Franz Boehm (resistance fighter)

Franz Boehm (born October 3, 1880 in West Prussia ; † February 13, 1945 in Dachau concentration camp ) was a Roman Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of Cologne , resistance fighter and martyr .

Life

Franz Boehm came from a family of teachers. He spent his primary school years in the Rhineland. He passed the Abitur in Mönchengladbach. After his philosophical and theological studies in Bonn, he was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Cologne in 1906. At his three chaplain positions in the Ruhr area, he was also active in the Polish pastoral care, as he speaks the Polish language. He also baptized in his mother tongue and not in Latin as planned at the time. He took up his first pastor's position in 1917 in St. Katharina in Gerresheim / Vennhausen (today Düsseldorf-Gerresheim ). In 1923 he became a pastor in Sieglar .

Resistance to National Socialism

Supported by the then mayor of Sieglar Jakob Hörsch, the state police repeatedly investigated Boehm and issued numerous sanctions. In 1934 there was a criminal case, which was discontinued; In 1935 Boehm was forbidden to give religious education. At the same time he received his first deportation, which was lifted by an amnesty in 1936. The second and final expulsion from the administrative district of Cologne followed as early as 1937 . Boehm had to leave Sieglar and wait for the vicariate general to assign him a new place of work . This archbishop's policy to protect his own clergy was also felt by Boehm to be cold. In a personal letter to a younger confrere, Boehm wrote that he was "disappointed with his ecclesiastical authority [...] because he received no recognition and help". However, he had "used the proud and humble consciousness in Sieglar [...] [his] last strength" and lived according to the "guideline", "fighting unanimously for the faith and the Gospel and not being intimidated in any way by resistance" to want. In letters to the Vicariate General, he asked “to have mercy on the physical and emotional pressure” and “to assign him a new place of work as soon as possible”.

In 1938 Boehm took up a position as a pastor in Monheim am Rhein . In his priestly work he continued to resist the regime. Boehm mainly worked with young people. He always countered the increasing escalation with the Bible verse: “They are all mute dogs, they cannot bark” ( Isa 56,10  EU ). In 1938 there was a fine and in 1941 a warning for religious services in Polish. In 1942 he was sentenced to a security deposit of RM 3,000 for a sermon for the Christ the King . At Easter 1944 he preached against the Nazi film system, which resulted in his first arrest. In connection with the arrests around July 20, 1944 , Boehm was arrested in the church immediately after a mass. On August 11, 1944, he was taken to the pastors' block in the Dachau concentration camp . Even a letter from the bishop did nothing to change the imprisonment. He died in the concentration camp on February 13, 1945 from the effects of a facial rose caused by imprisonment .

Effect to the present

Pastor Franz Boehm House, Monheim am Rhein

Franz Boehm is considered to be one of the bravest pastors in the Archdiocese of Cologne during the Nazi era. In Monheim am Rhein in Franz-Boehm-Straße in front of the staircase to St. Gereon, a stumbling block reminds of Boehm - also in front of the St. Katharina rectory in Düsseldorf. In 2002, the Catholic elementary school on Kamper Weg in Düsseldorf was renamed "Franz Boehm School". In Monheim and Sieglar streets and community centers are named after Franz Boehm. In Dusseldorf in June 2004 the naming of a street to Boehm failed due to the dissenting votes of the CDU in the district council 7.

In 1999 the Catholic Church accepted Pastor Franz Boehm into the German martyrology of the 20th century as a witness of faith . In the traveling exhibition “Martyrs of the Archdiocese of Cologne from the Nazi Era”, which the educational work of the Archdiocese of Cologne has been showing at various locations since 2006, Franz Boehm occupies an outstanding position.

literature

• Heinz Boberach: Reports of the SD and the Gestapo on churches and church people in Germany 1934-1943 . Mainz 1971.
• Ulrich von Hehl : Catholic Church and National Socialism in the Archdiocese of Cologne 1933–1945. Mainz 1977.
• Bedšrich Hoffmann: And Who Will Kill You: The Chronicle of the Life and Sufferings of Priests in the Concentration Camps. 4th edition, Pallottinum, Poznań 1994, ISBN 83-7014-223-0 , p. 395.
• Ulrich von Hehl: priest under Hitler's terror . 4th, through and additional edition Schöningh: Paderborn 1998.
• Helmut Moll (Ed. On behalf of the German Bishops' Conference): Witnesses for Christ. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhundert , Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Volume I, pp. 342-345.
• Peter Buter / Rudolf Pohlmann: Pastor Franz Boehm 1880–1945, witness and martyr ; Self-published by the Catholic parish of St. Gereon in Monheim am Rhein, 2005; 156 pages, ISBN 3-00-016142-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ H. Moll, Zeugen für Christus , Paderborn 2019, p. 343.