Ambros Opitz

Ambros Opitz (born September 27, 1846 in Leopoldsruh near Groß Schönau , Northern Bohemia, † September 27, 1907 in Warnsdorf , Northern Bohemia) was an Austrian Catholic theologian, Christian-social politician, popular educator, publicist and publisher.

Life

Opitz came from a family of textile merchants. 1859–1866 he attended the Jesuit grammar school in Mariaschein . After studying theology at the seminary in Leitmeritz , he was ordained a priest in 1870. Opitz worked as a chaplain in Warnsdorf until 1874. Then he went into business for himself by buying a printing company and doing journalistic and political work.

As early as 1873 he headed the first Catholic newspaper in Bohemia, the Nordböhmische Volksblatt (later from 1884 under the name Warnsdorfer Volkszeitung , from 1887 Österreichische Volkszeitung , from 1918 Volkszeitung ). Further periodicals that were founded or taken over by him were the Warnsdorfer Hausblätter (1884, since 1897 in Vienna as a Christian family paper for entertainment and instruction ), the Hausblätter for the parishes of Blottendorf and Falkenau , Egerland (1897 in Eger ), Immergrün (1893) , the series of brochures, People's Enlightenment (1898), Landbote (1901), but above all the Wiener Reichspost (1894, as a daily newspaper since 1907), which was considered the most important Catholic medium in the monarchy.

The first book printer in Varnsdorf (German: Warnsdorf)

Opitz organized the first German Catholic Days in Northern Bohemia, from which the Bohemian Catholic Days later developed. Your program also shaped the Austrian Catholic Days in Linz and Salzburg . On the Katholikentag in Linz in 1892 Opitz achieved a reform of the Catholic press.

Between 1895 and 1901 Opitz was a Christian-social member of the state parliament in the Bohemian state parliament . He was one of the most important representatives of political Catholicism in Austria. He was an opponent of Georg von Schönerer , liberal capitalism and anti-clerical socialism. In 1897 he founded the Christian-Social Association for German Bohemia. His social commitment (he founded numerous associations for education and self-help for workers, men and women, as well as Raiffeisen associations) combined with an advocacy of a Greater Austria, but also with German national and anti-Semitic tendencies, which increased the national differences in Bohemia (so was he against the bilingualism decree for Czech officials of the Badeni government in 1897). His initiatives were influential and continued even after his death. His clerical followers were called Opitzians .

Grave site of A. Opitz in the Czech town of Vilemov u Sluknova (formerly: Wölmsdorf bei Schluckenau)

In 1903 the Opitzgasse in Vienna- Hietzing was named after him.

Fonts

• Intercourse with God. Devotional book for the Christian year . Opitz, Warnsdorf 1897
• The school question. Speech and reply by Ambros Opitz in the Bohemian Diet in March 1897 according to the stenographic protocol . Opitz, Warnsdorf 1897
• The Bohemian Dispute , 1898
• Jesus my everything! Prayer and edification book , 1900

literature

• Joseph Gürtler: Ambros Opitz. A champion for truth, freedom and justice . Opitz: Warnsdorf 1908
• Augustin Kurt Huber: Ambros Opitz 1846-1907. A pioneer of the Catholic movement in Old Austria . Königstein Institute for the Culture and History of East Central Europe, Königstein / Taunus 1961
• Otfried Pustejovsky:  Opitz, Ambros. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , pp. 549 f. ( Digitized version ).
• E. Life:  Opitz Ambros. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 7, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1978, ISBN 3-7001-0187-2 , p. 233 f. (Direct links on p. 233 , p. 234 ).