Anton Fränznick

Anton Maria Fränznick (born August 9, 1889 in Rohrbach am Gießhübel , † January 27, 1944 in Dachau concentration camp ) was a Catholic priest .

Fränznick was ordained a priest on July 2, 1913. After various vicar positions in Neustadt in the Black Forest , in St. Urban in Freiburg-Herdern , as a chaplain at the St. Josefsanstalt for the handicapped in Herten near Rheinfelden (Baden) and again as a vicar in Karlsruhe , he became pastor in Mörsch in what was then the dean's office in Ettlingen in 1925 .

Already in the seminary in Freiburg he was noticed by his deep piety and strictness towards himself as well as towards others. In the 1920s he joined the Schoenstatt Movement . With this in mind, he organized so-called “Eucharistic Weeks” in his congregation with great success and was active as a traveling missionary throughout southern Germany. Some of his confreres viewed this with suspicion. In 1931 his dean wrote "Fränznick / Mörsch is spinning again".

Fränznick tomb in Rohrbach am Gießhübel

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, he joined with other Schoenstatt priests in a "conspiracy" to promote the religious life in a church on Kaiserstuhl together, before allowing access to the Gestapo was safe. Nevertheless, he was soon targeted because he continued to pursue his missionary work. Because of the pressure of persecution by the state, the Rottenburg Ordinariate obtained a - within the church - ban to work in his diocesan area. As early as 1934, several clergymen in his area were in “ protective custody ”, and in 1935 the Archbishop's Ordinariate of Freiburg forbade him - albeit unsuccessfully - from missionary work because this was at the expense of the community service.

In 1940, Anton Fränznick was transferred to the remote village of 500 people in Bollschweil near Freiburg for his own protection . However, he did not rest there either. Rather, he had a dispute with the local mayor over the pulpit as to whether the parish had to take part in the construction of a road, and in a sermon criticized the “legal” shooting of a Polish slave laborer who had a relationship with a woman from Bollschweiler.

On July 24, 1942, Anton Fränznick was arrested and taken to the Dachau concentration camp in the priest's block. There he had to grind herbs in a primitive mill, an extremely dusty job that ultimately led to his death. The autopsy revealed the following: survived pneumonia, typhoid fever, dust lung, diseased kidneys, embolism in the leg, blood clots in the heart chamber.

Anton Fränznick died inwardly unbroken. He had prepared for his death as a martyr . His urn was buried in Rohrbach, his birthplace, and his tomb was designed by Emil Wachter .

Appreciations

The local community of Bollschweil has named a street after Anton Fränznick as a souvenir. There is also a Fränznickstraße in Rheinstetten in the Mörsch district.

In 1999 the Catholic Church accepted Pastor Franz Anton Fränznick as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

literature

• Dieter Heck: Pastor Anton Maria Fränznick . 1994.
• Hans-Josef Wollasch: Fränznick, Franz Anton. In: Baden biographies . New series, Volume 4, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-17-010731-3 , p. 80.
• Helmut Moll (Ed. On behalf of the German Bishops' Conference): Witnesses for Christ. The German martyrology of the 20th century. Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , pp. 257-260.

Web links

• Literature by and about Anton Fränznick in the catalog of the German National Library
• Tanja Bury: Pastor Anton Maria Fränznick died in the Dachau concentration camp. In: Badische Zeitung . January 25, 2014 (badische-zeitung.de, February 1, 2014)