Eduard Weigl

Eduard Weigl, Papal House Prelate

Eduard Weigl (born May 31, 1869 in Lackenhäuser , Bavarian Forest , † February 4, 1960 in Munich ) was a priest of the Diocese of Passau , later in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising and professor of pastoral theology , homiletics and liturgy at the University of Munich . From 1909 to 1946 he was director of the Archbishop's Seminary Georgianum in Munich. He held the honorary title of Papal House Prelate .

Life

Eduard Weigl was born in 1869 as the son of the royal customs collector Johann Michael Weigl from Tiefenbach in the Upper Palatinate and his wife Therese, nee Drexler, in Lackenhäuser (since 1978 a district of Neureichenau ), Bavarian Forest, Diocese of Passau. In 1889 he passed his Abitur and then studied philosophy in Passau . From 1890 on he attended the archbishop's seminar Georgianum in Munich as an alumnus and was ordained priest in 1893 . Weigl then worked as a coadjutor (auxiliary chaplain) in Passau and Bad Birnbach , before he was appointed sub-rain of the Episcopal Clerical Seminary in Passau in 1897 . In 1900 he received his doctorate as Dr. theology in Munich, then the priest was promoted to director of the clerical seminary in Passau in 1901. In 1909, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Franziskus von Bettinger appointed him director of the renowned Munich seminary Georgianum. In the same year he also became full professor of pastoral theology at Munich University, succeeding Andreas Schmid (1840-1911). Eduard Weigl was to become the longest-serving incumbent - just as he was the rector of the Georgianum. He held the chair for 30 years until 1939 and had to endure the difficult times of the First World War , the revolution and the Nazi regime. Initially a private lecturer in church history, he also gave liturgical and pastoral theological lectures, lectured rubricistics and corrected written and oral attempts at sermon by the alumni. Until the violent closure of the theological faculty in 1939, around 40 years of theology students passed through his hands, including the dogmatist Michael Schmaus , whose pupil was the future Pope, Benedict XVI. is. Weigl's sober theology, shaped by ratio, was strongly influenced by the Church Fathers ; Despite his high liturgical sentiments, the experimental "liturgical movement" remained alien to him throughout his life.

At the Georgianum, too, Eduard Weigl was the director with the longest term of office. He officiated there from 1909 to 1946, modernized the house fundamentally (electric light, central heating, water in the dormitories) and steered it through the cliffs of the First World War, the Soviet Republic, the Second World War , the Nazi dictatorship and the subsequent occupation. Generations of priests passed through the seminary while he was officiating and were thus shaped by him; however, seminars in the Georgianum were forcibly suppressed from 1939 and could only be resumed at the end of 1945. However, Director Weigl stayed in the house and also made sure that the art collection, which was mainly put together by his predecessor Andreas Schmid, survived the war largely unscathed. It made sense to move all movable works of art to different locations, especially rectories. Eduard Weigl was co-editor of the “Munich Studies on Historical Theology” until 1937 , also an employee at the “ Lexicon for Theology and Church ” and author of a large number of theological writings. As early as Whitsun 1918, As Rector of Munich University, Weigl, together with the famous Bavarian art historian Hans Karlinger, published the booklet "Pictures from Altbayern" , according to Weigl's foreword, a gift from the University of Munich to their fellow students in the field and at the same time a welcome gift for those students who who were allowed to enroll there in the last months of the terrible war.

Web links

• PDF page of the University of Munich, about Eduard Weigl - with picture ( Memento from June 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

literature

• "Privy Councilor, Papal House Prelate Dr. Eduard Weigl “ Albert Vierbach, without a location, 1965.
• “Christian life in the course of time” , Walter Dürig , (editor Georg Schwaiger ), Munich 1987, Volume 2, pp. 265–278.

swell

1. ^ Church book Breitenberg 006, page 247