacji Zydów - próba krytycznego ujęcia, in: Zagłada Żydów: studia i materiały , 5 (2009), p. 23
  7. ↑ quoted from: Maciej Müller, Prymas Hlond bez retuszu , in: Tygodnik Powszechny , June 17, 2018, p. 33.
  8. ^ Thomas Urban : From Krakow to Danzig. A journey through German-Polish history. Munich 2004, p. 114.
  9. ↑ Maciej Müller, Prymas Hlond bez retuszu , in: Tygodnik Powszechny , June 17, 2018, p. 33.
  10. ^ Evelyne A. Adenauer: The Christian Silesia 1945/46. Berlin 2014, p. 180.
  11. ↑ Norbert Trippen, The integration of evicted priests in West Germany after 1945, in: In the memory of the church anew. Studies on the history of Christianity in Central and Eastern Europe. Eds. R. Haas, K. Rivinius, H. Scheidgen, Mainz 2000, p. 279.
  12. ↑ Józef Pater: The resettlement of Lower Silesia in the context of the re-establishment of the diocese of Breslau in the years 1945 to 1951. P. 89.
  13. ↑ Ferdinand Piontek, Report of the Wroclaw Capitular Vicar on the visit of Cardinal Hlond, in: Archives for Silesian Church History , 39.1981, pp. 27-29.
  14. ↑ Johannes Kaps, report on the journey of a Silesian priest from Breslau to Rome to report to the Holy See about the conditions in Breslau du Schlesien (1945), in: Archive for Silesian Church History, 38.1980, p. 38.
  15. ^ Peter Raina: Kościół w PRL. Documenty. T. 1. 1945-1959. Poznań 1994, pp. 46-48.
  16. ^ Franz Scholz: Between reasons of state and gospel. Cardinal Hlond and the Tragedy of the East German Dioceses. Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 20.
  17. ↑ Kardynał August Hlond, Do ludnosci katolickiej Ziem odzyskanych, in: Listy Pasterskie Episkopatu Polskiego 1945–1974 . Paris 1975, pp. 16-18.
  18. ↑ Wędrówka ku świętości . Tygodnik Katolicki Niedziela. Retrieved July 5, 2013.
  19. ↑ a b The Catholic Church of Poland and the "Reclaimed Territories" 1945–1948 . P. 13. Archived from the original on January 12, 2016. Retrieved January 12, 2016.
  20. ^ Lothar Groppe SJ: Sermon during the pilgrimage of the expellees on October 17, 1999 in Cologne Cathedral . In: Theological . Volume 29, No. 11/12. November / December 1999, p. 614.
  21. ↑ Maciej Müller, Prymas Hlond bez retuszu , in: Tygodnik Powszechny , June 17, 2018, p. 33.
  22. ^ Catholic News Agency , March 10, 2017.
  23. ↑ Promulgazione di Decreti della Congregazione delle Cause dei Santi, May 21, 2018. In: Daily Bulletin. Holy See Press Office , May 21, 2018, accessed September 24, 2019 (Italian).
  24. ↑ Maciej Müller, Prymas Hlond bez retuszu , in: Tygodnik Powszechny , June 17, 2018, p. 31.
  25. ^ German province of the Salesians Don Bosco: The saints and blessed of the Don Bosco family . Munich 2014.
predecessor Office successor
Aleksander Cardinal Kakowski Archbishop of Warsaw
1946–1948 		Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński
Edmund Cardinal Dalbor Archbishop of Gniezno and Posen
1926–1946 		Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński
Bishop of Katowice
1925–1926 		Arkadiusz Lisiecki
personal data
SURNAME Hlond, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hlond, August Cardinal
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish theologian, Archbishop of Gniezno and Poznan, Archbishop of Warsaw and Primate in Poland
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Brzęczkowice near Myslowitz , Poland
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1948
Place of death Warsaw