Athanasius barley

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Athanasius Gerster OSB (* 4. August 1877 in Dogern ; † 15. March 1945 in the prison of Bayreuth ) was a Roman Catholic priest who during the Nazi came to death dictatorship in detention.

Life

August Gerster completed a commercial apprenticeship after attending school , entered the Benedictine Abbey of Seckau in 1898 , made perpetual profession on September 3, 1900 and received the religious name Athanasius. On November 30, 1906, he was ordained a priest and took over the duties of cantor and gardener in the monastery .

“In Seckau, the alcohol consumption of the population was a particular thorn in the side of Gerster. In order to put an end to this grievance, he strongly advocated the consumption of sweet cider, which soon earned him the nickname 'Süßmostpater'. "

After the abbey was abolished and the monks expelled by the Gestapo at the beginning of April 1940, Gerster first came to Weingarten and was transferred to the St. Matthias Abbey in Trier on June 1, 1940 . After the Abbey of St. Matthias had also been closed by the Gestapo in April 1941, Gerster came to the Abbey of Gerleve via the Maria Laach Abbey . Shortly afterwards this abbey was also dissolved in the National Socialist monastery tower and Gerster found new shelter in the Neuburg Abbey near Heidelberg.

Arrest and death

“During a train journey in the summer of 1944, a conversation ensued with a foreman, the content of which was supposed to be the undoing of the otherwise calm and withdrawn Father: According to Gerster, salvation for Germany would not come from either National Socialism or Communism, but only practiced Christianity . Just one day later the Gestapo was standing in front of the monastery gate. ”After this denunciation , Gerster was questioned by the Gestapo in Heidelberg for eight days in July 1944 , summoned to the Karlsruhe State Police Station on July 24, 1944 and then taken into custody. In mid-November Gerster was transferred to Berlin on remand at the People's Court . The Neuburg Abbey and the Archdiocese of Freiburg tried in vain to get the already ailing Gerster released; In January 1945 he was sentenced to three years in prison for degrading military strength and was brought to Bayreuth in February 1945. “He was transferred in an open freight car. [...] The freezing cold in the unheated reinforced concrete cell and the completely inadequate nutrition made the priest's health dwindle. "

He shared the cell with the later President of the German Bundestag , Eugen Gerstenmaier , who reported several times after the end of the war about the joint detention and the last weeks of Gerster's life. On March 15, 1945, he collapsed at his workplace in the weaving mill. A few hours after admission to the hospital, Athanasius Gerster died completely exhausted and emaciated. “Malnutrition was found to be the cause of death. At the instigation of the pastor Albert Sailer, the burial did not take place in the prison cemetery, but in the city cemetery. "

Honors

In Dogern the parish hall of the Catholic parish of St. Clemens is named after Athanasius Gerster. On August 22nd, 2016, a stumbling block was laid for him in front of the church in Dogern.

literature

  • Johann Großruck: Lambach Benedictine Monastery in the Third Reich 1938 - 1945. A monastery in the focus of Hitler's myth and swastika legend. Wagner Verlag, Linz, 2011, pp. 667-673, ISBN 978-3-902330-62-8 .
  • Ulrich von Hehl : priest under Hitler's terror. A biographical and statistical survey . Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh 19963, Vol. I, p. 614.
  • Benedicta Maria Kempner : Priest before Hitler's tribunals . Unchanged reprint of the 2nd edition from 1967. Bertelsmann, Munich 1996, ISBN 978-3-570-12292-1 , p. 114 .
  • Helmut Moll (Ed.): Witnesses for Christ - The German Martyrology of the 20th Century , Paderborn-Munich-Vienna-Zurich 1999, Vol. II, pp. 726–729. ISBN 3-506-75778-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Südkurier: In memory of a martyr from Dogern , 23 November 2015.
  2. ^ Alfred Lins: Action against forgetting. In: suedkurier.de. August 23, 2016, accessed January 13, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Barley, Athanasius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gerster, Athanasius August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Roman Catholic religious priest
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Dogern
DATE OF DEATH March 15, 1945
Place of death Bayreuth