Achim Besgen

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Achim Besgen (born September 2, 1924 in Eschweiler ) is a German Catholic priest.

Achim Besgen was with a thesis on 1949 Max Scheler at the University of Bonn doctorate . In 1952 he was ordained a priest.

Before 1960, on vacation at Bühlerhöhe in the Black Forest, he met Felix Kersten († April 1960), whose confessor he became. Based on Kersten's diaries, some of which have not yet been published, Besgen wrote a biography of Kersten from 1939 to 1945. In a benevolent review it was said restrictively: "Unfortunately, Besgen only partially cited the diary passages he used verbatim, others ... but apparently abbreviated and only brought them analogously". A copy of a Bernadotte letter, for which the Swedish government had declared in 1958 that it was based on a forgery, “Besgen claims to have found in Kersten's diary, for the authenticity of which he cites an affidavit by the Dutch historian Nicolaas W. Posthumus ” NW Posthumus did not make an affidavit himself, but rather refers to an affidavit made in 1053 by the former SS Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger, a friend and confidante of Kersten. Berger was just u. a. released from custody on the intercession of Kersten. How reliable Berger's affidavit was was made clear by the German-English historian Gerald Fleming in 1978 in his work "The Origin of the Bernadotte Letter". Berger's oath was perjury.

Around 1969 he played a key role in the planning and founding of the St. Wolfhelm High School in Waldniel and was its first director until his retirement in 1985. As a senior teacher, he taught religion and history. He is one of the canons of honor in the Aachen Cathedral . In 2009, on the occasion of his 85th birthday, the auditorium of the St. Wolfhelm Schwalmtal high school was named after him.

Publications

  • Religion and philosophy with Max Scheler. Dissertation. University of Bonn 1949.
  • The silent command. Medical Councilor Kersten, Himmler and the Third Reich. Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung , Munich 1960.
  • The biblical work of Marc Chagall . In: Voices of the Time. Issue 12, December 1996 ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mass in St. Michael: Thanks mass on the occasion of the 90th birthday of Dr. Achim Besgen…  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on st-mariae-himmelfahrt-schwalmtal.de@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.st-mariae-himmelfahrt-schwalmtal.de  
  2. ^ A b Anne Goch, Birgitta Ronge: A hall for Achim Besgen on rp-online.de, September 3, 2009
  3. ↑ KERSTEN: Himmier's stomachache . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1960 ( online - May 11, 1960 ).
  4. ↑ International Scientific Correspondence on the History of the German Labor Movement (IWK), ISSN  0046-8428 ; Free University of Berlin (Editor: Andreas Graf), Volume 40: Historical Commission on Berlin 2004, (see footnote on p. 504)
  5. ↑ Cathedral chapter on aachendom.de
personal data
SURNAME Besgen, Achim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Catholic priest
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Eschweiler