Alfred Delp

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Alfred Delp around 1940

Alfred Friedrich Delp SJ (born September 15, 1907 in Mannheim ; † February 2, 1945 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German Jesuit and member of the Kreisau Circle in the resistance against National Socialism .

Life

Memorial plaque on Delp's birthplace in Mannheim, 2006

Delp was the eldest son of six children born to his parents Johann Adam Friedrich Delp (* 1876 Mannheim - 1958) and Maria, née Bernauer (* 1881 Asbach bei Mosbach - 1968). He was born in the “Asylum Luisenheim” in C 7 in Mannheim and baptized there two days later by Kaplan Mutz of the Jesuit Church , in whose district the asylum was located. At the later Catholic wedding of the parents, his Protestant father had to promise in writing that the children resulting from this marriage would be baptized and brought up Catholic. The father could not keep this promise, because for economic reasons the young family had to live with the father’s Protestant parents in Hüttenfeld , where the grandmother, proud of her Protestant family tradition, enforced the Protestant upbringing of the boy, which led to a permanent conflict in the family . There he lived at Mannheimer Straße 3 until 1914. In 1921 he was initially confirmed as a high school student, but after a dispute with the Protestant pastor, he was admitted to the Catholic Church for first communion and confirmed .

The desolate relationship between the Christian denominations accompanied him to the end of his life, as he wrote from prison: "If the churches once again expose humanity to the image of a quarreling Christianity, they are written off."

Alfred Delp's youth were then shaped primarily by the Catholic youth movement “ Bund Neudeutschland ”. Immediately after graduating from the Goethe School in Dieburg , he entered the Jesuit order in 1926 . During his studies, the later theologian of Vatican II , Karl Rahner , was his Latin teacher. Delp worked as an educator and teacher at the St. Blasien college in the Black Forest . In 1937 he was ordained a priest. From 1939 he worked as a pastor in the Heilig Blut parish in Munich 's Bogenhausen district . He became an employee of the magazine Voices of Time in Munich, whose permission to print was revoked in June 1941 until it could appear again in October 1946.

From 1942 on, Delp worked in the Kreisau Circle around Helmuth James Graf von Moltke to develop a model for a new social order after the end of National Socialism . Here he was particularly committed to the positions of the Catholic Church in the rebuilding of Germany with regard to Catholic social teaching .

Imprisonment and execution

Memorial at St. Georg in Munich-Bogenhausen, 2007
Memorial plaque in Lampertheim

After the failure of the attempted coup on July 20, 1944 , Delp was arrested on July 28, 1944 after early mass in St. Georg in Munich's Bogenhausen district, a branch church of Heilig Blut, although he was not involved in the preparations for the assassination attempt. In the trial before the People's Court , chaired by Roland Freisler Alfred Delp was due to high and treason to death by the strand convicted. The court had dropped the allegation of complicity in the attack, but his involvement in the Kreisau Circle, his work as a Jesuit priest and his Christian-social worldview were enough to make him a victim of the Nazi justice system.

During his imprisonment, the Gestapo made him the offer of “release against leaving the Order”, which Delp refused. On December 8, 1944, Delp made his last solemn vows to his fellow brother Franz von Tattenbach in the Berlin-Tegel prison , the profession with which Delp and his order expressed their mutual bond. On February 2, 1945, he wrote in his farewell letter:

“How long I'll wait here, if and when I'll be killed, I don't know. The way here to the gallows in Plötzensee is only a ten minute drive. You only find out shortly beforehand that you are 'on it' today and that it is about to be. Do not be sad. God has helped me so wonderfully and tangibly until now. I'm not scared yet. That is still to come. Perhaps God wants this waiting position as the ultimate test of trust. That's okay by me. I will try to fall into the soil as a fertile seed for all of you and for this land and people that I wanted to serve and help "

- Alfred Delp from Berlin Plötzensee on February 2, 1945

The judgment was carried out on the same day in Plötzensee , his ashes were scattered on the Berlin Rieselfeldern . On the way under the gallows he said to the priest: "In a few moments I will know more than you."

Honors

In his home town of Hüttenfeld, the Catholic Community Center bears his name, and the street on which his parents' house was also now bears his name. At his place of work at the St. Blasien college , the sports hall was named after him. In the Berlin-Tegel prison there is a memorial plaque (not open to the public) for him and his fellow campaigners. Near the Plötzensee execution site, the Delpzeile commemorates him.

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of Germany has included Father Alfred Delp as a witness of faith in the book German Martyrology of the 20th Century .

Numerous schools in Germany are named after Alfred Delp, including in Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Mainz, Hamm, Bremerhaven , Froschhausen , Hargesheim , Mondorf , Troisdorf , Ubstadt-Weiher , Dieburg and Lampertheim . In Frankfurt , Mannheim, Bayreuth and Goettingen are Catholic student dormitories named after him. The guest house on the grounds of the Canisius College in Berlin also bears his name. In Dieburg the upper secondary school, the Alfred Delp school, the Catholic community center, the Pater Delp house and a street were named after him. Streets in Münster , Bonn , Osnabrück , Rheine , Gießen , Erfurt, Harsum , Durmersheim , Leverkusen , Lingen (Ems) , Lüdinghausen , Paderborn , Schwandorf , Viernheim , Aalen , Rimpar , Bietigheim , Siegen and Bebra were named after him. In Munich-Bogenhausen , Wasserburgerstrasse, where Eva Braun lived in a villa from 1935 , was renamed after Delp. The OKJA / Catholic youth maintains an Alfred Delp home in Bottrop . The Bundeswehr named a barracks in Donauwörth after him. In Neuss , a local group of Georgs scouts named itself after him, the DPSG tribe Alfred Delp. In Brilon in Hochsauerlandkreis is the local Children and Youth Center (Alfred Delp House, ADH short) and in Oberursel / Taunus a residential and day center is named for people with intellectual disabilities by him, further located in Troisdorf, the Alfred Delp Elderly Center. An Alfred Delp Society has existed in his hometown Mannheim since Delp's 60th anniversary of his death in 2005. She has been publishing the Alfred Delp Yearbook since 2007, organizes a commemorative lecture in collaboration with the Historical Institute of the University of Mannheim near her birthday (September 15) and donated a bust designed by Karlheinz Oswald for the Jesuit Church by her honorary member Karl Cardinal Lehmann was inaugurated in 2007.

Works

  1. Spiritual writings . 1982, ISBN 3-7820-0478-7 (with introductory texts by Karl Rahner ).
  2. Philosophical writings . 1983, ISBN 3-7820-0485-X (With introductory texts by Karl Heinz Neufeld ).
  3. Sermons and speeches . 1983, ISBN 3-7820-0487-6 (with introductory texts by Ludwig Bertsch ).
  4. From prison . 1984, ISBN 3-7820-0499-X (with introductory texts by Roman Pencil ).
  5. Letters - texts - reviews . 1988, ISBN 3-7820-0580-5 .

See also

literature

  • Klaus Kreppel : On Alfred Delps Political Theology . In: Young Church. A magazine by European Christians . No. 1 . Bremen 1980, p. 6–9 (41st year).
  • Karl H. Neufeld: History and Man. A. Delp's idea of ​​the story - its becoming and its main features . Ed. Pontifica Univ. Gregoriana, Rome 1983, ISBN 88-7652-425-8 .
  • Günther Saltin: Crossed life. Alfred Delp: Path - Struggle - Sacrifice . Schüssler, Mannheim 2003, ISBN 3-00-012687-2 .
  • Günther Saltin: Singing in the furnace. The ecumenical reading of the Bible by Helmuth James von Moltke, Alfred Delp, Eugen Gerstenmaier and Joseph Ernst Fugger von Glött in the Tegel prison . Echter, Würzburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-429-03672-0 .
  • Oskar Simmel SJ:  Delp, Alfred. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 589 ( digitized version ).

Movies

  • Ikarus-Film (Prod.): Alfred Delp. DVD, Munich 2006.
  • Ikarus-Film (Prod.): Pater Delp DVD, Munich 2007.

Web links

Commons : Alfred Delp  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wikiquote: Alfred Delp  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Else Hanf, b. Delp: A little more "Hütt"! 1998.
  2. ↑ Thought leaders with courageous testimony , February 2, 2015.
  3. ↑ a b Sixty years ago, Alfred Delp was executed on kath.net, January 30, 2005
  4. ^ Michael Pope: Alfred Delp SJ in the Kreisau circle. The legal and social-philosophical foundations in his conceptions for a new order in Germany. In: Publications of the Commission for Contemporary History. Row B: Research, Volume 63.
  5. ↑ Delpzeile. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )
  6. ↑ adh-studentenhaus.de
  7. ^ Contemporary history Eva Braun - Frau Germany . In: Der Spiegel No. 49/1967 of November 27, 1967, accessed on December 6, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Delp, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Delp, Alfred Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Jesuit and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH February 2, 1945
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee