Amandu's field

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Father Amandus Acker

Amandus Acker CSSp (born April 24, 1848 in Weyersheim in Lower Alsace; † March 30, 1923 in Knechtsteden near Neuss) was an Alsatian Catholic missionary and colonial pioneer and re-founder of the German Spiritan Province. Acker fought for the return to Germany of the Spiritans , Redemptorists and Lazarists / Vinzentines who were identified as "Jesuit relatives" in the Kulturkampf .

Life

Amandus Acker was the child of a peasant family, but because he had lost his parents at a young age, he was brought up in the house of a related doctor. His foster father refused to let him go to college because of his speech impediment. His sister, however, paved the way for Acker to attend a Spiritan mission school in France.

Despite his language deficit, Acker completed his theology studies in Langonnet , was ordained a priest in 1875 and entered on August 15 th. J. joins the Mission Society of the Holy Spirit. In the same year he was assigned to the Zanzibar mission.

He began as an orphan father in the home for the ransomed slave children, then headed the mission on the island and at the same time administered the procuration for the ever increasing number of missions on the East African mainland. During the 19 years on Zanzibar, he developed many good relationships with domestic and foreign colonial officials and politicians, who would prove to be very useful in his later development work in Germany.

In 1893, Father Amandus became involved in a dispute over the Goans in Zanzibar , which grew into political tensions between France and Portugal. Acker therefore had to return to Europe. There he was given the task of returning the Spiritans expelled in the Kulturkampf to Germany. From the General Superior of his order and from the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation missionary, he was appointed Superior of the German Province of the Order ordered, which had only a single member for the time being: even him.

With the help of the Archbishop of Cologne Krementz , the permission of the Prussian government and financial support from the Africa Association, he acquired the burned-out ruins of the former Premonstratensian Abbey of Knechtsteden in 1895 . Until 1908 it was rebuilt under his direction. Acker built a mission school there in 1896, a novitiate in 1898 and a seminary in 1905. This first establishment was followed by four more houses by 1914: the mission schools in Zabern-Alsace (1900) and Broich near Aachen (1905), the clerical novice in Neuscheuern-Lothringen (1904) and a rest home in Heimbach in the Eifel (1914).

Acker headed the German Order Province until 1919. With extraordinary missionary zeal he promoted the missionary work and the idea of ​​colonialism, represented his cause in the pulpit, on extensive lecture tours in Germany and Austria and on Catholic Days (Regensburg 1904, Düsseldorf 1908). He was a co-founder of the "Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft", which had 7,000 subscribers after only two years. In Strasbourg (1905) Acker was President of the Mission Assembly. Until 1917, Father Amandus was repeatedly elected chairman of the Superior Conference of Missionary Orders and Congregations in Germany, founded in 1910.

With energy and skill he defended the Catholic point of view on questions of slavery, forced labor and racial intermarriage in the protected areas. He called for the abolition of slavery and polygamy and the establishment of schools and hospitals for the colonies. During the First World War he campaigned with great determination for the Armenians persecuted in Turkey. His commitment to German colonial policy earned him the goodwill of the German emperor, whom he met three times, by being awarded the Order of the Red Eagle and the Order of the Crown. His attempt to inspire Pope Pius X , whom he visited during a pilgrimage to Rome in 1908, with missionary enthusiasm and to induce the publication of a mission encyclical, was unsuccessful.

Acker spent the last years of his life in Knechtsteden, where he died on Good Friday 1923 at the age of 75 - almost blind and paralyzed on one side by a stroke.

In 1931 a bell in the Knechtstedener monastery church was named "Amandus" in his honor.

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personal data
SURNAME Field, Amandus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Alsatian Catholic missionary and colonial pioneer and re-founder of the German Spiritan Province
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1848
PLACE OF BIRTH Weyersheim in Lower Alsace
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1923
Place of death Knechtsteden near Neuss