Adolf von Doß
Max Adolph Karl Marcus Johann Nepomuk von Doß (born September 10, 1825 in Pfarrkirchen , Lower Bavaria, † August 13, 1886 in Rome ) was a Bavarian nobleman and Jesuit who was also active as a writer and composer.
Live and act
Adolf von Doß was the son of the Bavarian district judge Johann Nepomuk von Doß (1764-1838) and his wife Countess Josephine Joner auf Tettenweis (1798-1863). The father came from a family ennobled in 1740. The mother came from old Bavarian nobility; her uncle (brother of her mother) was Lieutenant General Count Maximilian von Spreti , brother of her great-grandfather the Minister Franz Xaver Josef von Unertl .
After the father's retirement, the family moved from Pfarrkirchen to Munich in 1832, where Adolf attended the royal educational institution of Father Benedict of Holland , the so-called "Hollandeum", from 1835 to 1843 . His older brother Adam's wife later wrote in her memoirs:
“ The nine-year-old boy Adolf was a paragon of liveliness and lack of discipline. The father was blameless in this; it was the mother's work. She loved him more than anything, he could do what he liked. He was not lacking in talent; there has never been a complaint about learning. But nobody in the house was spared his wanton pranks. The father shook his head; the boy laughed at him, the mother took his side. So it went day after day, the boy seemed a real goblin! There was only one thing that could calm him down and often keep him busy for a long time, he loved one game in front of everyone else: reading mass, preaching, hearing confession. His resolve to become a minister of the Church was clear. Of course, he was not believed and everyone laughed in the face of the wanton rascal at his repeated assurances of this resolution. Then he could get angry at such disbelief "
When the father died unexpectedly in 1838, his older brother Adam von Doß, as well as the barons von Pfetten and von Aretin were appointed guardians alongside the mother .
Against the express will of his legal guardians, Adolf von Doß secretly fled to Switzerland. In 1843 he joined the Jesuit order in Freiburg im Üechtland , and on November 13, 1845, after a two-year probationary period, the vows were made. Years later, he confessed to his brother that his mother had known about the plan and approved it.
During the Swiss Sonderbund War , the Jesuits had to flee Freiburg in 1847. Doß initially stayed in France, from August 1848 to October 1852 in Namur, Belgium . On September 15, 1855, Adolf von Doß was ordained a priest in the Jesuit church in Leuven through Bishop Matteo Eustachio Gonella , Apostolic Nuncio of Belgium .
From 1855 to 1862 Doß worked in the Jesuit monastery in Friedrichsburg near Münster . In 1862 he came to Bonn as a superior , and in 1866 to Mainz , where he also became pastor and renovator of St. Christoph's Church . Forcibly expelled from there by the Jesuit Law of 1873, he moved to Liège as a professor at the Collège St. Servais and stayed there until 1884. From April of this year, Adolf von Doß took care of the German-speaking students at the Collegium Germanicum et Hungaricum in Rome as a spiritual director . Here he died in 1886; He had been suffering from gout and rheumatism for a long time, with malaria recently being added. On August 14th he was buried in the Roman cemetery of Campo Verano , where the Germanicum has its own burial chapel.
Adolf von Doß was active throughout his time as an avid religious writer, as well as a composer. The most famous piece of music is his "Ave Maria" from 1881, which is still sometimes performed today. He mainly composed sacred music, but also several operas , which are largely forgotten.
In his birthplace Pfarrkirchen, Von-Doß-Straße is named in his honor.
The brother
The older brother Adam von Doß (1820–1873) was hostile to the Catholic Church and was one of the most ardent supporters of Arthur Schopenhauer at the time . In his notes in 1845 he wrote about his and his brother's contradicting world views:
“ My brother lives many, many miles from me; but our souls, which would not be separated by time and space, are separated by the demanting wall of faith. He believes in the order of the Jesuits, in everything related to it, I believe in the order of their most determined adversaries. He firmly believes in the Catholic Church dogma. I feel irresistibly drawn to its hostile principle, Protestantism, in the broad sense of the word. He glows in devotion and adoration before the saints of the church, I before the conquerors and rulers in the realm of thought. He fetches the waters of life from the deep well of tradition; I think they have been drawn fresher from the stream of the spirit of the times. "
The brother's granddaughter Martha Mechthild Mayer-Doss was married to Karl Haushofer , a friend of Rudolf Hess . She and her husband committed suicide together in 1946, after the fall of the Nazi Reich.
literature
- Otto Pfülf : Memories of Father Adolf von Doß , Herder-Verlag, Freiburg, 1887
- Ina-Ulrike Paul: Doß, Adolf von. In: Karl Bosl (ed.): Bosls Bavarian biography. Pustet, Regensburg 1983, ISBN 3-7917-0792-2 , p. 152 ( digitized version ).
- Ludwig Schemann: Adam Ludwig von Doss, a life picture based on family records and letters, written by his widow , in: 15. Yearbook of the Schopenhauer Society, 1928, pages 247–321; The contribution as a PDF document
Web links
- Adolph von Doß in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors
- Adolf von Doß in the Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO)
- Website for the Ave Maria by Adolf Doß, with a playable YouTube recording of the piece
- Ave Maria von Doss, instrumental (organ and panpipe)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Genealogical website on the mother and her family environment
- ↑ Website on the former Jesuit monastery Friedrichsburg ( Memento from September 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Doß, Adolf von |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Doß, Adolf de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German nobleman, Jesuit, author and composer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 10, 1825 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Parish churches |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 13, 1886 |
| Place of death | Rome |