August Wessing

August Wessing (born January 18, 1880 in Gescher , † March 4, 1945 in Dachau ) was a Catholic clergyman. He was tortured to death in Dachau concentration camp .

Origin and education

August Wessing was the second oldest of seven children of the farmer Johann Bernhard Wessing and his wife Maria Katharina, born. Boing. He attended high school in Coesfeld and then studied Catholic theology in the seminary in Münster . There he was on 25 May 1907 Great Cathedral of Bishop Hermann Jakob Dingelstad for priests ordained .

Act

His first job after ordination as a chaplain took him to St. Antonius in Recklinghausen , where, thanks to the knowledge of the Polish language he had already acquired during his studies, he was intensively involved in Polish pastoral care and also learned the Czech language in order to help as many immigrant foreign workers and their workers as possible To be able to support families as pastors. After an unusually long time in this position, Bishop Johannes Poggenburg appointed him on September 25, 1924 as the first chaplain at St. Felizitas in Lüdinghausen ; on March 9, 1932, Wessings was appointed pastor of St. Lambertus in Hoetmar and, in 1939, he was also appointed dean of the Freckenhorst dean's office .

Persecution by National Socialism

Although Wessing was more of an apolitical man, he was determined by the special court at the Hamm Higher Regional Court in 1937 after an Easter sermon . Although the NSDAP local group leader and village policeman acted as a witness for the prosecution, the proceedings were discontinued. After contravention of the provisions of the Reich Concordat of religious education from the primary school had been exiled in Hoetmar, Wessing taught in the outbuildings of the rectory two classes for one of the parish an organized religious instruction. In 1941 he was summoned for interrogation and warned about a trip by the Congregation for the Jungfrauenkongregation to the Gestapo in Münster. In the same year the Gestapo carried out a house search near Wessing because he had distributed copies of the critical sermons of his bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen . Wessing's commitment to Polish and Russian prisoners of war and civilian workers led to another complaint the following year.

"I am a pastor and in this capacity I cannot be hostile to any person, not even Poles, Russians or Jews."

- Wessing to the Gestapo, 1942 :

Arrest and death

After Wessing had commissioned a religious sister to make clothing for a Ukrainian girl who had been abducted from his homeland, he was arrested by the Gestapo on July 18, 1942 on charges of openly favoring the enemy and imprisoned in the Münster prison. Although the local council of Hoetmar intervened with the Gestapo for his release, Wessing was transported to the Dachau concentration camp on the day after the petition, where he arrived on October 2, 1942. The forced labor there weakened him so much over the course of the next few months that he fell ill with typhus at the end of February 1945 and died on March 4, 1945. Other priests obtained bribes to ensure that the clergyman's body was cremated separately in the crematorium of the Dachau concentration camp and that they could hide the ashes until the end of the war. In May 1945 a priest brought the remains of Wessing back to Hoetmar, where the parish of St. Lambertus said goodbye to their pastor in a solemn requiem on May 25, 1945 . The urn was placed in the base of the large cross in the Hoetmar cemetery.

Honors

The Catholic Church included August Wessing as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

Streets in Gescher, Recklinghausen and Warendorf and a primary school in Warendorf-Hoetmar were named after August Wessing. His portrait bust can also be found on the Portal of Reconciliation designed by Bert Gerresheim in 1997 in the Marienbasilika in Kevelaer , where the artist depicted those persecuted by National Socialism.

literature

• Christian Frieling: Art .: Dean August Wessing . In: 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 vol. 1, pp. 542-545
• Christian Frieling: priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp. 38 biographies. Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster 1992 ISBN 3-402-05427-2 pp. 198-200
• Bernhard Frings, Peter Sieve: Forced laborers in the diocese of Münster. Church action in the field of tension between work, pastoral care and nursing. Dialogverlag, Münster 2003 ISBN 3-933144-64-7 p. 158f., P. 349
• Ulrich von Hehl (Ed.): Priest under Hitler's terror. A biographical and statistical survey. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, 3rd edition 1996 ISBN 3-506-79839-1 vol. 2, p. 1109
• Hans-Karl Seeger:  Wessing, August. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 21, Bautz, Nordhausen 2003, ISBN 3-88309-110-3 , Sp. 1555-1558.
• Schematism of the diocese of Münster 1938 , Verlag der Regensberg'schen Buchhandlung, Münster 1938, p. 102

swell

1. ^ Christian Frieling: Priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp. Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster 1993, p. 198.
2. ↑ Schematism of the diocese of Münster 1925, Westfälische Vereindruckerei vorm. Coppenrathsche Buchdruckerei, Münster i. W., 1925, p. 100.
3. ^ Christian Frieling: Priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp. Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster 1992, p. 199.
4. ↑ Heinz Boberach , Reports of the SD and the Gestapo on Churches and Church People in Germany 1934–1943 Mainz 1971, p. 709. One charge: he had spoken to civilian workers in Polish.
5. ^ Christian Frieling: Priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp. Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster 1992, p. 200

Web links

• Website of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site