Albert Coppenrath

Albert Coppenrath (born February 19, 1883 in Oelde ; † November 27, 1960 in Telgte ) was a German Roman Catholic priest and author, who as a pastor in Berlin-Schöneberg because of his critical Sunday pulpit reports during the time of National Socialism as a "Westphalian stubborn man Winterfeldtplatz ”became known.

Life

family

Albert Coppenrath came from the Coppenrath publishing family and was a great-grandson of the publisher's founder, notary and procurator Joseph Heinrich Coppenrath (1764-1853). His father, Hermann Coppenrath (1845–1918), was the royal rent master . Several Catholic clergy came from the family, including the two Tahitian archbishops Michel-Gaspard Coppenrath and Hubert Coppenrath as well as Ludwig Coppenrath, dean in ( Millingen ) and Honorary Domeon of Münster .

Training and appointment to Berlin

After graduating from high school in Warendorf in 1902, Albert Coppenrath went to Innsbruck to study theology with the Jesuits . He then continued his training at the seminary in Münster. There he was ordained a priest on June 14, 1908. His first job as a chaplain was in Lüdinghausen , where he worked for around five years. In 1914 he became a chaplain at St. Liudger's Church in Duisburg . There he began to write religious small letters, including “Celebration of Holy First Communion” and “To the non-Catholic visitors to this place of worship. Provides an explanation of what is striking non-Catholics in our churches, ” which were printed in hundreds of thousands of copies before his death.

At the suggestion of the Münster bishop Johannes Poggenburg , Albert Coppenrath was appointed pastor at the St. Matthias Church in Berlin in 1929 to succeed Clemens August Graf von Galen , who had returned to Münster. The pastors of this church have always been filled with clergy from the diocese of Münster at the request of their founder Matthias Aulike . From 1931 onwards, Coppenrath endeavored to redecorate the church by the expressionist church painter Fritz Wingen and promoted the liturgical design of the service.

Resistance to National Socialism

Coppenrath saw himself as a rather apolitical person and did not want to get involved in party political disputes for pastoral reasons. At first he even linked Hitler with the expectation of a better future. But as early as the second half of 1933, his Sunday pulpit reports, in which he took a stand against attacks by the National Socialists, were suspected by the Gestapo . When the Berlin Catholic leader Erich Klausener , who was a member of the church council of St. Matthias, was murdered on the orders of Reinhard Heydrich on June 30, 1934 , Albert Coppenrath publicly contradicted the lie about his suicide, which Adolf Hitler had also adopted. Coppenrath was then harassed by the Gestapo with house searches, interrogations and confiscations. The collection for a Klausen monument in the cemetery of the St. Matthias parish , which was also to serve as the first station of the cross , ultimately led to his arrest. The following trial on August 3, 1936 for " pulpit abuse " ended in an acquittal because he had met a judge who was kind to him. In 1937 he became archpriest of the Archipresbyterate Berlin-Steglitz .

Coppenrath stopped his pulpit reports with the beginning of the Second World War on September 1, 1939 "in the interests of the truce", but from then on he included his criticism in his sermons. After a sermon on October 20, 1940, in which he made derogatory comments about Alfred Rosenberg's work “ The Myth of the 20th Century ”, he was arrested again and was held in a cell in the police headquarters on Alexanderplatz until early December 1940 . On February 21, 1941, the Reich Main Security Office issued a ban on Coppenrath to stay in the area of ​​the Diocese of Berlin . After this deportation, he learned from a reliable source that they had actually intended to take him to a concentration camp . As to why he had not been liquidated, but only banished, Coppenrath was unable to give an explanation that went beyond presumptions. He returned to Munster, where the now Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen offered him an apartment in his residence for the period of exile. In order not to further compromise Galen, who was suspected by the National Socialists, Coppenrath turned it down and accepted an invitation to Haus Hall near Gescher , where the Gestapo visited him twice. Only after he was admitted to the St. Rochus Hospital of the Franciscan Sisters of St. Mauritz in the Marian pilgrimage site of Telgte in October 1942, with the help of Bishop von Galen , was he spared by the Gestapo.

Last years in Telgte

Albert Coppenrath remained pastor of St. Matthias even after his expulsion from Berlin at the request of the Berlin Bishop Konrad Graf von Preysing . However, he never returned to Berlin and finally renounced his parish of St. Matthias in 1947 because of arthritic walking problems. Albert Coppenrath published a selection of his pulpit reports from 1933 to 1939 in printed form in 1946.

He remained in the care of the sisters of St. Rochus Hospital until his death. There he took on written work for the episcopal vicariate in Münster, including the office of censor for the church imprimatur , which he held until his death in 1960. He was buried in the cemetery of the St. Rochus Hospital in Telgte, where his grave still exists.

Honors

• Pope Pius XII appointed Albert Coppenrath in recognition of his services in 1946 as papal secret chamberlain with the title of monsignor .
• The Federal President awarded him the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
• At the house where he was born in Oelde there is a plaque with the inscription “His role model continues to work”.

Works (selection)

• The literature in church, hospital, retreat and club house, a means of spreading good writings in town and country . Johannesbund, Leutesdorf 1929 (2nd increased edition); has also been translated into French, Flemish and Polish.
• To the non-Catholic visitors to this place of worship . Johannesbund, Leutesdorf 1930 (7th and final edition: Leutesdorf 1957).
• Our St. Matthias parish through the ages. Serious and cheerful from 7 centuries in words and pictures . Salvator print, Berlin 1938.
• The Westphalian Dickkopf on Winterfeldtplatz. My pulpit reports and experiences in the Third Reich . JP Bachem, Cologne 1948 (2nd increased edition).
• Celebration of Holy First Communion . Butzon & Bercker, Kevelaer 1960 (31st [last] edition, 411th – 430th thousand).

literature

• Thomas Brechenmacher : Conversion as a lifeline? Pastor Albert Coppenrath and the help for persecuted "non-Aryans". in: Josef Wieneke (Ed.): Firm in faith. 150 years of St. Matthias Berlin-Schöneberg , Sankt Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 2018. ISBN 978-3-8306-7905-9 , pp. 157–176
• Hans-Joachim Fieber et al .: Resistance in Berlin against the Nazi regime 1933 to 1945: A biographical lexicon , Volume 2. Trafo Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89626-350-1 .
• Ernst-Alfred Jauch : Albert Coppenrath (1883–1960) . In: Wolfgang Knauft (ed.): Co -builder of the Diocese of Berlin. 50 years of history in character images . Morus-Verlag, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-87554-176-6 , pp. 93-110.
• Johannes Schwarte: "We mustn't be mute dogs." Pastor Albert Coppenrath from St. Matthias in Berlin and the Gestapo . In: On Red Earth. Home pages for Münster and the Münsterland , February 2007.
• Gisela Wenzel: Albert Coppenrath - the "Westphalian Dickkopf from Winterfeldtplatz" . In: Life in Schöneberg / Friedenau 1933–1945 . Bezirksamt Schöneberg, Berlin 1987 (2nd extended edition).
• Kevin P. Spicer: Between Nationalism and Resistance. The Path of Albert Coppenrath . In: Donald J. Dietrich (ed.): Christian Responses to the Holocaust. Moral and Ethical Issues . Syracuse University Press, New York 2003, ISBN 0-8156-3029-8 . Pp. 38-51.
• Obituary in: Church and Life. Diocese of Münster , December 18, 1960.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ferdinand Florenz Coppenrath. In: History of the Cobbenrod – Coppenrath family , 1929. Retrieved on May 25, 2015.

Web links

• St. Matthias (Berlin)