Franz Justus Rarkowski

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Franz Justus Rarkowski SM (born June 8, 1873 in Allenstein , † February 5, 1950 in Munich ) was a German Catholic army bishop .

Life

Rarkowski, a student from Warmia within East Prussia , joined the Marist Fathers and studied theology in Innsbruck , Belgium and Switzerland. He received in the January 9, 1898 Brixen the priesthood . It is unclear when he officially left the Marists, but a few years later he was in fact a priest of the Diocese of Warmia in East Prussia. Immediately after the outbreak of World War I , he became a garrison, military hospital and prisoner of war pastor in Berlin, and during the war he was also field pastor on various front lines.

After the war he continued his work in the military chaplaincy, and in the 1920s he oriented himself in the direction of Alfred Hugenberg's German National People's Party . For this reason he remained more and more isolated in the Warmia priesthood, which was close to the Catholic Center Party . However, his contacts with the German army command were all the better , and so in 1929 he was given a leading position at the Reich level.

On June 13, 1936, Rarkowski was appointed Apostolic Protonotary . On August 11, 1936, he was then entrusted with the provisional management of the Catholic military pastoral care in the post of army bishop provided for in Article 27 of the Reich Concordat (1933).

The US intelligence service on "Franciscus Justus'" call to "destroy Bolshevism"

The appointment as titular bishop of Hierocaesarea and field bishop of the German armed forces took place on January 7, 1938 by Pope Pius XI. , although Rarkowski was not the candidate of the German Roman Catholic Church for this office, but that of the state. The apostolic nuncio Cesare Orsenigo donated him the episcopal ordination with the assistance of the bishops of Münster and Berlin , Clemens August Graf von Galen and Konrad Graf von Preysing , on February 20 of the same year in the St. Hedwig's Cathedral in Berlin .

From the ecclesiastical side he was seen as weak and superficial, and so he was eventually isolated within the college of bishops. His lack of distance from the National Socialist regime and the way he expressed himself in his pastoral letters also played a role (he wrote of the “Bolshevik subhumanity” and in a pastoral letter wished the wounded soldiers that “each of you would recover quickly and In the place he occupies, continue to prove himself in the service of the Führer, the people and the fatherland. May Almighty God help you to do this ... ”). He described Adolf Hitler himself as the "role model of a true fighter, our Führer and Supreme Commander, the first and bravest soldier ...". With his approval of Hitler and his war he was not alone within the German and Austrian episcopate; the church critic Karlheinz Deschner doubts the thesis that Rarkowski was merely an "outsider" among the bishops. In its self-critical memorandum, German Bishops in World War I of April 29, 2020, the German Bishops' Conference explicitly names Rarkowski as an example of “culpable failure”: “Field Bishop Franz Justus Rarkowski played a particularly problematic and negative role. Not belonging to the Bishops' Conference and a German national outsider in the church, he tried to mobilize the religious and spiritual forces of the soldiers in line with the Wehrmacht leadership. "[

From 1940 on, Franz Justus Rarkowski's health was so weak that he could only exercise his office with little strength. However, he did not retire until February 1, 1945. After the end of the war Rarkowski lived in Bavaria .

Fonts

  • The fighting of a Prussian infantry division for the liberation of Transylvania , Berlin 1917.
  • Catholic military prayer and hymn book , Berlin 1937.
  • Catholic field hymn book , Berlin 1939.

literature

  • W. Adolph: The Catholic Church in Germany Adolf Hitler. Berlin 1974.
  • H. Apold: Field Bishop Franz Justus Rarkowski in the mirror of his pastoral letters. In: Zeitschrift für die Geschichte und Altertumskunde Ermlands 39 (1978), 86–128.
  • HJ Brandt: Rarkowski, Franz Justus. In: Erwin Gatz (Ed.): The bishops of the German-speaking countries 1785/1803 to 1945. A biographical lexicon. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-428-05447-4 , 594-595.
  • Thomas Breuer, Hans Prolingheuer : Obedient to the leader: Christians to the front. The entanglement of the two churches in the Nazi state and the Second World War. Study and documentation. Oberursel 2005.
  • G. Denzler: Resistance or Adaptation. Catholic Church and Third Reich. Munich 1984, 88/89.
  • Gerhard Fittkau : Again: Field Bishop Franz Justus Rarkowski. In: Church newspaper for the Diocese of Aachen , February 2, 1969, No. 5, 12/13.
  • Peter Häger:  Rarkowski, Franz Justus. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 7, Bautz, Herzberg 1994, ISBN 3-88309-048-4 , Sp. 1363-1366.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Catholic Military Bishop's Office (Ed.) Man, what do you want to say to them? Catholic field chaplain in World War II. Pattloch 1991 ISBN 3-629-00660-4 .
  • Guenther Lewy: The Catholic Church and the Third Reich. Munich 1965.
  • Heinrich Missalla : For people and fatherland. The Church's War Aid in World War II. Koenigstein / Ts. 1978.
  • Heinrich Missalla: How the war became the school of God. Hitler's Field Bishop Rarkowski. A necessary reminder. Oberursel 1997.
  • P. Roth: Error and Resistance. In: Church newspaper for the Diocese of Aachen , December 15, 1968, No. 50, 10.
  • W. Thimm: Franz Justus Rarkowski (1873–1950). Field Bishop of the Wehrmacht. Report of a controversy in the assessment of his personality. In: Warmia letters - Our Warmia homeland. Bulletin of the Historical Association for Warmia 15 (1969), IX-XI.
  • Gordon Zahn: The German Catholics and Hitler's Wars. Graz-Cologne 1965.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Karlheinz Deschner: The rooster crowed again. Düsseldorf / Vienna 1980, p. 908 ff.
  2. ↑ https://www.dbk.de/fileadmin/redaktion/diverse_downloads/presse_2020/2020-075d-DB_107-Deutsche-Bischoefe-im-Weltkrieg.pdf dbk.de: German bishops in the world war ], April 29, 2020, p 13.
personal data
SURNAME Rarkowski, Franz Justus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Catholic military bishop
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1873
PLACE OF BIRTH Allenstein
DATE OF DEATH 5th February 1950
Place of death Munich