Augustin Pacha

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Augustin Pacha (born November 26, 1870 in Móricföld ( German  Moritzfeld ), Kingdom of Hungary , Austria-Hungary ; † November 4, 1954 in Timișoara , People's Republic of Romania ) was a Banat Swabian Roman Catholic bishop of the Timișoara diocese and church politician. He was known as the "Swabian Bishop" and "People's Bishop".

Life

Youth and Studies

Augustin Pacha was the twelfth of thirteen children of the shoemaker Marian Pacha and his wife Elisabetha, née. Halsdorfer was born in Moritzfeld in what is now Romania. Most of his siblings died in the first few years of life from various diseases such as flaking and diphtheria . Only three of his siblings survived the father. His older brother was the abbot pastor Stefan Pacha .

From 1876 to 1881 he attended elementary school in Moritzfeld. From 1881 to 1887 he attended high schools in Ketschkemet and Szeged ; in Temesvár from 1887, where he passed his Abitur in 1889 and then devoted himself to studying theology until 1893 .

Priestly career

On 12 August 1893 Pacha received in Cathedral Temesvár the ordination of the bishop of the Diocese of Szeged-Csanád , Alexander III. Cserneki és Tarkeői Dessewffy . From 1893 to 1894 he was a chaplain in Mezőkovácsháza . Pacha spoke German, Hungarian, Latin and Romanian, which made it easier for him to work as a confessor and preacher in Bucharest and Brăila from 1896 to 1898. In 1900, now in the office of secretary to the Bishop of Csanád , he made several trips to Italy and Austria , where he dealt with ecclesiastical administration.

In 1906 he became an honorary canon and consistorial councilor and received the order "For Church and Pope" from the Pope. In 1911 he was diocesan chancellor and canon of the diocese of Cenad until 1923. On August 26, 1926, he inaugurated the Banatia Educational Institute in Timișoara. In 1927 he was appointed titular bishop of Lebedo and on May 15 he was ordained Apostolic Administrator in the Timișoara Cathedral.

On June 5, 1930, Pope Pius XI. the Cenad-Timișoara administration to the "Timișoara diocese". Pacha was then appointed bishop of the Timișoara diocese on October 16, 1930 and enthroned on November 29 in the Timișoara Cathedral .

He consecrated some churches of the diocese, for example in 1925 in Teremia Mare (German Marienfeld ), 1928 in his home parish (now Măureni ), 1930 in Jimbolia ( Hatzfeld ), Reșița ( Reschitza ), 1933 in Lugoj ( Lugosch ) and the monastery church in Iosefin ( Josefstadt ), 1938 in Elisabetin ( Elisabethstadt ) and 1939 in Orșova ( Orschowa ).

The 1930s and 1940s

In 1930 the Romanian King Augustin Pacha appointed Grand Officer of the Romanian Crown Order. From 1939 to 1944 Pacha was a senator in the Bucharest Senate.

In the course of the 1930s and 1940s, the National Socialist German Reich gained more and more influence on the structures within the Romanian Germans and weakened the influence of the Church, especially in the school system.

Arrest and death

In autumn 1944 the Soviet troops overran the Banat. Especially after 1947 the Roman Catholic Church lost its legal basis; Clergymen were arrested, organizations were banned and properties were expropriated.

On July 18, 1950, the Romanian Security Police arrested Bishop Pacha and took him to Sighet Prison . A year later he was taken to the Interior Ministry's remand prison in Bucharest. With nine other defendants he was in a from 10. – 17. September 1951 convicted of a show trial before a military tribunal in Bucharest. Pacha has been accused of spying for the Vatican and a foreign currency offense. In addition, he did nothing to accept the growing influence of the National Socialists and their takeover of Catholic schools in the Banat.

According to the trial records, Pacha himself stated that he was in Berlin in February 1934 to ask Adolf Hitler to curb the propaganda of his supporters in the Banat against the Catholic Church. Hitler had promised to comply with the bishop's request. He was only detained in Sighet Prison. There he was discharged almost blind and seriously ill in the spring of 1954 and lived in Timișoara until his death.

Pacha died on November 4, 1954 in Timișoara as a result of an operation and was buried in the crypt of the cathedral.

Appreciation

The Catholic Church accepted Bishop Augustin Pacha as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

origin

Pedigree of Augustin Pachas and his siblings.

The grandparents and great-grandparents of mother Augustin Pachas were among the colonists of Moritzfeld and came to the Banat between 1786 and 1796 from the Palatinate, Trier and Bavaria .

The father Augustin Pachas was born in Petersdorf near Königgrätz in Bohemia and moved with his parents and his three siblings from his homeland to Moritzfeld in 1838 because of difficult economic circumstances.

literature

  • Hans Diplich: Pacha, Augustin . In: Biographical Lexicon on the History of Southeast Europe . Volume 3. Munich 1979, pp. 378-380
  • Horst Fassel :  Pacha, Augustin. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 744 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Horst Fassel :  PACHA, Augustin. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 6, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-044-1 , Sp. 1407-1409.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Nikolaus Engelmann: Shepherd of his people. From the life and work of Temesvar Bishop Dr. theol. hc Augustin Pacha. Verlag Christ on the move, Munich 1955.
  • Franz Herbs : Memories of Bishop Pacha. A piece of Banat local history. ADZ, Bucharest 1995.
  • Franz Herbs: Memories from my Christian-Democratic service. Self-published, Freiburg 1967.
  • Franz Herbs: My "guilt" and my atonement. Mirton Verlag, Timișoara 1995, ISBN 973-578-038-0 .
  • Helmut Moll (publisher on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference), witnesses for Christ. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhundert , Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Vol. II, pp. 1197–1198.
  • Anton P. Petri: Home book of the German community Moritzfeld in the Banat. Heimatsortsgemeinschaft, Moritzfeld 1986, ISBN 3-922046-53-3 .
  • William Totok : Episcopul, Hitler și Securitatea. 2 parts. In: Observator cultural. (I): No. 252/253, December 21, 2004 - January 3, 2005, ISSN  1454-9883 ; (II): No. 254/255, 4th January 2005 - 17th January 2005.
  • William Totok: The Bishop, Hitler and the Securitate. The Stalinist show trial of the so-called "Vatican spies", 1951 in Bucharest. 8 parts. In: Half-yearly publication for Southeast European history, literature and politics (HJS). (I): Vol. 17, No. 1, 2005, ISSN  0939-3420 , pp. 25-41; (II): Vol. 17, No. 2, 2005, pp. 45-62; (III): Vol. 18, No. 1, 2006, pp. 23-43; (IV): Vol. 18, No. 2, 2006, pp. 21-41; (V): Volume 19, No. 1/2007, pp. 27-41; (VI): Volume 19, No. 2/2007, pp. 34-50; (VII): Vol. 20, No. 1/2008, pp. 17-24; (VIII): Vol. 20, No. 2/2008, pp. 45-59.
  • William Totok: The forgotten Stalinist show trial against the "spies of the Vatican" in Romania 1951. In: Yearbook for historical communism research. 2005, ISSN  0944-629X , pp. 233-259.
  • William Totok: Aspecte secundare ale procesului intentat "spionilor Vaticanului" in 1951. Materiale inedite din arhivele aparatuluirepriv. In: Timpul. anul VII, No. 7/8, July-August 2006, pp. 14–16, online (PDF; 1.23 MB) .
  • William Totok: "Securitatea şi Vaticanul". In: magazine istoric , XLVI. Vol., No. 8 (545), August 2012, pp. 9-13.

Web links

Individual evidence


predecessor Office successor
... Bishop of Timisoara
1927 - 1954 		Sebastian herbs
personal data
SURNAME Pacha, Augustine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Banat Swabian Roman Catholic bishop and church politician
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Móricföld , Kingdom of Hungary , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH 4th November 1954
Place of death Timișoara , People's Republic of Romania