Bruno Fehrenbacher

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Abbot Bruno Fehrenbacher (1939)

Bruno Fehrenbacher OSB (born July 27, 1895 in Mengen (Württemberg) as Hermann Fehrenbacher ; † July 18, 1965 in Buckfast ) was a German-British Benedictine monk and abbot of Buckfast Abbey in Devon (Great Britain).

Life

Fehrenbacher grew up with five siblings in a Catholic merchant family. In the Latin school in Mengen he came into contact with a Benedictine from Buckfast; At the age of 15 he joined - like many other Upper Swabian boys - the Buckfast Benedictine Abbey , which at that time was looking for workers to rebuild an abandoned medieval monastery and whose abbot Ansgar (Martin) Vonier came from Ringschnait near Biberach. His predecessor, Abbot Bonifaz Natter, also came from Upper Swabia.

In 1919 Fehrenbacher was ordained priest , after which he studied at the Benedictine College St. Anselm in Rome , where he received his doctorate in 1922 . He returned to Buckfast in 1935 and became a British citizen, and from 1937 onwards he taught Syrian Catholic clergy at the Benedictine seminary in Jerusalem and in Charfet near Beirut. During his stay in Palestine he was elected in Buckfast as the successor to Abbot Vonier, who died on December 26, 1938, he was solemnly installed on February 25, 1939, and the benediction followed on March 23, 1939.

During the war Buckfast was spared air raids and could serve as a refuge for St. Boniface College from Plymouth, 40 km away. After the war, Abbot Fehrenbacher succeeded in considerably expanding the monastery buildings and having the organ in the neo-Romanesque church completed in 1937 rebuilt and enlarged. Because of his poor health, he resigned as abbot in 1956, after which he served as a spiritualist in the Benedictine Abbey of Stanbrook near Worcester, from where he returned to Buckfast in late 1964. After a heart operation and almost complete loss of vision, he died in Buckfast shortly before the age of 70.

literature

  • Willi Eisele: From Upper Swabia to England - Bruno Fehrenbacher OSB (1895–1965), monk and abbot of Buckfast. In: Heritage and Order , Volume 92, 1 (2016), 103–104.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ K. Fakler: Swabian Benedictine monks built the English Buckfast Abbey. In: Schwäbische Zeitung - Saulgau, Church and Life, No. 213 of September 15, 1964
  2. ↑ Vonier, Ansgar. In: Biographia Benedictina (Benedictine Biography) , version of June 18, 2013
  3. ↑ Natter, Boniface. In: Biographia Benedictina (Benedictine Biography) , version of June 18, 2013
  4. ^ John Stéphan OSB: Buckfast Abbey - A new history of the Abbey from AD 1018-1968. The Burleigh Press, Bristol 1970
  5. ↑ The solemn abbatial blessing. In: The Buckfast Abbey Chronicle. Vol. IX, no. 2, 1939, pp. 59-68
  6. ↑ Scarlet Banners: Abbot of Buckfast solemnly blessed. In: Catholic Herald , March 31, 1939, online ( Memento from September 5, 2014 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Fehrenbacher, Bruno
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fehrenbacher, Hermann (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Benedictine monk and abbot of Buckfast Abbey in Devon (Great Britain)
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Quantities , Württemberg
DATE OF DEATH July 18, 1965
Place of death Buckfast, Buckfastleigh , England