Ubryk affair
The "Ubryk Affair" was the case reported in 1869 of the nun Barbara Ubryk, a Discalced Carmelite in Krakow who, according to detailed newspaper reports, was held in her convent cell from 1848 to July 21, 1869 . Against the background of the increasing culture war , the reports caused a growing anti-Catholic mood, especially in the German-speaking part of Europe, and were one of the triggers for the Moabit monastery tower in Berlin in the same year.
presentation
The nun Barbara Ubryk is said to have been freed after the Austro-Hungarian authorities heard rumors of her imprisonment. They forced their way into the monastery against the opposition of the prioress and the confessor. According to newspaper reports from that time, Barbara Ubryk is said to have been found completely naked in a small filthy cell. According to statements that she later gave before an Austrian court, Sister Barbara survived the 21 years in the monastery cell only thanks to prayers and counting the hair on her head. During the court hearings, Barbara Ubryk showed behavioral problems from which the examining doctors concluded that she was a nymphomaniac . In the opinion of the doctors, this behavioral problem had existed since puberty . The doctors also took the view that her condition could no longer be cured, as she would have had to be admitted to an institution for the mentally disturbed in order to heal.
The Krakow population reacted indignantly to the reports in the press. An excited crowd of Krakow citizens entered the monastery and destroyed the windows and parts of the courtyard. Finally, the police and the military intervened. Despite the intervention of the state authorities, the attacks on other monasteries spread during the following night. Cavalry and infantry regiments patrolled the streets in the days that followed to prevent further attacks.
Consequential effects
The "Ubryk Affair" sparked a series of newspaper articles that reported alleged similar cases. A similar case should have occurred in Prague. The nun allegedly imprisoned there after breaking her religious vows of chastity is said to have hanged herself in desperation. Two other nuns allegedly collapsed under the rigid management of their monastery and were now living in a madhouse. A walled-in skeleton was allegedly found in the walls of a former Dominican monastery in Brno , and skeletons were allegedly secretly buried in a Carmelite convent in Poznan . The German magazine Die Gartenlaube reported about a "Nun X" who, after a broken marriage promise, was lured into a monastery and held there. Liberal newspapers also reported that a Dominican had molested underage girls in Düsseldorf.
Catholic newspapers defended the incident, saying that Barbara Ubryk was mentally ill and had been locked up for her own safety. They blamed the influence of Freemasons and democratic Jews for the negative response the incident triggered in the liberal press . Michael B. Gross describes the reactions of the Catholic and liberal press as an almost ritualized exchange of blows, in which each side used its own characteristic vocabulary, symbolism and metaphors. In return, newspapers such as the Freiburg Catholic newspaper denounced the exploitation of women in contemporary industry. The liberal press saw in the attacks of the Catholic side on the working conditions of the workers in turn evidence of the backwardness of the Catholic Church.
supporting documents
literature
- Michael B. Gross: The War against Catholicism - Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany . The University of Michigan Press, 2004, ISBN 0-472-11383-6 .
Single receipts
- ↑ http://www.polona.pl/dlibra/doccontent2?id=5939&from=latest (accessed on May 25, 2010)
- ↑ Gross, p. 158
- ↑ Gross, p. 161
- ↑ Gross, p. 162
- ↑ Gross, p. 159
- ↑ Gross, p. 160 and p. 161
- ↑ Gross, p. 168
- ↑ Gross, p. 168 and p. 169
Remarks
- ↑ Cracow belonged to the Habsburg Empire Austria-Hungary until 1918 .