Franz-Josef Bungarten

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Franz-Josef Bungarten (born February 4, 1876 in Ammerich , † September 7, 1965 in Bad Neuenahr ) was a Catholic pastor and Saarland politician.

Life

Bungarten was born in the Westerwald and grew up in Prüm , where he also passed his Abitur. On August 11, 1900 he was ordained a priest and appointed chaplain in Prüm. At the same time he was a member of the Center Party in the district council. On April 17, 1904 he was appointed chaplain in Bitburg until he was appointed pastor in Daleiden in the Eifel on May 31, 1910 . On September 12, 1913, he took up a position as a pastor in the Brebach district of Saarbrücken , and on November 16, 1919, he moved to the parish of St. Josef in Malstatt , where he worked until 1936.

In 1920 Bungarten was involved in founding the Saarbrücker Landeszeitung and was a member of the supervisory board until January 29, 1935. In 1923 he was elected first alderman of the city of Saarbrücken , but the French government commission of the Saar area refused to recognize the election. During this period, Bungarten also organized a signature campaign against the separation of the Saar parishes from the dioceses of Trier and Speyer . He also took a position against the promotion of non-denominational French domain schools in the Saar area. Both the Trier bishop Franz Rudolf Bornewasser and the Speyer bishop Ludwig Sebastian , in whose dioceses the Saar area was located, had taken a clear position in their pastoral letters of February 2, 1923 on the school question in favor of maintaining the German denominational elementary school and against the French Domanial school pronounced for the membership of the Saar area to their dioceses and thus strengthened German patriotism, which Bungarten also advocated.

On the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of St. Michael's Church on St. Johanner Rotenberg on June 3, 1923, Bungarten was co-organizer of the first Saarland Catholic Day , in which the Speyer Bishop Sebastian, the Trier Bishop Bornewasser, his Auxiliary Bishop Antonius Mönch and around 70,000 Catholics took part. Two resolutions of the Katholikentag commented on the school question and on the commitment to the German home dioceses of the Saar region, Speyer and Trier. In speeches, a pro-German position was clearly taken, which was underpinned religiously. As a reaction to the Catholic Day, France intensified its efforts to obtain the separation of the Saar region from the German dioceses and the establishment of an apostolic administration at the Holy See . Pope Pius XI, who advocated the Saarland Catholic Day and its political intentions, did not comply with this request.

In 1923 a house search was carried out by the government commission against Bungarten, whereupon the Center Party intervened in the League of Nations in Geneva ( Switzerland ). On September 21, 1926, Bungarten was elected by the Saarbrücken city ​​council as an honorary alderman for the city of Saarbrücken. Bungarten held this office until January 29, 1935, when he resigned after the Saar referendum on January 13, 1935 in order to forestall a dismissal by the Nazi rulers.

During his tenure in Malstatt, the Josefskirche was given a new ring in 1925/1926 as a replacement for the war-confiscated bells; in 1923/1924 he had already had a large new organ installed. In 1924, Bungarten initiated the renovation of the community's clubhouse.

As chairman of the supervisory board, Bungarten did not comply with the request made in 1934 by the Nazi government in Berlin to remove the editor-in-chief of the Saarländische Landeszeitung, Johannes Hoffmann , from his post because of his Nazi opposition. The background was that Hoffmann had reprinted a politically exposing interview of the NSDAP country leader, Alois Spaniol , with a Swedish journalist. As a result, Spaniol was ousted from his offices by Josef Bürckel in February 1934 .

In the run-up to the Saar referendum on January 13, 1935, Bungarten campaigned for the preservation of an independent Saar area (status quo), but was unable to prevail with his fellow campaigners of the German People's Association for Christian-Social Community and the Saar area was established on March 1, 1935 Affiliated with Nazi Germany.

Bungarten, who headed the largest parish of the Trier diocese with around 17,000 Catholics and was the last chairman of the center party on the Saar, was considered a typical representative of political Catholicism, who was not ready to integrate into the propagated " national community ". In the following years, Bungarten suffered from repression by the Nazi regime , especially after he demonstratively stayed away from Hitler's referendum on March 29, 1936 on the invasion of the Rhineland and the confirmation of the new Reichstag candidates and Nazi election workers who harassed him in the parsonage on election day, had shown the door. This vote was the first all-German election for the Saarlanders after they became part of Nazi Germany on March 1, 1935, since the election to the German National Assembly in 1919. The list of the NSDAP had officially received 98.8% of the vote.

As early as March 30th, members of the NSDAP marched in front of the rectory and chants roared against Bungarten. When the five chaplains who lived together in the rectory with Bungarten asked the police for help several times over the phone, they finally moved in towards evening, but did not intervene. On the following day, March 31, 1936, the chaplains again asked the police for help, as NSDAP party members broke in the windows of the rectory. A short time later the parish door was rammed open and the Malstatter rectory was stormed by a team from the National Socialist Motor Corps and other NS party members on the initiative of the Malstatter primary school rector and an official from the Burbacher Hütte . In addition, young people from Malstatt penetrated the parsonage and chanted chants such as: “Bungarten come out, we will take off your robe”, “Whoever breaks your loyalty to the Führer will not keep it to the Lord either” and “Bungarten, you are Traitor to the people and not God's representative ”. During the action, spectators in a heated mood demanded the direct shooting of the Malstatter pastor and the subsequent demolition of the Malstatter Josefskirche. The police did not intervene and let the rioters have their way . After storming the rectory, Bungarten was taken into " protective custody " by the police and taken to the Lerchesflur prison. On May 6, 1936, Bungarten was arrested again and, on the orders of Gauleiter Josef Bürckel, expelled from the area now known as Saarland . At the request of the Trier Vicariate General, Bürckel initially withdrew the expulsion, but it was nevertheless carried out by Reich Church Minister Hanns Kerrl . Bungarten was then temporarily admitted to oblate monks on the Rochusberg above Bingen am Rhein . Under pressure from the Vicariate General, Bungarten renounced the parish of St. Josef in Malstatt and was appointed pastor in Bad Neuenahr shortly afterwards in October 1936 .

On November 30, 1937, the rectory was also searched because of Bungarten's commitment to the denominational school . In June 1940 Bungarten was arrested again by the Gestapo, imprisoned for eight weeks and then expelled from the Rhineland because he had refused to ring the bells after the Wehrmacht marched into Paris . He was retired on November 1, 1940. From 1940 to 1946 he lived in a sanatorium for the blind in Bingen am Rhein .

After the war, Bungarten returned to Saarland in 1946 and together with others founded the Christian People's Party of Saarland (CVP). At the beginning of 1947, however, he resigned from the CVP and drafted a memorandum against the separation of the Saarland parishes from the dioceses of Trier and Speyer. On January 11, 1948, he was expelled from the Saarland by the French occupying forces because he had opposed direct influence by the French military authorities. In 1952 he was a co-founder of the German Saar Federation .

Honors

  • 1952: Honorary Chairman of the German Saar Federation
  • 1955: Awarded the Great Federal Cross of Merit
  • 1955: Honorary chairman of the CDU Saar
  • 1961: Awarded honorary citizenship of Saarbrücken
  • 1965: Appointment to the Dome of Honor in Trier
  • 1965: Pfarrer-Bungarten-Strasse is named in the Malstatt district of Saarbrücken

Fonts

  • Franz-Josef Bungarten: I must not be silent: my expulsion from the Saar area . Comel, Cologne 1951.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sascha Hinkel: Der Erste Saarländische Katholikentag 1923 in the reporting of the Munich Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli, in: Archive for Middle Rhine Church History 67 (2015), pp. 239–267.
  2. ↑ Johannes Schlich (Ed.): First Saarland Catholic Day in Saarbrücken on June 3, 1923, Saarbrücken 1923.
  3. ↑ Maria Zenner: Saarland Catholicism in the League of Nations, in: Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Gerhard Paul, Ralph Schock / Reinhard Klektiven (eds.): We were never right at home, voyages of discovery to the Saar region 1815–1955, Bonn 1995, p. 143– 147.
  4. ↑ Ludwig Linsmayer: Political culture in the Saar area 1920–1932, symbolic politics, prevented democratization, nationalized cultural life in a separate region, St. Ingbert 1992, pp. 132–137.
  5. ^ I cattolici della Sarre a Congresso, in: Osservatore Romano No. 142 of June 22, 1923, p. 1.
  6. ↑ Testimony to the incident in the diocese archive Trier, 85/206
  7. ↑ Cornelia Rauh-Kühne: Katholisches Milieu und Kleinstadtgesellschaft, Ettlingen 1918–1939, Sigmaringen 1991, p. 365.
  8. ↑ Gerhard Paul and Klaus-Michael Mallmann: Milieu and Resistance, A history of behavior in society in National Socialism, pp. 105-106.
  9. ↑ Bernd Schikofsky (Ed.): Outstanding - Surprising, The Church of St. Josef in Saarbrücken-Malstatt, Saarbrücken 2010, pp. 169–176, 184–185.
  10. ↑ Short biography at the parish of St. Josef in Malstatt
personal data
SURNAME Bungarten, Franz-Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION catholic priest and politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Ammerich
DATE OF DEATH September 7, 1965
Place of death Bad Neuenahr