Engelbert Rehling

Engelbert Rehling (* 29. June 1906 in Düpe ; † 25. November 1976 in Aachen ) was a Catholic priest of the Missionary Order Oblates of Mary Immaculate , who for 1941 because of his critical stance Nazi regime in the Dachau concentration camp was imprisoned.

Childhood and youth

Engelbert Rehling was born as the fifth child of Bernhard Franz Rehling and Antonia Rehling, née Tanklage, in Düpe near Steinfeld (Oldenburg) . His father ran a workshop for agricultural machinery. Engelbert Rehling grew up in a deeply Christian family. Of his four living siblings - four others died in childbed - two of his sisters joined the congregation of the Salzkotten Franciscan Sisters . Engelbert Rehling, however, opted for the mission order of the "Oblates of the Immaculate Virgin Mary" (OMI). The order was founded in 1816 by the French clergyman Eugene von Mazenod and conceived as a purely French order. In 1880 most French orders were forced to dissolve or emigrate by law. Some of the French wafers went to Valkenburg aan de Geul in the Netherlands . In the local mission college of the Oblates St. Karl also Germans were accepted, so that the German branch of the order was created here.

Engelbert Rehling must have decided early on to join the Oblate Order, because as early as 1921, when he was almost fifteen, he joined the Oblate Junior Council in St. Karl in Valkenburg in the Netherlands, where he stayed until he finished his high school studies in 1927. It is not known whether Engelbert Rehling made this decision alone, or whether he was urged to do so by his parents, who otherwise saw no opportunities to enable their son to continue school and study at a university. Engelbert Rehling began his novitiate on April 30, 1927 in the Maria Engelport monastery , where he took his first vows on May 1, 1928. This was followed by theological and philosophical studies at the Oblate Order College in Hünfeld near Fulda , where he made his perpetual vows on May 1, 1931. Here by the Lower found ordinations also on 24 December 1932, the ordination as deacon and on 9 April 1933, the ordination as priest instead.

Worked as a people's missionary 1934–1941

From 1934, Father Engelbert Rehling, who is described as a “very sociable priest and preacher”, worked as a people's missionary , which “ should lead him through almost all West German oblate monasteries ” in the course of his 43 years as a priest . A mission abroad was not considered due to his poor health. Looking back on his work as a people's missionary during the Nazi era, Father Rehling wrote in 1972:

“As a devout Christian, as a priest and preacher, I was in conflict and opposition to the rulers of the Third Reich from the start. No wonder that this found its expression in the preaching of God's word. [...] I could have crawled into the mouse hole and counted myself among the mute fish. Never in my life have I denied my nature. "

It was only a matter of time before Father Rehling came into conflict with the Nazi regime.

The first conflict occurred in Kapellen / Erft in 1935 . Here Father Rehling, on behalf of Pastor Kessel, preached the sermon on February 17, 1935 in high mass on the subject of Can one be truly happy on earth? On the following day, the local group leader of the NSDAP reported to the district leadership of the NSDAP in Neuss that Father Rehling had said in his sermon: “Man cannot become happy on earth, not even through ' strength through joy ', she only asks the one Tour already. ”He is also said to have said:“ You don't have to believe the leaders of today's government either, they want to tear the Ten Commandments from our hearts, they don't fit the Aryan race, they are said to be were intended for the Jews. You will have heard this phrase many times at the meetings. "

The case was passed on from the district leadership to the Gauleitung of the NSDAP in Düsseldorf , which in turn forwarded it to the state police headquarters in Düsseldorf on March 13, “with a request to take note of and investigate the matter” . On March 17th, this commissioned the district administrator in Moers to investigate the case, which in turn passed it on to the district administrator in Grevenbroich . He heard two witnesses on April 2nd . Both witnesses "came to the local group leader of the NSDAP on their own initiative and reported the incident." They confirmed that Father Rehling had said that one could not find true happiness through strength through joy, but they were able to go to the Ten Commandments who Rehling had preached, do not give a clear indication.

On May 7, 1935, Father Rehling was questioned in Grevenbroich. He testified that the criticized statements were "apparently misunderstood by the churchgoers." He never used the word "government". With regard to the ten commandments, he never spoke of the "Aryan race". In the manuscript of the sermon there was the sentence: “But for a real (German) Aryan German there are no Jewish laws.” However, this sentence was crossed out and Father Rehling insisted that a similar sentence be used, but the word “Aryan” not having used. He could not see anything wrong in the contested statements, in particular he did not believe that he had violated the statutory provisions. The criminal proceedings against him for insult were then discontinued. According to a file note from the Düsseldorf State Police Headquarters on October 3, 1941, this happened because "he denied the statements against him and witnesses who objected to his statements could no longer be identified." On the other hand, it seems much more likely that the Rehling case is very simple was messed up and this should be covered up in this way afterwards. The reason for this could lie in the great shortage of suitable skilled workers from which the Gestapo suffered in the first few years.

Another conflict broke out in 1937 “because of allegedly critical statements made by sermons” during a mission week from May 16 to 30, 1937 in Hüls near Krefeld . The local group leader of the NSDAP in Hüls had "urged his sister-in-law to file a complaint." For almost a whole year, Father Rehling had to endure summons and interrogations carried out by the police in Bedburdyck near Neuss on behalf of the Düsseldorf Special Court. The trial for an offense under the " Heimtückegesetz " ( Heimtückegesetz ) was discontinued on May 9, 1938, due to the Law on Exemption from Punishment of April 30, 1938, passed after the annexation of Austria .

Father Rehling benefited from the domestic and foreign political situation. On July 13, 1936, with a view to the Olympics , the Ministry of Justice ordered that criminal proceedings with a religious-political background be suspended. The order was made in response to the encyclical With Burning Concern Pope Pius XI. of March 14, 1937, in which he protested against the obstruction of the Church in Germany by the Nazi regime, repealed on April 7, 1937, but re-enacted in July 1937. Hitler was preparing for war and therefore initially avoided major conflicts with the Catholic Church: "The problem should be solved with little noise in the future."

In the following years, in addition to popular missions, Father Rehling held religious weeks and retreats, "especially for soldiers who had to go to war." His work was made more difficult by the dissolution of the Aachen Monastery of the Oblates in mid-July 1941 in the course of the " monastery tower " . The Gestapo officers who came to the monastery one afternoon around 2 p.m. without warning asked the members of the order to vacate the monastery within four hours. The wafers were only allowed to take some personal items with them, all food was confiscated. The Gestapo officers also rummaged through the clergy's letters and written sermons, and Father Rehling only narrowly escaped arrest. An officer found a letter from a soldier that said, "Enjoy every day that you don't need to be at the barras." The officer insinuated that he had given the soldier this thought. However, he released him with the words "One day (!) We will get you!" After its residents had been driven out, the monastery was to be made available as accommodation for the homeless of the first major air raid on Aachen on July 10, 1941.

At the beginning of September 1941, Father Rehling took over a vacation replacement for Pastor Bernhard Werschmann in Kaldenhausen near Duisburg. There was an incident with the postman Lehnhoff, who greeted the Father provocatively with the Hitler salute, but he did not return it. Lehnhoff later complained "in the post office building at the Catholic Church and its priests who don't even know the German greeting." Father Rehling forbade these attacks, which led to a dispute between him and the postman:

“Lehnhoff, however, became more and more violent. He mentioned the attack on Poland and the fact that his boy, who was in the SS, had died. I mentioned that the SS formation in particular was not squeamish when it came to waging war, that it would have simply put various Polish confreres against the wall. With the malevolence of this postman, that couldn't go well. After a few days they were looking for me. Lehnhoff was reported. He was known in the community as a fanatical National Socialist. "

Father Rehling was charged with saying in public: “The SS troops are much worse hordes than the Bolsheviks. Our Stukas are mass murderers. "According to Lehnhoff's testimony to the gendarmerie , Father Rehling had started the argument and claimed" Our Stukas are not military equipment, are they? (I have lost this expression [Lehnhoff]) but it sounded very mean. ”Father Rehling also said“ everything in a very biting tone ”. Michael Erkelenz, the sexton named by Lehnhoff as a witness , who also worked in the Kaldenhausen post office, protested to the master of the gendarmerie in Rumeln , "holy and holy that he has heard nothing from all of this, and he knows nothing at all." Therefore the sexton was not even questioned, "since it is clear from the start that E. (Erkelenz) does not want to testify."

The day after the incident, Father Rehling left for Essen so that the police in Kaldenhausen could no longer arrest him. The state police control center in Düsseldorf commissioned their field office in Essen to question Father Rehling. This returned the order on October 15, 1941 with the remark that Father Rehling had taken over the representation of Vicar Kemper in Wüllen in Westphalia at the end of September , so that his interrogation "on this side (could not) be carried out." When he arrived in Wüllen, said Father Kassiepe informed Father Rehling that the Gestapo was already looking for him and that he had given Wüllen as his whereabouts. On October 28, 1941, around 4 p.m., Father Rehling was arrested by Gestapo officer Eugen Dehm from Münster . The officer locked Father Rehling in the “syringe house”, which was used as a prison, in Ahaus, 5 kilometers away, until 11 p.m. while he drove to Stadtlohn and arrested Vicar Johannes Klumpe there. The two clergymen were transferred to the police prison in Münster that night. He waited in vain for a court hearing. The lawyer appointed by his superiors as defense counsel was not admitted at all, because Hitler had already forbidden the use of lawyers in protective custody cases in 1935.

During his detention, Father Rehling was interrogated several times, both day and night, in the cellars of the Gestapo building at Gutenbergstrasse 41 in Münster. He denied all accusations and was largely silent so as not to incriminate anyone. Despite his silence, he was not tortured :

“Because I was silent, the Gestapo officers got angry. A couple of times they wanted to get violent. I strongly forbade myself from doing that. Then they let go of me. "

During the detention, the sister of the vicar Klemper from Wüllen looked after Father Rehling. She did his laundry and notified his parents, who were allowed to visit him in the police detention center twice. Father Rehling used the laundry to smuggle messages out of prison , which was strictly forbidden. Police Commissioner Brockschneider, who supported the prisoners as much as he could, noticed this but did not reveal him to the Gestapo at his request. “His wife Maria became the mother of all priests who walked through the police prison in the long years. I was in correspondence with her until her death in 1970, ”remembers Father Rehling.

On November 8, 1941, the Münster state police station applied to the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin to “order protective custody against Rehling until further notice and to be sent to a concentration camp. Rehling has been examined by a medical officer; he can be held in a camp and can work. ”Clergymen were only sent to a concentration camp with the permission of the Reich Security Main Office . On the same day, the state police headquarters in Münster asked the Düsseldorf "for information about what is otherwise known about R. there in terms of political or criminal law." For the state police headquarters, the last incident in Kaldenhausen alone was reason enough to send Father Rehling to a concentration camp to be instructed. The documents were sent to Münster on November 19 with the request “to inform me about the further course of the matter, since I intend - in order to prevent Rehling from returning to my area of ​​office - to bring about a residence ban against him if necessary.” On December 2 In 1941 the personal file was sent back to Rehling with the note that the decision of the Reich Security Main Office would be communicated "in due course."

"Around December 20," Father Rehling was informed that he would be transferred to the Dachau concentration camp . The transport took place in a prison wagon of the railway from December 22nd to 26th from Münster via Kassel , Frankfurt am Main and Nuremberg to Dachau .

Detention in Dachau 1941-1945

Registration card from Engelbert Rehling as a prisoner in the National Socialist concentration camp Dachau

From 1940 onwards, all clergymen who had been taken into “ protective custody ” in the National Socialist sphere of influence were imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp . After negotiations between the imperial government and the papal nuncio Orsenigo , the priests were assigned blocks 26, 28 and 30 as "pastor blocks " , which were separated from the blocks of the other prisoners by a fence. Block 26 contained a chapel which only clergymen were allowed to use. Furthermore, the clergy were released from work and received somewhat better food than the other prisoners. On September 15, 1941, all Polish clergymen were brought together in Blocks 28 and 30. They lost their privileges and were no longer allowed to use the chapel. Only the block of non-Polish clergy remained fenced. A total of around 2,700 clergy were imprisoned in Dachau, of which around 1,000 did not survive imprisonment. The total number of prisoners in Dachau fluctuated between an average of 20,000 to 30,000.

On December 26, 1941, Father Engelbert Rehling was sent to the Dachau concentration camp as prisoner no. 28963 because of pacifist statements. He had the impression that he had gone straight to hell . He was insulted and insulted, his bald head was shaved and he was given prison clothing that was much too small and too tight for him. "After four months the clothes fit after I had lost 50 to 60 pounds." On the same day Engelbert Rehling witnessed how the SS beat a Jewish fellow inmate to death. On the first night, another imprisoned clergyman died next to him without his noticing. The next morning, Father Rehling was beaten up by the guards because he had not reported this immediately.

As a rule, the newly incarcerated spent around two weeks in the access blocks before they were distributed to the actual apartment blocks. During this time the prisoners had to practice drills, which almost cost Father Rehling his life. He reported with sore feet for admission to the "Revier", the infirmary. Father Rehling wrote in 1972: “Two days before the action of the disabled had [been] completed.” Clergymen who were disabled or unable to work ran the risk of being gassed (what is meant here is Action 14f13 ). The victims were transported to the Nazi killing center in Hartheim Castle near Linz for gassing . Since the camp management declared that the disabled would be better housed in another camp, there were even volunteers at first.

But the prisoners soon realized what the " invalid transports " were all about, because the clothes of the transported prisoners came back after a few days. In addition, the inmates learned from letters from their relatives that the deported inmates had died. After 320 clergymen had been killed by gassing, the Reich Security Main Office ordered on August 18, 1942, that Reich German priests no longer be gassed. It was not until April 27, 1943, that the gassing of the disabled, but not of the mentally ill , was completely stopped.

In 1942 the supply situation in the Dachau concentration camp deteriorated dramatically. In February the potatoes ran out, so that the food only consisted of 250 g bread a day and turnip soup. In his memoirs, Father Rehling notes: “After the liberation, I spoke to an official from the administration of the city of Dachau and learned that not 1/5 of the board we were entitled to had reached us. Everything else was sold off by the SS and their accomplices in the camp management. ”From April 1942, the non-Polish clergy also had to do forced labor , but without receiving the additional meal that is usual for forced laborers. So began in June and July “the great death. The priests had to mourn several deaths every day. ”During this time, Father Rehling had to crush sauerkraut at the Durach company in Munich outside the concentration camp. He volunteered to do so, "because there was more to eat, because you could breathe different air and see other people than bald prisoners and SS with pistols." He managed to get a message to the Oblate branch in Munich who then secretly provided him with bread while he was working. In this way, Father Rehling was able to survive the great famine. At the end of October 1942, the prisoners were allowed to receive food packages.

Father Rehling's poor health had already been attested in a medical report in 1933. On January 14, 1943, a typhus epidemic broke out in the Dachau concentration camp, killing around 1,400 prisoners. Father Rehling, too, hovered “between life and death” for more than four months. He later suffered a cardiac collapse and had all his food parcels for a tablet sacrifice. After that he was in the "Revier" three times with diarrhea and pneumonia .

On September 1, 1943, a day that Father Rehling should “never forget”, he collapsed, weakened by diarrhea , during the morning roll call on the roll call square . Two inmates then took him to the "Revier", but were turned away there. Father Rehling was called a "slacker" and was put at the entrance gate by camp elder Kapp. He was even not allowed to leave, and the only advice he received from the guards was: "In your pants, you piglet!" He had to endure like this for more than eleven hours. This happened in what Frieling describes as "the relatively best for the inmates".

During the entire period of his detention Father Rehling took every opportunity, his fellow prisoners as well as he pastorally to care, even though this was forbidden by the camp authorities. Like many other prisoners, the presence of a chapel helped him endure imprisonment in the camp. In 1947 he wrote: “I will not forget the moment when I was allowed to enter this shrine for the first time on February 7, 1942.” In addition to pastoral work for the lay prisoners, on July 23, 1944 he had the first opportunity to celebrate Mass himself . This was reserved for the camp chaplain Franz Ohnmacht until March 16, 1943 . His successor Georg Schelling gave - illegally - the other priests in turn the opportunity to celebrate mass. This also applied to the Polish priests, who were banned from using the chapel on September 15, 1941. Lay prisoners could now also attend church services . Although these were often disrupted by the SS, no really serious incident occurred.

Father Rehling also took part in the lively theological and intellectual life of the clergy in the Dachau concentration camp. This included panel discussions and lectures by individual priests. The chapel served as a lecture venue:

“Lectures were held in the chapel in orderly fashion on the situation of the Church in the individual countries. And in the presence of all religious communities represented in Dachau, we heard lectures on reunification in faith. "

In this way the clergy got around the prohibition of the camp administration to form courses and circles.

A unique event in the history of the Dachau concentration camp was the ordination of deacon Karl Leisner on December 17, 1944 by the French bishop Gabriel Piguet . Karl Leisner had contracted pneumonia while working on the labor service , which broke out again in Dachau. Father Rehling provided him with eggs that his parents sent him. When it became clear that he would not survive the disease, it was Karl Leisner's last wish to be ordained a priest. After both the cardinal responsible for Dachau , Archbishop Michael von Faulhaber , and the bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen , who was responsible for Karl Leisner from the diocese of Münster , had given their consent, the necessary insignia were smuggled into the camp by nun Josefa Mack . The seriously ill Karl Leisner struggled to get through the consecration ceremony. In order to protect him, only a limited number of participants were allowed to attend the consecration act. One of them was Father Rehling, who also signed the certificate of consecration. Karl Leisner said to him: "Without your kind help I would not have got that far." Father Rehling also served Karl Leisner at his Primary Mass on December 26, 1944. This gave "the second day of Christmas 1944 a very special consecration and meaning." Karl Leisner died of illness on August 12, 1945 after the liberation from Dachau.

As early as 1942, as in many other cases , the Fulda Bishops' Conference tried to intervene in the case of Father Rehling without success. In 1943 Father Rehling's father traveled to Dachau and tried unsuccessfully to get him released. At the beginning of 1945 Bishop Heinrich Wienken presented to the Reich Security Main Office about the priests in Dachau. SS officer Müller asked him within two hours for a list of names that occurred to him. From March 27th to April 11th there was a wave of dismissals of German and Austrian priests. Hence the assumption that Father Rehling was not among the dismissed only because Bishop Wienken, who was not responsible for him as a religious, was not familiar with his case.

On April 25, 1945, the order to evacuate the camp was given. The evacuation march began on the evening of April 26th and led via Dachau into the Mühlbachtal. We stopped here the next day. In the evening the march continued to Starnberg . At one o'clock in the night, Father Rehling and two other prisoners managed to escape.

Further activity as a people's missionary from 1945

After his escape during the evacuation march from the Dachau concentration camp, Father Rehling initially found accommodation in the Rottmannshöhe Jesuit monastery . Until 1947 he worked in the Mission Convict in Westphalia.

Before the end of their imprisonment, the twenty priests from the diocese of Münster, who were imprisoned together in the Dachau concentration camp, had agreed to meet with Pastor Josef Reukes in Gronau on Pentecost 1946 . Father Rehling described it as a "warm reunion". He preached the sermon on the three evenings of the meeting. The meeting of the former concentration camp priests met with lively interest in the Gronau community. Families from Gronau had agreed to take in a priest as a guest for the duration of the meeting. At the closing ceremony “the church was filled to the last seat, not only by Catholics but also by many people of different faiths.” After this church celebration, the twenty priests met in Pastor Reukes' apartment for dinner and a cozy get-together. The following day, after a “simple lunch, which our former block elder Friedrichs himself served according to Dachau style ”, the whole group drove to Lüdinghausen in Westphalia, “where a similar meeting of the Dachau priests from the dioceses of Münster, Paderborn and Aachen was held. "

Even after this meeting, Father Rehling kept in contact with the group of his former fellow prisoners and was “very committed” to them. In September 1950 he made a pilgrimage to Rome with “more than 200 German concentration camp priests”.

The postman Lehnhoff, who had brought Father Rehling to the Dachau concentration camp with his complaint in 1941, was relieved of his post after the end of the war as part of the denazification process . In order to get back his position as a postman, he asked Father Rehling to help him with a letter (popularly " Persilschein "). Father Rehling replied that although he had forgiven him, he could not expect that after everything he had suffered in the Dachau concentration camp, he would now stand up for him too.

In 1947 Father Rehling became a parish missionary in Bingen - Rochusberg . From December 1, 1958, he worked as a hospital chaplain in the Luisenhospital Aachen . In 1959, his transfer to the Aachen / Salvatorberg Oblate Monastery , where he had lived during his time as a hospital chaplain, became legally binding. Here he continued to work as a people's missionary. In contrast to many other former concentration camp priests, he often spoke about his experiences in the Dachau concentration camp, including on his popular missions.

Father Rehlings' already poor health continued to suffer from imprisonment in Dachau, and he suffered from diabetes . In June 1974 he suffered a severe stroke from which he did not recover properly until his death. Father Rehling died on November 25, 1976 in Aachen. He was buried in the Oblatenfriedhof in St. Nikolauskloster near Bedburdyck near Neuss.

Fonts

• Christmas in Dachau . In: Monthly pages of the Oblates of the Immaculate Virgin Mary. Volume 47, issue April 1, 1946, pp. 14-16.
• Priestly life and work in the Dachau concentration camp. In: Monthly pages of the Oblates of the Immaculate Virgin Mary. 48th year, issue January 1, 1947, pp. 7-11.

literature

• Christian Frieling: priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp. Aschendorff, Münster 1992, ISBN 3-402-05427-2 , pp. 157-159.
• Erwin Gatz : History of the Diocese of Aachen in data, 1930–1985. Einhard-Verlag, Aachen 1986, ISBN 3-920284-19-4 .
• Bernd Hey : On the history of the Westphalian state police headquarters and the Gestapo. In: Westphalian research. 37th Volume, 1987. pp. 58-90.
• Thomas Klosterkamp : Father Engelbert Rehling OMI. People's Missionary. Prisoner in Dachau concentration camp 1941–1945. (Essay, not yet unpublished, written in Rome in 1992 for the Dictionnaire Historique Oblat , which is gradually appearing online , intended for volume 3 ).
• General Administration of the Oblates (ed.): The Missionaries Oblates of the Immaculate Virgin Mary. Strasbourg 1994.
• Priest under Hitler's terror. A biographical and statistical survey. Arranged by Ulrich von Hehl . Publications of the Commission for Contemporary History: Series A, Sources: Volume 37. Mainz 1984.
• P. Engelbert Rehling OMI. Aachen, Salvatorberg . In: Heinrich Selhorst (Ed.): Priest fates in the Third Reich from the Diocese of Aachen . Einhard-Verlag, Aachen 1972, pp. 121-140.
• Gregor Schlarmann: Engelbert Rehling. A stone field in the Dachau concentration camp . In: Walter Scherbring, Rudi Timphus (Red.): Steinfeld 1187–1987 . Vechta 1987, p. 602.
• Reimund Schnabel: The pious in hell. Clergy in Dachau . Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1966.
• Emil Thoma: The clergy in Dachau as well as in other concentration camps and in prisons , edited and expanded by Eugen Weiler. Volume 1. Mödling 1971.