Andreas Rieser

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Andreas Rieser (born July 1, 1908 in Dorfgastein ; † March 3, 1966 in Bramberg am Wildkogel ) was an Austrian priest of the Archdiocese of Salzburg . He was persecuted as a staunch opponent of National Socialism and interned in concentration camps for seven years .

Life

Origin, education and activity up to internment

Andreas Rieser was born on July 1, 1908, the second child of Josef and Theresia Rieser. His parents ran a mountain farm in the Präau near the Luggau district of the village of Dorfgastein in today's St. Johann im Pongau district, which is described as “poor” . He had two sisters and four brothers, one of whom later continued to run his parents' farm. The family was deeply rooted in the Catholic faith and the parents placed particular emphasis on “inner strength” and “straightforwardness” when bringing up their children. Even as a child, he was also an acolyte in his home parish, Andreas Rieser felt the vocation to be a priest. After attending the College Borromaeum Salzburg , he studied at the seminary in Salzburg .

On July 10, 1932, he was ordained a priest and celebrated his first priesthood on July 31 in his native Dorfgastein. In 1933 he got a job as parish vicar in Stumm in the Zillertal. Even before Austria was annexed to the National Socialist German Reich in 1938, he had repeatedly warned against National Socialism, both from the pulpit and in personal conversations. On July 7, 1938, the Kaltenbach gendarmerie commando wrote to the gendarmerie in Dorfgastein: “Rieser was always an outspoken opponent of National Socialism and [...] often caused a nuisance. About two years ago he is said to have said, among other things, 'I prefer ten communists to a Nazi' ". During the time when the NSDAP was banned in Austria , Rieser often "reviled" it from the pulpit. In his parish, Rieser was popular as a zealous, committed and open priest and pastor who particularly cared for the young. Even decades later, the silent citizens remembered his straightforwardness, combined with a certain severity.

On June 1st, Andreas Rieser went to Dorfgastein to attend a funeral and to help the pastor there with the forty-hour “ hourly prayer ” on Whitsun. Two days later, Arno Binna, pastor of Dorfgastein, received a tip that, based on various statements and writings directed against the National Socialists, his arrest was planned by them. He then fled to Italy. The parish was then entrusted to Rieser as the parish administrator , who soon found out that he was practicing “hidden criticism” of the new circumstances in his sermons.

On June 18, according to his own statements, he was commissioned to write a memorial for the newly renovated church tower of the parish church in Dorfgastein, which should be sealed in the tower knob. He handed the sealed letter to the plumber so that he could put it in the designated place. He broke the seal and passed the writing on to the local Nazi functionaries. In terms of content, Andreas Rieser, after describing the NSDAP's rise to power in Germany through “ruthlessness and violence”, regretted that Chancellor Schuschnigg had not succeeded in “cleaning up something among the Nazis” around what he described as an “attack” To prevent Austria. In the letter he denounced the "miserable" economic situation, the Hitler salute, the "religious lukewarmness" including the dissolution of the Catholic associations and the ban on newspapers. Furthermore, he complained about the difficult situation of priests. The end of his letter is a reference to the “notorious Dachau concentration camp ”, in which many men who would have worked under Schuschnigg were “terribly mistreated”. In the letter he also predicted a “terrible” world war. His biographer Birgit Kaiser doubts the authenticity of parts of these letters, as only a copy of the original letter has been preserved by the local gendarmes, which, both linguistically and due to countless spelling, punctuation and factual errors, is hardly true to the original writing of a studied theologian can reproduce.

Life in the concentration camp

On June 23, 1938, Andreas Rieser was arrested at 11:15 p.m. by the district inspector Emil Hübner, who had already co-authored the above-mentioned copy. Via the so-called police prison in Salzburg, he was taken to the Munich police prison on June 30 and from there to the Dachau concentration camp on August 3, 1938, where he was given prisoner number 21859. Because of the reason for his arrest, he was nicknamed "Chaplain of the Onion Dome".

He came to the concentration camp as a protective prisoner who was assigned to a penal company . As soon as he was admitted, he had to see a Jewish prisoner probably beaten to death. After he involuntarily made the sign of the cross, another inmate warned him not to do so in the future, otherwise he would face the worst punishments. In the detail, he was then forced to run wet concrete with wheelbarrows through the area. His bloody hands were then treated with iodine by SS guards who spoke of an anointing in order to further humiliate him .

In Dachau he was once dragged on a rope by the guards to a work detachment made up of Jews who were dismantling and winding up rusty barbed wire . After verbal humiliation of all involved, in which the Jewish prisoners were forced to say that they had murdered Christ, Rieser had to wind himself a “crown of thorns” made of barbed wire, which the guards placed on his head. They forced the Jewish prisoners to spit on him and then had him drag beams to replace the cross, causing him to fall several times.

At Christian festivals in particular , he and other priests were forced into particularly humiliating activities, while at the same time they were promised immediate release if they gave up the priestly profession.

On September 27, 1939, he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp , where he was given the prisoner number 1977. Rieser later referred to Dachau as the “mother and head of the concentration camps, stronghold of pain, furnace of testing and purification”, while he described Buchenwald as “excessive hell” for a priest. On December 8, 1940, he was transferred back to Dachau , presumably due to a decree to intern all the priests in the pastor's block together.

In April 1942 he became a command scribe. This relatively influential position allowed him to help others. Testimony from former fellow prisoners has come down to us, in which he is referred to as the "Angel of Dachau". So he exchanged his cigarette quota for bread and then smuggled it into the punishment company. After Georg Schelling , who had been dean of the camp since then, was released from the concentration camp on April 12, 1945 , Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber transferred this position to Andreas Rieser. He was forced to take part in one of the “ evacuation marches ” from the Dachau concentration camp, during which he carried the holy of holies from the camp chapel with him. The death march broke up near Waakirchen because the SS guards fled from the approaching US army . In Waakirchen, he handed over the Holy of Holies to the local pastor, with whom he spent the following night with other priests and lay people.

Life after liberation and aftermath

On May 31, 1945, on the Feast of Corpus Christi , almost exactly seven years after his arrest, he was able to celebrate a church service again for the first time in his home parish, Dorfgastein. Andreas Rieser forgave those guilty of his suffering and tried to reconcile with them, although none of them ever apologized to him.

During 1945 he was appointed parish vicar for Reith im Alpbachtal . In 1948 he became pastor of Bramberg am Wildkogel. His health suffered from the consequences of the abuse in the concentration camps throughout the rest of his life. The consequential damage from injuries in a car accident on September 4, 1950 also affected him.

In 1953 he was appointed a clerical councilor by Andreas Rohracher . As a pastor, he is described in such a way that he was definitely “rough with the children” in religious instruction, which was, however, common practice at that time. However, he was always very friendly to his acolytes and also went on excursions with them. He never mentioned his time in the concentration camp to children. Andreas Rieser himself helped with the renovation of the local parish church between 1962 and 1964 in his work suit. He died of a heart attack on March 3, 1966, while walking home from a visit to the sick and giving the sacraments . He was an honorary citizen of Dorfgastein and was buried in the local cemetery.

In an obituary published in the church newspaper of the Archdiocese of Salzburg, he was referred to as a "confessing priest", whose name has always been called with reverence by everyone who "knew him from his time of suffering in Dachau".

In 1983 Christian Wallner shot the documentary television game “Der Onion Dome” about his life, which was also broadcast on ORF. This was designed according to "actual incidents", but took a certain amount of artistic freedom in many details, which make it appear rather dubious as a source for Rieser's life. The closing words to the film say that he was forgotten in his homeland and that people were by no means proud of him.

Ignaz Steinwender, who wrote his short life picture in Large Figures of the Church in Tyrol - Life Pictures , called him there in 2002 a “prophet who was not valid in his home country”.

After the historian Rudolf Leo honored him in 2013 in his volume Pinzgau under the swastika , people began to remember him again. As a result, on November 3rd, the square in front of the church in Dorfgastein was named after him and a memorial plaque was placed in the church. The exhibition “Martyrs of Faith” with six panels, supplemented by three panels about Andreas Rieser, was on view in November 2013 in the local council.

Today (2016) you can read on the website of the village of Dorfgastein that "the Dorfgastein farmer's son - a role model of faith, moral courage and humanity - [...] for many is a saint."

literature

  • Jan Mikrut (ed.): Martyrdom of the 20th century , martyrdom of the faith , Volume 3: Dioceses Feldkirch, Innsbruck, Gurk, Salzburg. Wiener Dom Verlag, Vienna, 2000, ISBN 3-85351-163-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b baptismal register - TFBIV | Dorfgastein | Salzburg, rk. Diocese | Austria | Matricula Online. Retrieved October 31, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Birgit Kaiser: Christ in the concentration camp . Sankt Ullrich Verlag, Augsburg, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86744-164-3 , pp. 179-194.
    Sources named there: Archives of the Archdiocese of Salzburg. Hanns Humer, Werner Kunzenmann: Great figures of the church in Tyrol - life pictures . Verlag Kirche, Innsbruck, 2002
  3. ↑ a b Andreas , website of the municipality of Dorfgastein, accessed on January 21, 2019.
  4. ^ Anton Kaindl: Pastor survived seven years in the concentration camp . Salzburger Nachrichten , November 2, 2013, accessed on June 9, 2016.
  5. ↑ Rudolf Leo: Andreas Rieser - The chaplain from the onion dome . Retrieved June 9, 2016
  6. ↑ Monika Bamberger: A place for the angel of Dachau . Archive report Archdiocese of Salzburg, Rupertus Blatt 45/2013, kirchen.net, accessed on June 9, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Rieser, Andreas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian priest of the Roman Catholic Church and persecuted under National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Dorfgastein
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1966
Place of death Bramberg am Wildkogel