Apollonia Diepenbrock

Apollonia Diepenbrock (born November 13, 1799 in Bocholt , † July 4, 1880 in Regensburg ) was a Westphalian hospital donor.

Life

Apollonia was the daughter of Anton Diepenbrock and his wife Maria Franziska, née Kesting. She had five sisters and four brothers, including Melchior von Diepenbrock , later a cardinal in Breslau . Alphons Diepenbrock was a great-nephew . Her parents owned an estate; they were educated and strictly Catholic.

Apollonia met Clemens Brentano in 1818 when he was visiting her brother-in-law Hans von Bostel , and soon afterwards met Luise Hensel through him, and she developed her own melodies for her verses. Inspired by this acquaintance, she decided against marriage and for service in charitable communities. However, a religious order did not appeal to her. After her mother's death, she was free to work in the poor and sick.

In Koblenz , a former monastery had been converted into a hospital, but initially there were no nurses. Hensel and Diepenbrock looked after the sick there from 1825 until the Bürgerhospital was taken over by Borromean women in 1826 . Diepenbrock subsequently hired herself as a housekeeper and educator and only later resumed her charitable work. In 1834 she moved to Regensburg, where her brother Melchior von Diepenbrock (as secretary to Bishop Johann Michael Sailers ) and her father were already . Here she looked after the needy in their apartments and took in up to five orphans and women in need at home at Niedermünstergasse 2. Apollonie Diepenbrock was close friends with Maria Pohl, the daughter of the Protestant physicist Georg Friedrich Pohl , who converted to Catholicism in 1844, and the convert Luise Hensel . In 1845 she bought the Josefshäuschen (Obermünsterstrasse 5), which had space for 15 women. This “house for women” later developed into a hospital and old people's home for abandoned maids and homeless women: the St. Josephs Institution, which she bequeathed to the Regensburg Cathedral Chapter in her will and which was then continued by nuns. Today there is a Caritas welfare station in the building. Her brother, who had significantly supported her work, died in 1853, while she was looking after her. She also traveled to Brentano's deathbed in Aschaffenburg and was in close contact with Joseph Görres in Munich . Her work was supported by Emilie Linder . In 1856, she asked Prince-Bishop Förster , who was in close contact with her, to write a biography of her deceased brother, which was published in 1859.

From 1872 Diepenbrock suffered from gout and had to withdraw from nursing. Her hospital was taken over by the Franciscan Sisters and briefly renamed after her in 1882, later moved to the former Domkapitelsche Hospital on Aegidienplatz and from 1930 continued as the St. Josef nursing home by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent ( Vincentian Sisters ). There was still a Diepenbrock room there until the 1980s. It was dissolved during renovation work.

Apollonia Diepenbrock died on July 4, 1880 and was buried with great sympathy among the population. Her grave has not been preserved, the tombstone is set in the south wall of the Lower Catholic Friendhof. Her correspondence with Brentano was published posthumously by Ewald Reinhard .

literature

• Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 130.
• Ewald Reinhard (Ed.): A soul friendship in letters. Clemens Brentano and Apollonia Diepenbrock. 25 Brentano letters . (Romantic library; 51/52). Ed., Introduced and annotated by Ewald Reinhard. Parcus, Munich 1924
• Tanja Rexhepaj: The "Angel of Mercy". In: Mittelbayerische Zeitung . December 16, 2013.

Web links

• Biography on the city page of Bocholt

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Sachs: 'Prince Bishop and Vagabond'. The story of a friendship between the Prince-Bishop of Breslau Heinrich Förster (1799–1881) and the writer and actor Karl von Holtei (1798–1880). Edited textually based on the original Holteis manuscript. In: Medical historical messages. Journal for the history of science and specialist prose research. Volume 35, 2016 (2018), pp. 223–291, here: p. 250.
2. ↑ Michael Sachs (2016), p. 250.