Aloys Ludwig

This article deals with the theologian Aloys Ludwig; on the architect see Alois Ludwig .

Aloys Ludwig (born July 3, 1910 in Bous (Saar) ; † October 29, 2002 ibid) was a German Roman Catholic theologian and a leading member of the National Committee Free Germany (NKFD).

Life

Parental home and studies

Aloys Ludwig was born as the son of the railway official Peter Ludwig and his wife Angela. Fery was born in Bous in the Saarland . After graduating from high school in Saarlouis , he studied philosophy and theology from 1931 , first in Trier, then in Munich. There he was arrested by the secret state police in the summer of 1934 for anti-Nazi activities ("atrocity propaganda") . In a trial, he was sentenced to three months in prison and at the same time from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University relegated . After imprisonment, he completed his studies in Salzburg with a doctorate ( dissertation topic : The causa instrumentalis with Thomas von Aquin ).

First pastors and military chaplaincy

After being ordained a priest in Salzburg in July 1936, he first worked as a youth pastor in Vienna , then for two years in Strobl on Lake Wolfgang. Because of sermons critical of the system, he was removed from service there at the instigation of the local NS party leadership. He then worked as a chaplain in Neunkirchen (Saar) until he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in February 1940 . As a military chaplain in Kalisch and pastor in Prague , he again came into conflict with the prevailing Nazi ideology, which ultimately led to his transfer to the Eastern Front. In the summer of 1942 he took part in the advance on Stalingrad , saw the 6th Army being encircled and in January 1943 was taken prisoner by the Soviets.

National Committee Free Germany

While in captivity, he joined the anti-fascist National Committee Free Germany (NKFD) and in June 1944, together with other Wehrmacht clergymen (including Josef Kaiser, Peter Mohr and Johannes Schröder ), he founded the working group for church issues at the NKFD. He gave spiritual speeches on the Moscow broadcaster Free Germany and wrote articles for Free Germany , the NKFD newspaper, in which he called for resistance to the Nazi dictatorship , referring to the crimes committed by the Hitler regime . He also took part in the preparation of leaflets that were dropped over the German lines in order to act as propaganda against the Nazi regime and its war. Thereupon he was sentenced to death in absentia in Berlin for “ collaborating with the enemy”.

After 1945

At the end of the war, the NKFD was dissolved in November 1945. Some of the members were released into the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany. Others - among them Aloys Ludwig, who made no secret of his fundamentally anti-communist convictions - were transferred to a special camp of the Soviet secret service NKVD in Gorki , where they were accused of alleged war crimes in Stalinist-style criminal trials. Aloys Ludwig was sentenced to death in December 1949 on this mocking basis, but was "pardoned" in April 1950 to 25 years of forced labor . In October 1953 he was released from prison and returned to his home in Saarland. Until his retirement in 1975 he taught as a religion teacher in Saarlouis .

In addition to his pedagogical work, one of his main concerns was to create a close connection between Christian youth work and sports life. As a teenager, he therefore joined the Catholic sports organization Deutsche Jugendkraft (DJK). In addition to his active sporting activities and support work, he took on various board positions at the DJK, was involved in public relations and was a spiritual adviser to the diocesan association of the DJK in the diocese of Trier .

Aloys Ludwig died in his hometown on October 29, 2002 and was buried in the local cemetery.

The verdicts against him in the Soviet Union were posthumously declared illegal and overturned by a decision of the Moscow District Military Court in July 2005.

Works

• Why don't you see for yourself what is right? In: Georg Thurmair (Ed.): Das Siebengestirn. Freiburg i. B. 1939, pp. 187-202
• Everything is yours. From knowing about the whole. Recklinghausen 1939
• Ready for service. A reception ceremony and introduction for altar servers. Recklinghausen 1939
• Young Christian. Recklinghausen 1940
• 60 years of German youth worker Bous. Bous 1970

Individual evidence

1. ↑ At the same time, Ludwig's brother Otto also studied theology in Munich, who from 1934 worked as a mission benedictine under his religious name Servatius Ludwig in Manchuria , where he was murdered in 1946 in the turmoil after the war.
2. ↑ See also: Peter. Parish journal of the cath. Parish of Bous. July 1961, p. 1f.
3. ↑ See: Bouser Echo. Official notice of the municipality of Bous from July 18, 1986, p. 4f.
4. ↑ See Bodo Scheurig : Traitors or Patriots. The National Committee “Free Germany” and the Association of German Officers in the Soviet Union 1943–1945. Berlin, Frankfurt am Main 1993, pp. 113 and 202ff; Klaus Drobisch (Ed.): Christians in the National Committee “Free Germany”. Berlin 1973, p. 61f.
5. ↑ Manuscripts of his broadcasts in: Bundesarchiv Berlin, inventory SgY 12 / V 238/132; see. on this: Drobisch p. 167ff
6. ↑ Article by Aloys Ludwig in Free Germany see: Staatsbibliothek Berlin, G mikro R 137; see. on this: Bodo Scheurig: traitors or patriots. The National Committee “Free Germany” and the Association of German Officers in the Soviet Union 1943–1945. Berlin, Frankfurt am Main 1993, p. 111ff.
7. ↑ See his retrospective reports on the work in the NKFD, in: Archive of the Institute for Contemporary History Munich, inventory ZS / A31, volume 10
8. ↑ Cf. Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.): The National Committee "Free Germany" and the Association of German Officers. Frankfurt am Main 1995, pp. 71ff.
9. ↑ See on this Paul Burgard, Ludwig Linsmayer: Der Saarstaat. Saarbrücken 2005, p. 79.
10. ↑ Message from the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany Moscow (Gz .: RK 544 - E 27.725) of August 3, 2005