Bernhard Poether

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Bernhard Poether (born January 1, 1906 in Datteln , † August 5, 1942 in Dachau ) was a Roman Catholic priest of the diocese of Münster who was committed to the Polish minority in the Ruhr area . He was arrested by the Gestapo in September 1939 because of his commitment to the “Polish pastoral care” and because of critical comments on political measures of the Nazi government and later, in April 1941, deported to the concentration camp in Dachau , where he suffered from malnutrition in 1942 and torture died.

Life

Poether was born in Datteln as the third child of the postmaster Heinrich Poether and his wife Maria Poether, geb. Timpe, born. In Hiltrup near Münster , where the family moved in 1909, he had formative childhood and youth. After graduating from high school in 1926 at the High School Paulinum he studied from 1926 to 1932 theology at the University of Münster and the University of Freiburg . During this time he was shaped by the closeness to the youth and wandering bird movement, especially to its Catholic branch " Quickborn ".

Poether was ordained a priest in Münster on December 17, 1932, and celebrated his first mass on December 26, 1932 in his home parish of St. Clemens in Hiltrup. Until March 1934 he was chaplain in Südkirchen and Gelsenkirchen-Buer . In 1935 he took up a position as vicar in Cięcina near Krakow in Poland, on the one hand out of an interest in Eastern Europe and its people, on the other hand in order to deepen his Russian and Polish language skills. After returning from Poland on August 6, 1936, he became a chaplain in the Herz Jesu congregation in Gladbeck - Zweckel . On April 4, 1939, he moved to the St. Joseph parish in Bottrop .

Here, as before in Gladbeck, Poether was committed to the minority of the Ruhr Poland population. That brought him into conflict with the Nazi regime. On September 22, 1939, three weeks after the start of the war against Poland , Bernhard Poether was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Bottrop prison. Poether had resisted the arbitrary arrest of Polish Catholics. On March 19, 1940, he was transported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . He was tortured repeatedly there. According to reports from eyewitnesses, an offer was made to him that he could be released if he parted ways with the Polish pastoral care. Josef von Styp-Rekowski, dean and fellow prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp, wrote in retrospect in 1953:

“After Kaplan Poether categorically declared that as a Catholic priest he could not part with the Polish pastoral care with which he was entrusted by his bishop, he was transported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. There he was taken to strict solitary confinement in the notorious bunker, where he had to spend a whole year, isolated from everyone, without reading or walking. As he told me in Dachau, it was the greatest agony for him to stay all alone in the cell without reading anything. The Gestapo wanted to wear him down in this way, but they did not succeed. "

- Reinhold Otzisk 1979

On April 18, 1941, Bernhard Poether was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp in the “ priest block ” there. He died on August 5, 1942 as a result of torture, malnutrition and harassment in the Dachau concentration camp. His body was cremated in the Dachau concentration camp crematorium.

The urn with his remains was given to the family in Hiltrup and later found a place of remembrance in the St. Clemens parish church in Hiltrup.

Commemoration

Stumbling block for Bernhard Poether in Bottrop

Public memory of Bernhard Poether and his commitment to the Ruhr Poles had long faded. According to the report of an unnamed author in the WTK magazine published in Wrocław / Breslau in 1960, the Union of Poles in Germany is said to have donated a memorial plaque to those who sacrificed themselves for the cause of Poland in World War II , on which poethers were mentioned in the first place should. But the location of this memorial plaque is unknown today. In the WTK contribution it says about Poether: "In the memory of the Poles he will always remain as the model of a person and priest who loved justice above all."

In 1979 the "Historische Gesellschaft Bottrop" published a biographical sketch about him, written by Reinhold Otzisk. The writing appeared on the occasion of the inauguration of the community center named after Poether of the St. Josephs parish church in Bottrop-Batenbrock in 1979. Since then, some street names in Bottrop, Gladbeck and Münster-Hiltrup as well as other church institutions in the named places have been named after him.

The German Martyrology of the 20th Century , published at the instigation of Pope John Paul II and on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference, has accepted Chaplain Bernhard Poether as a witness of faith. The German Martyrology of the 20th Century has been in its 7th edition since 2019.

Church initiatives in Gladbeck and Hiltrup have been remembering him since around 2005. In Gladbeck-Zweckel a memorial stone in front of the Herz-Jesu-Kirche commemorates Kaplan Poether.

In October 2007 , the artist Gunter Demnig laid a “ stumbling stone ” in front of St. Josef Church, Förenkamp 27. It bears the simple inscription: “This is where Bernhard Poether lived - born 1906 - arrested September 22, 1939 - Dachau concentration camp - dead August 5, 1942 ". Further information about himself, the reason for his arrest and the circumstances of his death are missing.

The Republic of Poland, represented by Consul General Jolanta Róża Kozłowska, paid tribute to Poether's commitment to the Ruhr Poles on January 16, 2012. The Consul General laid a wreath at the urn grave in the St. Clement Parish Church in Hiltrup and said: “He deserved it, that you don't forget your name. ... The Dachau concentration camp is also the grave of thousands of Polish citizens and Polish clergy. I think Poether belonged to an intellectual elite that had to be classified as particularly dangerous by the Nazi regime at the time. ”It was probably the first official honor a state had given to Kaplan Poether, according to Pastor Ewald Spieker, spokesman for the Bernhard Poether working group.

literature

in order of appearance

  • Reinhold Otzisk: Chaplain Bernhard Poether . A biographical sketch. Bottrop 1979.
  • Christian Frieling: priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp. 38 biographies. Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster 1992, ISBN 3-402-05427-2 . In it pp. 152–156: Bernhard Poether.
  • Günter Lassalle: Bernhard Poether. In the S. (Ed.): 1200 years Paulinum in Münster 797–1997. Münster 1997, pp. 549-551.
  • Christian Frieling, Chrysostomus Ripplinger: Chaplain Bernhard Poether. In: Helmut Moll (ed. On behalf of the German Bishops' Conference): Witnesses for Christ. The German martyrology of the 20th century. Paderborn u. a. 1999, 7th, revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Volume I, pp. 531-535.
  • Ingeborg Oliver: Memory of an almost forgotten hero . In: Hiltruper Monatshefte , Vol. 119 (2011), Issue 1 (January / February), pp. 16-18 online ( Memento from May 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  • Ewald Spieker (Ed.): Chaplain Bernhard Poether (1906–1942). Concentration camp priest of the diocese of Münster. Dialogverlag, Münster 2014, ISBN 978-3-941462-96-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Westfälische Nachrichten, Hiltrup edition, January 17, 2012.
  2. ^ Church + Life , February 3, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Poether, Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Catholic priest, victim of National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Dates
DATE OF DEATH August 5, 1942
Place of death Dachau