Hieronymus Jaegen

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Hieronymus Jaegen (born August 23, 1841 in Trier , Rhine Province , Kingdom of Prussia ; † January 26, 1919 ibid) was a German Catholic banker , parliamentarian and mystic .

Life

education

Jaegen was born as the son of a teacher and a housewife from a Moselle boatman family in Trier's St. Paulusviertel. After elementary school he first attended grammar school in Trier and then the provincial trade school, which he graduated from in 1859 with the final exam. He then completed a one-year internship at the Mosel Steamship Company . He then went to Berlin to study at the Royal Commercial Institute , from which today's Technical University of Berlin emerged . His subjects were mechanical engineering, construction and metallurgy . Because of his good academic performance, he received a scholarship of 200 thalers from the Prussian Ministry of Commerce in the last year of his studies . During his time in Berlin, Jaegen met the theologian Eduard Müller and was influenced by him. After completing his studies, Jaegen began working as a designer at the Trier iron foundry and machine factory Eduard Laeis & Cie.

military service

After fifteen months of employment he registered as a one-year volunteer with the 29th Trier Infantry Regiment in order to meet his one-year service. In the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 he took part in the 29th Rhenish Landwehr Regiment from Aachen, among other things on July 3, 1866 in the battle of Königgrätz . He returned from the war decorated and as a second lieutenant and, after a short period of unemployment, found a job as a designer with his old employer. The company also entrusted him with other tasks that put him in the position of quasi-managing director. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871 he did military service again, this time with the Trier Landwehr Regiment, which was occupied in Koblenz . After the war, however, he was removed from military service as a reservist in 1873. The reason for this was his open support for the Catholic Center Party , which achieved great success with voters in the Trier administrative district . The Kulturkampf led by Bismarck as Chancellor turned against the structures of the Catholic Church and Jaegen was a loud voice of opposition to the May laws of the Reich government.

Banker and MP

In 1879 Jaegen left the service of the Laeis company and was appointed to the board of the newly founded Volksbank Trier , which he served for 19 years before becoming a member of the bank's supervisory board. From 1899 to 1908 he was then twice directly elected member of the Center Party in the Prussian state parliament in Berlin. His activities in the state parliament were described as those of a backbencher who, however, vehemently and successfully campaigned for the interests of his home region, which was partly an emergency area . In 1908, for reasons of age and health, he decided not to run again for the state parliament.

The active Catholic and the mystic

Jaegen had been active in various associations since 1867 and held important positions there, for example as President of Harmonia , a forerunner of today's Association of Catholics in Business and Administration . In addition, he organized the Trier Corpus Christi procession for 33 years . He died after a long illness in his hometown and was first buried in the main cemetery in Trier . In 1959 he found his resting place in the Church of St. Paul in Trier.

Jaegen recorded his mystical experiences in several books. Edith Stein described his book The Struggle for the Supreme Good as “suitable as a manual for the lay apostolate ”. Jaegen's writings were influenced by Mathias Joseph Scheeben and Giovanni Battista Scaramelli .

Jaegen reportedly suffered from severe headaches for years. It was possibly a temporal lobe epilepsy which could also explain his mystical experiences.

Afterlife

1934 of the moral theologian Franz Peter Hamm has been a chaired Jägen Society established a beatification aimed Jaegens. She reissued the writings of Jaegen and distributed a Jaegen biography written by Karl Sudbrack, which was printed in an edition of 10,000 copies. The National Socialists did not like these activities. In October 1935 an anonymous article appeared in the Nazi magazine Das Schwarze Korps , in which Jaegen's works were described as “the aberration of the human spirit”. On May 8, 1939, the process of beatification was initiated by Bishop Franz Rudolf Bornewasser , and the Jaegen Society dissolved shortly afterwards.

The Hieronymus-Jaegen-Bund was founded in 1948 and is still committed to beatification today. On June 26, 2006, the conclusion of the Roman Virtue Trial was reached. Pope Benedict XVI recognized the heroic degree of virtue . Hieronymus Jaegen can thus be described as a venerable servant of God .

The Hieronymus-Jaegen-Strasse in Trier has been named after Jaegen since 2001 and runs near his grave in the Pauluskirche . Since the church has meanwhile been profaned , Jaegen was reburied in the St. Gangolf church on the main market in August 2018 .

Publications

  • 1883: The fight for the crown. Instructions for Christian Perfection (under the pseudonym Julius Mercator).
    • 1908: 4th edition: The struggle for the greatest good. Guide to Christian perfection in the midst of the world .
    • 2005: New edition: Edited, introduced and commented on by Bernhard Schneider. Paulinus Verlag, Trier, ISBN 3-7902-0222-3 .
  • 1949: The mystical life of grace , 4th edition, edited and annotated by Ignaz Backes. Guys, Heidelberg.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mann, Bernhard (edit.): Biographical manual for the Prussian House of Representatives. 1867-1918 . Collaboration with Martin Doerry , Cornelia Rauh and Thomas Kühne. Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1988, p. 197 (handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties: vol. 3); for the election results see Thomas Kühne: Handbook of elections to the Prussian House of Representatives 1867–1918. Election results, election alliances and election candidates (= handbooks on the history of parliamentarism and political parties. Volume 6). Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5182-3 , pp. 775-777.
  2. ↑ Martin Persch: Jaegen, Hieronymus. In: Trier biographical lexicon . Trier 2000, p. 202
  3. ^ Benedictine Monthly Bulletin 16 (1936), p. 76 f.
  4. ^ Christoph Berger: Hieronymus Jaegen (1841-1919), engineer, politician, bank director and - modern mystic. In: Geist und Leben 74 (2001), p. 357
  5. ↑ Kenneth Dewhurst and AW Beard: Sudden religious conversions in temporal lobe epilepsy. In: Epilepsy & Behavior 4 (2003), p. 84
  6. ↑ Bernhard Schneider: “Heavenly Advocate of Jewish Bank Directors”? The beatification process for Hieronymus Jaegen and the Jaegen Society in the area of ​​tension between the Church and the Nazi state. In: Archive for Middle Rhine Church History 51 (1999), pp. 169–201
  7. ↑ Kulturbüro der Stadt Trier (ed.) / Emil Zenz: Street names of the city of Trier: their sense and their meaning. Trier 2003.
  8. ↑ http://www.trier-reporter.de/klare-christliche-identitaet-und-laienengagement/
personal data
SURNAME Jaegen, Hieronymus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Catholic banker, parliamentarian and mystic
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1841
PLACE OF BIRTH Trier , Rhine Province , Kingdom of Prussia
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1919
Place of death Trier , Rhine Province , Kingdom of Prussia