Emmanuel Reichenberger

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Emmanuel (sometimes also Emanuel ) Johannes Reichenberger (born April 5, 1888 in Vilseck , Upper Palatinate , † July 2, 1966 in Vienna ) was a German Roman Catholic priest and Sudeten German publicist. During the final phase of the Second World War he developed into the “father of the expellees ” and an opponent of the expulsion policy and the collective guilt thesis , as they were widespread among the Allies . Before joining the German Empire in the Sudetenland, he resisted National Socialism .

Life and activity

After attending the high school in Amberg , Reichenberger decided to pursue a spiritual career. From 1908 to 1912 he studied theology in Regensburg. In 1912 he was ordained a priest in Leitmeritz Cathedral by Bishop Josef Gross . He then became a chaplain in time for the Austro-Hungarian Empire belonging Bohemia resident: He became the chaplain of the parish Röchlitz in the Diocese of Litomerice appointed. Today this community belongs to Reichenberg in the Jizera Mountains . Since then he has been heavily involved in the Catholic associations in Bohemia, for example he was a member of the KDSt.V. Saxo-Bavaria Prague .

After the First World War, Reichenberger devoted himself primarily to Catholic club life and Catholic youth work.

From 1935 to 1938 Reichenberger was chairman of the Volksbund der Deutschen Katholiken, the unified organization of German Catholics in Czechoslovakia , of which he had been a driving force since the early 1920s. The Volksbund was responsible for the entire cultural and educational work of the German Catholics in the Sudetenland. Reichenberger was known as an opponent of Konrad Henlein's Sudeten German Party (SdP) and was given the name Der Rote Kaplan because of his social commitment in favor of the impoverished workers and his willingness to work with social democratic groups.

Reichenberger feared that the rise of National Socialism would exacerbate the conflict between the Sudeten German Catholics and the anti-clerical government of Czechoslovakia and that, as in the Nazi Reich, “neo-paganism” among the Germans in Bohemia would be spread by the SdP and the NSDAP would. Therefore he was involved in journalism as well as in his work within the Catholic association system in Czechoslovakia against National Socialism.

Time of National Socialism and emigration

On September 16, 1938, the "red chaplain" Reichenberger spoke to the Czechoslovak radio station Radio Prague and condemned the SdP efforts to unite with the German Reich:

“We stand at the edge of the abyss. An uninhibited campaign of hatred has claimed its first victims. I speak as a German who loves his people and his homeland and who wants to protect them from destruction. We must not bear the yoke and curse of the rest of the world. I speak as a human being and as a Christian who sees in every human soul the likeness of God, who believes in more worthy methods of eliminating human and domestic differences than war and annihilation. Sudeten German men and women: think of your responsibility before God, your homeland and our people. Pray, work, sacrifice for peace. God wants it!"

After the annexation of the Sudeten areas by the German Reich in October 1938, Reichenberger first went to the initially unoccupied part of Czechoslovakia and from there to France in order to evade Nazi persecution. In the summer of 1939 he left for Great Britain. There he participated with Franz Rehwald and Willi Wanka in a leading way in the negotiations of representatives of Sudeten German refugees with the Canadian government to accept larger contingents of this refugee group in Canada. He then moved to the United States (1940).

In the United States, Reichenberger initially worked as the head of a small community of Native Americans and Russian Germans in South Dakota . He later became chairman of the Jouroeymen's Association in Philadelphia and president of the Kolping family in Chicago .

During the war and in the post-war period, he was one of the most prominent advocates of the Sudeten Germans in the United States and spokesman for the Sudeten German exile community in that country. Since 1944 he also served as Vice President of the Democratic Sudeten Committee founded by Wenzel Jaksch on August 1, 1944 .

After his emigration, Reichenberger was classified as an enemy of the state by the National Socialist police. In the spring of 1940 the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people whom the Nazi surveillance apparatus regarded as particularly dangerous or important, which is why they would be succeeded by the occupation troops in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht Special SS commandos were to be identified and arrested with special priority.

post war period

In April 1945 Father Reichenberger traveled with the US Army to the settlement areas of the Sudeten Germans in Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia, which belong to the now re-established Czechoslovak state. He documented the attacks and crimes of Czech soldiers and militias against the Sudeten German population, but was expelled from the country despite his anti-fascist commitment because the government of Czechoslovakia now considered him a dangerous "German critic".

For the Sudeten German expellees, Reichenberger played a prominent role in the post-war years by organizing relief actions in their favor (e.g. supply of clothing and food) and theirs - initially from the USA, after his return to Europe from Bavaria Interests with the allied victorious powers, v. a. the United States. This commitment and his journalistic advocacy for the expellees from Eastern Europe - especially the Germans of Bohemia and Moravia - earned him the nickname of “the father of the expellees”.

Because of his commitment to the recognition of German suffering, Reichenberger was often rated in his time and by later authors as a "reactionary" who wanted to excuse National Socialism and play down the German crimes of the prewar and war years. In their book Lessons and Legacies (2003) , the historians Peter Hayes and Jeffry Diefendorf listed Reichenberger's work for the expellees in the chapter "Downplaying the Holocaust" as an example of a corresponding attitude towards the Nazi system.

Reichenbergern supplied his critics with ammunition through numerous books, circulars and public appeals in which he campaigned against the concept of German collective guilt for the Nazi crimes of the war years: In these, he took the view that the German people were fully responsible for what happened, However, he used - especially in appeals to the Sudeten German communities and in his sermons - a tone that Tobias Weger identified as "coarse" and "folkish", which at that time was very well received by the audience, but according to the verdict of later assessors was not suitable for one Rethinking the Sudeten German expellees in their view of the events from 1936 to 1945 and their interpretation of them.

The selection of the extremely right-wing publishers, especially Stocker, Westland, Arndt, who published his works after 1945, was also not suited to show Reichenberger in any way interested in reconciliation.

Honors

Pope John XXIII appointed Reichenberger in recognition of his services to the Catholic Church as papal secret chamberlain . Furthermore, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Theological Faculty of the University of Graz , the honorary citizenship of Vilseck, the honorary citizenship of the city of Amberg (1951), the honorary badge of the Republic of Austria , the Nordgau culture prize of the city of Amberg in the category " Nordgau funding" (1956) and the honorary letter of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft.

The city of Amberg named Reichenbergerstrasse on the Eisberg after him.

Fonts

  • Judas over Sudetenland , 1938. (anonymous)
  • East German Passion , Westland-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1948. (Reprinted as Sudeten German Passion. For Truth and Justice , Kiel 1995)
  • Drive through the defeated country , Pyramide-Verlag, Karlsruhe 1950.
  • Europe in ruins. The result of the Allied crusade , Leopold Stocker Verlag, Graz / Salzburg / Vienna 1950,
  • Against arbitrariness and power intoxication. Findings and confessions from two continents , Graz and Göttingen 1955.
  • Home of the Sudeten Germans , Volkstum-Verlag, Vienna 1967. (with Josef Starkbaum)
  • Visiting poor brothers , Veritas-Verlag Munich 1951.

literature

  • German Biographical Encyclopedia , Volume 6 (Kogel-Maxsein), 1999, p. 201.
  • Josef Weinmann: "Upright champion of noble humanity", in: Volksbote from April 8, 1988.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Without fear and without trembling - 100 years of KaV Saxo-Bavaria Prague in Vienna, Vienna 2007.
  2. ↑ Laura Hölzlwimmer, Martin Zückert: Religion in the Bohemian Lands 1938–1948. Dictatorship, war and social change as challenges for religious life and church organization. Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, p. 44.
  3. ^ Radio Prague : September 1938: last-minute appeals for moderation as Hitler builds up forces on the Czech border broadcast of January 10, 2008.
  4. ^ Entry on Reichenberger on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .
personal data
SURNAME Reichenberger, Emmanuel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reichenberger, Emmanuel Johannes (full name); Reichenberger, Emanuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Roman Catholic priest and Sudeten German publicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Vilseck , Upper Palatinate
DATE OF DEATH 2nd July 1966
Place of death Vienna