Albert Schmitt (clergyman)

Albert Schmitt OSB (born January 5, 1894 in Mannheim as Friedrich Schmitt ; † September 16, 1970 in Neckarsulm ) was the first abbot of the newly settled Benedictine monastery of Grüssau in Lower Silesia from 1924 and of the Grüssau Abbey in Bad Wimpfen from 1947 after the expulsion .

Life

Friedrich Schmitt entered the Archabbey of Beuron in 1912 , where he took the religious name "Albert". He made his profession on May 21, 1914 . After staying in the Beuron branches in Erdington / Birmingham and Weingarten , he was ordained a priest on June 12, 1920 by the Münster bishop Johannes Poggenburg .

After the repopulation of the former Cistercian monastery Grüssau in Lower Silesia with the Beuron Benedictines expelled from the Prague Emaus monastery in 1919 , Albert Schmitt was elected by the Grüssau convent on July 30, 1924 as the first abbot after the new settlement. He was ordained abbot by the Archbishop of Breslau , Adolf Bertram, on August 10, 1924. At the beginning of the Nazi era , Schmitt had good contacts with the circles around Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen , who were striving for a connection between Christianity and National Socialism. His closeness to National Socialism brought Schmitt not only to criticism from the ranks of the monastery, but also to that of the Archbishop of Wroclaw, Adolf Bertram, whose successor Schmitt was sometimes in discussion.

Because of the imminent end of the war, Albert Schmitt had left Grüssau together with the older or sick monks on February 27, 1945. The remaining monks, along with most of the population of Grüssau, which had been renamed Krzeszów after the transition to Poland , were expelled on May 12, 1946 . Only the monks not of German nationality were allowed to stay behind, among them Nikolaus von Lutterotti , who had already been appointed prior by Albert Schmitt in 1943 and who had taken on pastoral care for the Germans who had not been expelled until 1954.

In 1947 Albert Schmitt founded the Grüssau Abbey in Bad Wimpfen in the Diocese of Mainz for the expelled monks of the Grüssau Monastery . At the beginning of the 37th World Eucharistic Congress in Munich in 1960, he suffered a heart attack from which he did not fully recover. It was not until 1969 that he resigned from office. He died in 1970 and is buried in the cemetery near the Cornelienkirche in Wimpfen .

Schmitt had been an honorary member of the Catholic student association KDStV Winfridia (Breslau) Münster since 1956 .

literature

• Brigitte Lob: Albert Schmitt OSB - Abbot in Grüssau and Wimpfen. His ecclesiastical action and work in the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich . Böhlau, Cologne 2000, ISBN 978-3412042004
• Ambrosius Rose: Grüssau Monastery . Theiss, Stuttgart and Aalen 1974, ISBN 3-8062-0126-9
• Martin Lätzel:  Albert Schmitt (clergyman). In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 12, Bautz, Herzberg 1997, ISBN 3-88309-068-9 , Sp. 1237-1238.
• Friedrich Albert Schmitt , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 01/1955 of December 27, 1954, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Literature by and about Albert Schmitt in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry to Albert Schmitt (clergyman) on order online
• Albert Schmitt in the Biographia Benedictina (Benediktinerlexikon.de)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Inge Steinsträßer: Father Nikolaus von Lutterotti (1892–1955) Benedictines in Prague and Grüssau - wanderers between the political powers . In: Beuroner Forum 2011, pp. 79–94

predecessor	Office	successor
	Chairman of the Salzburg Abbots' Conference ( 1957 ) - 1970	Augustin Mayer
Resettlement of the monastery	Abbot of Grüssau (Silesia) 1924–1947	Expulsion of the monks from the monastery
Resettlement of the monastery	Abbot of Grüssau Abbey in Wimpfen 1947–1969	Laurentius Hoheisel