Charles de Foucauld

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Sel. Charles de Jésus

Charles Eugène Vicomte de Foucauld de Pontbriand , Charles de Jésus , in German also brother Karl von Jesus , (born September 15, 1858 in Strasbourg , † December 1, 1916 in Tamanrasset , Algeria ) was a French researcher, officer in the 2nd e régiment de hussards , priests , monk and hermit . He was murdered in front of his hermitage by Senussi in connection with the First World War and on November 13, 2005 by Pope Benedict XVI. beatified . After his death, eleven religious orders and eight other communities and secular institutes were founded, referring to Charles de Foucauld.

life and work

Childhood and youth

Charles de Foucauld was born on September 15, 1858 in Strasbourg as the elder of two children of Vicomte de Foucauld de Pontbriand into one of the richest families in France. His parents' marriage failed in 1863, his father died of tuberculosis in 1864 and shortly afterwards his mother died in childbirth that same year . Foucauld then came to Wissembourg in northern Alsace with his sister Marie in the care of his maternal grandfather . During the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 the family fled from the Germans via Switzerland to Nancy , where Foucauld attended grammar school. In 1874 he moved to the Jesuit high school in Paris ; Relegated from him in 1875 for “laziness and anti-social behavior”, he passed his Abitur in 1876 at a state school. In the same year he entered the Saint-Cyr Military School , which he left in 1878 as a sub-lieutenant . During the two-year officer training at Saint-Cyr, he received 45 penalties for disobedience, laziness and negligence. He passed the exam with difficulty as one of the last.

Army service and research trips

Rabbi Mordechai Abi Serur (1826–1886), guide to Charles de Foucauld in Morocco

After completing military school, he began his service with the 4th Hussar Regiment in Saumur in 1878 . Relocated to Pont-à-Mousson in 1879 , he was transferred to Algeria in December 1880 , where he was dishonorably discharged from the army on March 20, 1881 for indecent behavior and disobedience.

During his school days, Charles de Foucauld led an extravagant lifestyle that gave rise to scandals. After his grandfather De Morlet died in 1878, Foucauld inherited 840,000 gold francs , which he wasted in a few years with prostitutes and with almost daily drinking and eating orgies with friends. His favorite Mimi, whom he is said to have even smuggled into the barracks , also accompanied him to Algeria, where this relationship ultimately resulted in his dismissal as an officer. After a three-month tour of Algeria with Mimi, Foucauld read about an uprising in the newspaper, whereupon he left his lover and got the approval for his official reactivation in Paris. In contrast to his previous behavior, he now proved to be a brave soldier and earned respect for the first time.

His time as a soldier in Algeria brought him into contact with the Arab world and Islam and aroused his determination to explore Morocco , Algeria and Tunisia . When his request for study leave was denied, he left the army on January 28, 1882 at his own request and began to learn Hebrew . Together with Rabbi Mordechai Abi Serur , who had a similarly eventful past as Foucauld, he now began to explore Morocco. On June 25, 1883, the two crossed the border to Morocco, which was then forbidden for Christians. After Jews were allowed to enter the country, the two presented themselves as emissaries from Palestine who, on behalf of rabbinical schools in Jerusalem , would collect money for the training of rabbis in the Maghreb . Foucauld pretended to be a Russian Jew named "Joseph Aleman". Via Fès and Meknes , the two came on September 6th to the pilgrimage town of Boujad , which was not under the Sultan's sphere of influence but was ruled by the marabout of a Sufi order, Sidi Ben Daud. Foucauld provides a detailed picture of the social conditions in the cities visited. He describes how they were warmly received by the marabout and housed in a Jewish house in the city. After their onward journey on September 17th, they came south via Beni-Mellal to insecure areas in the High Atlas, controlled by small Berber tribes . Equipped only with a sextant and a compass as technical equipment, they made map sketches of the Atlas Mountains for the first time , which until then had only been a blank spot on the maps.

After traveling for eleven months, Foucauld returned to Paris in May 1884 and, with the support of the famous Saharan traveler Henri Duveyrier, wrote the work Research Tour through Morocco , which made him famous, about his experiences . The French Geographical Society awarded him the gold medal for the results of his work in 1885, and the English press was full of praise for Foucauld's achievements. As a respected researcher, he worked in libraries in Algiers and Paris in the following years . His family, who had had him incapacitated in court on June 12, 1882 because of his earlier scandalous lifestyle, did not reverse this order until January 1889.

Religious life and priesthood

View from the Assekrem plateau, where the hermitage de Foucaulds was
The hermitage built in 1911 by Charles de Foucauld on the Assekrem plateau in southern Algeria

As early as 1873, at the age of fifteen, Foucauld claimed to have lost all faith in God and the Church. In the course of his life so far he had carefully studied the other two monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam. In North Africa he often met devout Muslims who kneeled down on the ground five times a day and prayed. Since then, the question of God has never left him. In Paris he went to the church of Saint-Augustin again and again and repeated the same sentence: “My God, if you exist, then let me know you.” On October 30, 1886, another radical change took place in him, he turned finally to the Catholic faith again. On this day he met Abbé Henri Huvelin , with whom he remained friends until the end of his life, and made a general confession to him about his previous life. Faith now became more and more important in his life. On 16 January 1890 he joined the Order of the Trappists , and got to the investiture the religious name Marie-Albéric . In June of the same year he was sent to Syria from the Notre-Dame des Neiges Abbey in Saint-Laurent-les-Bains to the Notre-Dame du Sacré-Cœur Abbey in Midan Akbes (Maydan Akbes) in the Afrin district . September 1896 to Algeria in the Staoueli monastery there in the province of Algiers .

Although the Trappists are one of the most ascetic orders in the Catholic Church, after a few months in Akbes monastery, Foucauld complained to the abbot that life in the monastery was not hard enough for him. On February 2, 1897, Charles de Foucauld left the monastery to follow a vocation and lived a hermitic life under poor conditions as a clergyman with the poor Poor Clares in Nazareth and Jerusalem . There he was advised to strive for ordination . So he went back to Akbes monastery to prepare for ordinations and was ordained a priest in France on June 9, 1901, at the age of 43 .

He then went to Béni Abbès in the Algerian province of Bechar , where there were hardly any priests. Here he built a hermitage , gave pastoral care to the French soldiers stationed there and maintained contact with the local population. At the invitation of General François-Henry Laperrine , commander of the French camel corps , moved Foucauld on January 13 in 1914 following the Tamanrasset to act as an intermediary between the resident Tuareg to work and the French. Some time later he built a new hermitage about 70 km from Tamanrasset on the plateau of the Assekrem (2804 m), a peak of the Ahaggar Mountains, at an altitude of 2700 m.

A page from Foucauld's Tuareg-French dictionary

He learned Tamascheq , the language of the Tuareg, compiled a 2,000-page dictionary of this language and collected the poems and fables of this people on 800 pages. His research on the literature and language of the Kel Ahaggar is still one of the most valuable works from the early days of scientific African studies. A deep friendship linked him with Moussa ag Amastan , the amenokal (king) of the Tuareg, as he helped settle disputes. Foucauld did not pursue a mission , but devoted himself to his own spiritual development in his meager free time.

On December 1, 1916, during the First World War , which did not spare the Sahara either, the hermitage he had built in Tamanrasset was occupied by plundering Tuaregs and rebellious Senussi . Foucauld was supposed to be abducted to prevent him from passing militarily valuable information to the army. When horsemen who were mistaken for Méharists (Arab mercenaries in French service) appear at a distance , one of the guards panicked and shot the prisoner. His hut and Foucauld himself were ransacked.

Initially, Foucauld's naked body was buried in a ditch next to his hut, on April 26, 1929 his remains were transferred to a tomb erected for him in the El Meniaa oasis .

The Spiritual Family of Charles de Foucaulds

Tomb of de Foucauld near El Meniaa

During Foucauld's time with the Trappists in Syria, the idea of ​​a new community first appeared in his letters. In Beni Abbes he developed this idea and clarified it with the Tuareg. In a new spiritual family that was to live in small groups among the people, he saw the realization of his ideal of life, the imitation of Jesus . This concept of an order of monks, whose members lived in the middle of the world, completely called into question the ideal of the order of the Catholic Church at that time. Foucauld deeply fulfilled the wish for at least one companion who could continue his work, but during his lifetime he was alone.

Charles de Foucauld asked the Holy See for approval of his ideal of communion, but never received an answer. Several interviews with French bishops were also unsuccessful. It was not until 17 years after his death, in 1933, that the first community based on his model emerged in Algeria. René Voillaume, ordained a priest in 1929, played a key role . After he had learned Arabic for two years in Tunis , he moved with four young priests to the oasis El Abiodh Sidi Cheikh in the Sahara, where in 1933 he set up the first fraternity based on the rules that Foucauld had already worked out and practiced in the basics would have.

Founding of orders

More communities joined the family until 2007. These include:

Today around 13,000 members work in the international spiritual family around the world and are represented in 20 institutes of consecrated life. In the Evangelical Church in Germany there is the Evangelical Lutheran Community of Charles de Foucauld.

Beatification and Canonization

Statue of de Foucauld in Strasbourg

After Pope Benedict XVI. the beatification had confirmed in an apostolic letter, Charles de Foucauld was beatified on November 13, 2005 together with the nuns Maria Pia Mastena and Maria Crocifissa Curcio in Rome . Several members of the Tuareg tribes also took part in the service, led by José Cardinal Saraiva Martins . Charles de Foucauld's day of remembrance in the liturgy of the Catholic Church is December 1st.

In the subsequent canonization process on May 26, 2020 , Pope Francis recognized a miracle attributed to his intercession as the final prerequisite for canonization.

Relationship with the Tuareg

Father Charles de Foucauld is mentioned again and again in connection with the Tuareg . This is not just about the dictionary, which is still important today. His amicable role as mediator, his friendship with the Tuareg remained in the memory of various tribes. An example is the autobiography of Mano Dayak († 1995), Born with sand in his eyes: the autobiography of the leader of the Tuareg rebels .

Works

  • Reconnaissance au Maroc 1883–1884 . Paris 1888, 2 vols. New edition. Paris 1995 ISBN 2-7307-0262-8 .
  • Chants touaregs. Recueillis et traduits par C. de. Foucauld. Ed. Dominique Casajus, Paris 1997. [2]
  • Dictionnaire touareg-francais. René Basset (Ed.) Paris 1951–52, 4 volumes.
  • with Adolphe de Calassanti-Motylinski: Textes touaregs en prose. René Basset (Ed.), Paris 1922.
  • Texts touaregs en prose. Chaker, H. Claudot, M. Gast (Eds.), Aix-en-Provence 1984 (scientifically annotated edition of the work from 1922, edited by three leading Tuareg experts)

literature

Web links

Commons : Charles de Foucauld  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Little Sister Waltraud Irene of Jesus: Eucharist and Adoration in the Life of Charles de Foucauld. September 1, 2007.
  2. ↑ Jürgen Rintelen: This death was not wanted . In: Charles de Foucauld today. On the 100th anniversary of the death of Charles de Foucauld (themed issue of Mitten in der Welt , vol. 54 (2016), issue 205), pp. 6–10, here p. 10.
  3. ↑ Reinhard Freshness: Spirituality of love. AufAtmen 3/1999, pp. 44-49.
  4. ↑ Charles de Foucauld ecclesiastical family
  5. ↑ International website "Association Famille Spirituelle Charles de Foucauld" [1]
  6. ↑ In the middle of the world, Charles de Foucauld today , Communities Charles de Foucauld e. V. (Ed.), Lochham, ISSN 0176-7577 (contains the address list of all communities)
  7. ↑ https://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/apost_letters/documents/hf_ben-xvi_apl_20051113_beatification.html
  8. ↑ http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/de/speeches/2005/november/documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051113_beatifications.html
  9. ↑ http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/csaints/documents/rc_con_csaints_doc_20051113_beatificazioni_fr.html
  10. ^ Promulgazione di Decreti della Congregazione delle Cause dei Santi. In: Daily Bulletin. Holy See Press Office , May 27, 2020, accessed May 28, 2020 (Italian).
  11. ^ German first edition 1997 in the Unionsverlag Zurich
personal data
SURNAME Foucauld, Charles de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Foucauld, Charles de Jésus; Charles of Jesus; Foucauld, Charles Eugène Vicomte de (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French priest-monk, hermit, founder and martyr
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1858
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH December 1, 1916
Place of death Tamanrasset , Algeria