Adolf Deuster

Adolf Hubert Deuster , known as "Kinderkaplan", (* March 25, 1887 in Lüftelberg ; † July 23, 1982 in Bad Neuenahr ), was a Catholic priest , founder and long-time director of the children's aid organization and a writer.

Youth and training

Catholic parish church St. Petrus in Meckenheim-Lüftelberg, Adolf Deusters home church

Deuster was born on March 25, 1887 as the youngest of five children of Mathias Deuster, who worked at Lüftelberg Castle , and his second wife Eva Franziska, née Leyendecker, in Lüftelberg, now part of the city of Meckenheim . The early death of his mother in October 1890 had an impact on his later life. As his father did not remarry, his older sister Agathe was responsible for looking after the household and bringing up her four siblings. Agathe's marriage and Adolf's move to a boarding school coincide.

He grew up in today's Flerzheimer Straße in Lüftelberg, not far from the moated castle Lüftelberg. In his home village, he first attended elementary school, before he switched to the religious school of the Sacred Heart Priests in Sittard (Netherlands) at the age of 14. At that time there were no Jesuit schools in Prussia. Here he passed his school leaving examination.

From 1910 to 1915 he studied theology and philosophy in Luxembourg and Bonn. He was ordained a deacon on March 20, 1915, and the day after that he was ordained a priest for the Sacred Heart Priests . He received both orders in Luxembourg from the local bishop Johannes Joseph Koppes .

Professional activity

Business card Adolf Deusters around 1940

Deuster's house in Bad Neuenahr from 1953 to 1975

After his ordination he returned to Lüftelberg for a few months, where after his primacy as a member of the order of the Sacred Heart Priests he supported the sick village pastor Wilhelm Herchenbach in pastoral care and after his death on February 5, 1916, his successor Joseph Bomans made it easier to take up service in May 1916. From 1916 to 1925 he worked as vicar (castle chaplain) at Gevelinghausen Castle (Hochsauerlandkreis), where he got to know the Sovereign Knight of Malta . Here he founded the Children's Holiday Fund, which was affiliated to the Order of Malta in 1931.

In 1919 he became the diocese of Paderborn incardinated - which his religious affiliation ended - and in 1921 he put the parish exams from.

He worked as a chaplain from 1925 to 1934 in Dortmund (parish Liebfrauen) and then until 1936 in Bochum (parish St. Marien). From August 1936 until his retirement in June 1953 he worked as a pastor in Lünen-Süd (Holy Family Parish), where after the war he gave new impulses to the Kolping Choir, of which he was President .

He spent the time of his retirement in Bad Neuenahr, where he continued to run the children's aid organization he had founded, but was also involved in pastoral care. An eye disease now prevented him from being active as a writer to the same extent as in previous years.

social commitment

Deuster's life's work was the holiday children's aid organization he founded in 1927, which gave children from socially disadvantaged families in particular a three-week carefree holiday period. During the Nazi era, this aid organization - like other similar organizations - was forbidden to work. From 1945 it was rebuilt by Deuster together with the Order of Malta. He managed and organized the holiday children's aid organization until 1969, when, at the age of 82, he handed it over to his successor. A total of around 40,000 children took part in the holiday periods organized by Deuster in castles, monasteries, holiday homes and youth hostels, as well as at religious associations. Even for children in the GDR he made such a vacation time possible in the 1960s by providing the financial means necessary for a similar vacation time in the GDR.

Deuster started thinking about founding this aid organization for children from socially disadvantaged families during his time at Gevelinghausen Castle. Here he offered two to three weeks vacation periods to the first groups of children from the Ruhr area, where in the 1920s, especially the people in the big cities suffered from the renewed occupation by French troops, increasing poverty and devaluation of money. Carefree days in rural nature, a healthy and adequate diet and varied activities in the group of peers offered the endangered city youth a new foundation for life. The circle of beneficiaries quickly expanded and expanded beyond the city and diocesan borders. He was also able to place children and youth groups in Belgium, Denmark, France, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Italy. When contacting potential hostel owners, he benefited from his connection to the Catholic nobility, which he had continuously expanded since his first job at Gevelinghausen Castle.

In later years, when he had already handed over the management of the children's aid organization to his successor, the Caritas pastor Karl-Theo Schultebraucks, he opened up new target groups for his social commitment. Disabled children and destitute priests in the diaspora were now in the foreground for him. Together with organizations such as the Diocesan Caritas Association, the Malteser Aid Service and the German Catholic Association for the Blind, and later also the Problem Child Campaign , he continued the charitable work he had started with the Children's Holiday Fund in the 1920s.

He received support in the organizational work from students, some of whom later also became priests. He himself mainly used the personal contacts he had built up over the decades to raise funds for the holiday children's aid organization. By bull of the Grand Master of March 29, 1938 Deuster was admitted to the Order of Malta as Donat 2nd class, after 1945 he was raised in rank by becoming magistral chaplain of the order.

Writing activity

In addition to numerous articles for daily newspapers and magazines, Deuster published a total of ten books between 1925 and 1958. Thematically, he spanned a wide range in his books, from the interpretation of the Lord's Prayer and instructions for working with children and young people to the adaptation of the language of the original Swiss literature about Nikolaus von der Flüe to the standard German language. All publications were based on a Christian attitude to life, derived from the Holy Scriptures and based on the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Deusters book publications:

In 1952 Adolf Deuster published "Das Wagnis des Vaterunsers"

• Kindness. A book about the longing of modern people. Mönchengladbach 1925
• Your wealth. Mönchengladbach 1928
• The Aloysian Sundays. Mönchengladbach 1929
• Catholic child friend work. Basic and practical. Leutesdorf / Rhine 1930
• Our children. Experiences and suggestions for Catholic child friend work. Paderborn 1931
• A beggar came to the door ... Kevelaer 1932
• Saint Nicholas of Flüe. God is calling a man. Bonn 1950, 1957
• The risk of the Our Father. Freiburg 1952
• Wild growth in the garden of charity. Kevelaer 1953
• Ave Maria. Three sing a song of Mary. Bonn 1958

In 1931 he also wrote the book for the short documentary Our Children by producer Hubert Schonger. The premiere took place in December 1931 in the Ufa-Palast in Dortmund.

The language of his books was contemporary and only as scientific as he could expect his readers at the time to be. The trains of thought laid down in his writings are sometimes difficult to understand today, although he worked with examples and quotations that his readers were probably familiar with. The conservative views represented in his books about life in the family and society, especially about the role of women, are due to the time; they corresponded to the views of many of his readers, as Deuster's contemporaries still report.

Writing target groups was one of his main concerns. In Your Wealth , for example, he tried to give courage to the people of the Ruhr area in the difficult 1920s in a missionary and educational tone with references to what, in his opinion, were real riches. For devout Catholics he interpreted the requests contained in this prayer in The Risk of Our Father in an at least largely understandable form. His writings cannot be judged by theological-scientific standards. He was very emotionally involved in all topics and left no doubts about his close ties to the Catholic Church.

He ended his work as a book author in the late 1950s. As a conservative Catholic who was strictly religious throughout his life, the decisions of the Second Vatican Council - especially with regard to the liturgy - were too extensive for him to believe that he could continue to credibly represent the theological views expressed up to that point in all areas.

Homeland attachment

Because of his school and professional training and his later professional activity, Adolf Deuster stayed away from home for the most part. The connection to his home town of Lüftelberg and to the neighboring community of Flerzheim (today part of the city of Rheinbach ), where some of his family members lived, was never interrupted, but rather intensively maintained by both sides. One kept in touch mainly through mutual visits. Even during his activity as a pastor in Lünen, he was visited by a delegation from Lüftelberg citizens and family members living in Flerzheim. They were also guests - occasionally in the form of the choral society - when he celebrated various anniversaries and received awards in Bad Neuenahr during his retirement. Conversely, he often came to visit his home in Lüftelberg, especially on the festive days of the holy Lüfthildis , who gave his home town its name. The fact that he showed himself at rehearsals at the choral society and in the local elementary school on such visits was an expression of his ties to his homeland. He chose the Antonius Monastery in Flerzheim as his quarters for these visits, just a few minutes' walk from the family members who lived there.

Deusters grave in the cemetery in Bad Neuenahr

Even more than on such occasions, his ties to his homeland are expressed in one of his writings. In the book Dein Reichtum , which he wrote in 1928, about 30 years after he left his homeland, some sections resemble a declaration of love to his home village. The almost enthusiastic description of his closer Lüftelberg homeland at the beginning of this book, the frequent reference to positive examples of his home village for all possible life situations and the generalized appreciation of the importance of homeland for the individual at the end of the book give your wealth a guideline and framework At the same time, it is strong evidence of Deuster's appreciation of his homeland. In this book, as he writes in the introduction, he uses the idea of ​​homeland as "... explanation of what has been said and at the same time as an effective means to the goal."

When he was buried in the cemetery there on July 29, 1982 in Bad Neuenahr, his apprenticeship and job-related departure from Lüftelberg was almost 80 years ago. Nevertheless, the Lüftelberger choral society insisted on giving him the final escort with a large delegation - equipped with a club flag.

honors and awards

Above all for his social commitment in child labor, Adolf Deuster has been honored and recognized several times: among others by the Catholic Church, the Order of Malta and the city of Bad Neuenahr. During his work in the Archdiocese of Paderborn, he was named the Pontifical House Prelate for his services to the Children's Fund . This was followed in 1955 (award of the Cross of Merit, 1st Class) and 1962 (appointment as conventual chaplain) awards by the Order of Knights, in 1963 he was appointed clerical council by the Archbishop of Paderborn and in 1965 he was appointed papal secret chamberlain . The city of Bad Neuenahr honored him in 1975 with the award of the silver coat of arms of the city of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler. Finally, in 1979, he received the Great Cross of Merit "pro piis meritis" from the Sovereign Order of Malta, the highest honor of this order for clergy.

literature

• Bad Neuenahrer Chronik - announcement organ of the district town Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler. Several years.
• Konrad Feilchenfeldt (Hrsg.): German Literature Lexicon - The 20th Century. Biographical-Bibliographical Handbook. Volume 6. Zurich and Munich 2004.
• Karl Hoeber (Ed.): People and Church. Catholic life in the German west. Essen 1935.
• Westphalian Lexicon of Authors 1750–1950. Edited and edited by Walter Gödden and Iris Nölle-Hornkamp on behalf of the Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association with the assistance of Annette Gebhardt, Jochen Grywatsch , Henrike Gundlach and Ursula Heeke. Paderborn 1993 to 2002.

Web links

Commons : Adolf Deuster  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Adolf Deuster in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Parish chronicle 1915/1916 of the parish of St. Petrus in Meckenheim-Lüftelberg, kindly made available in May 2018 by the Catholic Pastoral Office in Meckenheim.
2. ↑ Bad Neuenahrer Chronik 1982 . No. 11 , March 18, 1982, pp. 9 .
3. ↑ Konrad Feilchenfeldt (Ed.): German Literature Lexicon - The 20th Century, Biographisches-Bibliographisches Handbuch . tape 6 . Zurich and Munich 2004, p. 142 .
4. ^ Letter from Adolf Deuster of April 7, 1965 to the Herder publishing house, Freiburg (Herder publishing house private archive).
5. ↑ Adolf Deuster: Your wealth . Mönchengladbach 1928, p. 15th f .
6. ↑ Adolf Deuster: Your wealth . Mönchengladbach 1928, p. 10 .
7. ↑ Bad Neuenahrer Chronik 1982 . No. 31 , August 5, 1982, pp. 19 .