Adam stapler

Adam Hefter 1914

Adam Hefter (born December 6, 1871 in Stetten near Prien am Chiemsee , † January 9, 1970 ibid) was Bishop of Gurk .

Life

Adam Hefter was born in Bavaria as the son of a farmer. He attended high school in Rosenheim and in the Benedictine Convict St. Peter in Salzburg. In 1890 he entered the seminary in Klagenfurt one, on 22 July 1894 he was Bishop Joseph Kahn for ordained priests . Hefter initially worked as a pastor in St. Leonhard in Lavanttal and in Kellerberg (municipality of Weißenstein ). In 1896, Bishop Kahn sent him to the University of Innsbruck to study classical languages . Hefter passed the teaching examination and in 1901 acquired a doctorate in philosophy. Due to a nervous breakdown , the young professor soon had to give up his teaching activity in St. Paul in Lavanttal . A stay in a mental hospital brought his complete recovery. After a year he went to the state high school in Klosterneuburg . Here he met Friedrich Gustav Piffl , who later became Archbishop of Vienna , and was also politically active for Karl Lueger . In 1914 he was finally called to the Gymnasium in Mödling .

On December 26, 1914, during the First World War, Emperor Franz Joseph I appointed him Bishop of Gurk. It was the last appointment of a bishop in Gurk, which was made by the sovereign in accordance with the treaty of 1535. On February 6, 1915, Hefter was consecrated bishop in Salzburg Cathedral and on February 14 he was enthroned in Klagenfurt Cathedral .

The first years of his reign were overshadowed by the First World War , from which Carinthia suffered particularly badly as it became a very narrow war zone at times. With the collapse of the Danube Monarchy and the end of the war, however, the fighting for Carinthia was not over after Yugoslav troops occupied parts of southern Carinthia and partisan war broke out. The bishop was cut off from parts of his diocese and intervened with the bishops of Laibach and Lavant-Marburg for a ceasefire. Hefter appointed his own vicar general for the occupied area . With the referendum of October 10, 1920 , the borders of the diocese of Gurk were secured.

Crypt of the bishops Wiery , Hefter and Köstner

Hefter quickly came to terms with the new balance of power and called on his believers in a pastoral letter to recognize the republican form of government. The bishop, who repeatedly suffered from nervous diseases, submitted a resignation request to the Pope on his 60th birthday, but this was not granted. In 1934 the old privilege of the Archbishop of Salzburg regarding the appointment of his Gurk suffragan bishop was suspended. In 1939, Bishop Hefter obtained the canonization of the previously blessed Hemma von Gurk by Pope Pius XI. which its predecessors hadn't succeeded in doing. The National Socialist movement found fertile ground in Carinthia early on and Bishop Hefter tried to abstain from any political position and also refused to take a radical stand against National Socialism. When Bishop Hudal tried to build a bridge between Christianity and National Socialism with his controversial book “The Basics of National Socialism”, a condemnation of the work by the Austrian Bishops' Conference failed due to the resistance of the Viennese Archbishop Innitzer and the Bishop of Gurk. Hefter, who never made a secret of his German convictions, entered the charge of being a "Hitler bishop". Occasionally, he was resented for shaking hands with the Führer when Adolf Hitler visited Klagenfurt.

On July 14, 1939, Bishop Hefter abdicated as Gurk Oberhirte for health reasons and was appointed titular bishop of Marciana . He retired to Bavaria, where he was born in Prien am Chiemsee. However, he regularly spent the summer months in Carinthia and came to the Flattnitz and the Längsee to relax. In 1944 he celebrated his golden jubilee as a priest.

From December 5, 1939 until his death he held the office of titular archbishop of Maximianopolis in Rhodope .

On January 9, 1970, the former bishop Hefter died at the age of almost one hundred and was buried in the crypt of the Klagenfurt cathedral.

Hefter had been a member of the Catholic student association KHV Welfia Klosterneuburg since 1910 .

literature

• Jakob Obersteiner: The bishops of Gurk. 1824–1979 (= From Research and Art. 22, ISSN  0067-0642 ). Publishing house of the History Association for Carinthia, Klagenfurt 1980.
• Supplements to the official gazette of BH Mödling from December 6, 1998

Web links

• Literature by and about Adam Hefter in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry to Adam Hefter on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on December 31, 2016.