Franz Kern (priest)

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Franz Kern, Eugen Keidel and Heinz Eyrich , with glasses, from left, at the opening of the first “Herdermer Hock” in 1979.

Franz Kern (born November 8, 1925 in Sölden near Freiburg im Breisgau ; † July 5, 2012 in Ehrenkirchen ), full name Franz Alfons Kern , was a German Catholic clergyman and local researcher .

Life

He was the second of eight children of the Schwabenhof farmer and counselor Rudolf Kern (1895–1976) and his wife Hilda Genovefa, nee. Hug (1901–1943) was born on the Schwabenhof in Sölden . After his father remarried, there was a ninth child in the eight. From 1932 to 1938 he attended elementary school in Sölden. The Sölden pastor Ernst Föhr gave him additional lessons, so that in 1938 he was accepted into the lower secondary school of the Freiburg Berthold-Gymnasium by skipping three classes . During the holidays he helped “at home with all farming activities” and also learned “the crucial tasks reserved for men, such as mowing, tying sheaves, loading hay and harvesting wagons, plowing and sowing”. In 1943, when he was the youngest of his class, he took the normal Abitur examination , while the older students had to take the Abitur . This was followed by three years of military service in Normandy and captivity. The war experience solidified the decision to become a priest. Released from captivity in early 1946, studied core at the University of Freiburg Catholic theology and received on July 2, 1950, fifteen other candidates in St. Peter the priesthood . He was then parish vicar for two and a half years in Wolfach and five and a half years at St. Johann (Freiburg im Breisgau) . In 1957, he was from Freiburg's Faculty of Theology with one of the church historian Wolfgang Mueller supervised dissertation on the abbot of the monastery of St. Peter in the Black Forest Philipp Jakob Steyr Dr. theol. doctorate (evaluation of the dissertation “magna cum eruditione”, the oral examination “magna cum laude” ). From 1958 to 1962 he was pastor in Bühl and at the same time religious teacher at the girls' high school of Our Lady in Offenburg , from 1962 to 1983 pastor at St. Urban in Freiburg-Herdern and from 1983 to 2000 pastor at St. Gallus (Kirchzarten) . He then moved into one of the chaplain's houses of St. Mary's Assumption in Ehrenkirchen-Kirchhofen and finally into the prelate stepfather home in Ehrenkirchen. On July 11, 2012 he was buried in the cemetery near the church of St. Fides and Markus (Sölden) .

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Publications

In 1995 Kern wrote in his Sölden book: "In all places I was able to pursue my father's inherited interest in home history in free hours and publish some things that can also serve pastoral care in a broader sense." The pastoral intent speaks for example from the end of the book: “Dear reader! I give myself up in the hope that my last request is also yours: God bless our homeland and keep it inner and outer peace! May he give her, her residents and the people to come a good way into the future! ”Some of Kern's publications are intended for specialist historians and others for the general public:

Altar rediscovered by Kern in St. Benedikt, Eisenbach
  • A rediscovered work by JC Brentzinger in the Herdern Urbanskirche . In: Schau-ins-Land Volume 93, 1975, pp. 93–96.
  • Parish of St. Urban Freiburg-Herdern. Catholic rectory St. Urban 1976, 76 pages.
  • The parish church of St. Fides and St. Markus in Sölden. Supplement to the bulletin of the administrative community Hexental 26, 1978, 32 pages.
  • Dr. Ernst Foehr. In: Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv Volume 102, 1982, pp. 139–148. (PDF; 25.8 MB) Retrieved July 28, 2013
  • The Dreisamtal with its chapels and pilgrimages. Schillinger Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1985, 210 pages. The first edition was sold out in a few weeks. The second was published in 1986. By 1997, the book had a total of four editions.
  • The Giersberg. The Marian shrine of the Dreisamtal. Schillinger-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1989, 104 pages. ISBN 3-7954-4794-1 .
  • with Manfred Hermann : Parish Church of St. Gallus Kirchzarten. 3. Edition. Schnell und Steiner publishing house, Regensburg 1991, 27 pages. The 4th edition was published in 1999. The first two editions, 1976 and 1983, came from Manfred Hermann alone.
  • The former Koch bell foundry in Freiburg i. Br .. In: Freiburger Diözesan-Archiv Volume 112, 1992, pp. 279–338. (PDF; 32.3 MB) Retrieved on July 29, 2013. The bell foundry was founded in 1856 by Johann Baptist Koch and his brother Bernhard. Kern received the foundry's handwritten workbook for the years 1878 to 1921 from Johann Baptist Koch's granddaughter Anna Maria Weber, née. Koch (* 1918). “The Koch bell foundry was located in today's Schwarzwaldstraße ... and wasbought and demolishedby the Ganter brewery in 1932. Where the bronze metal once flowed into the bell shapes, today the beer flows into the kegs. ”In the list of authors in the Freiburg Diocesan Archive, Franz Kern is listed - this is the only time - with his full name, Franz Alfons Kern .
  • Philipp Jakob Steyrer - Abbot and scientist. In: Hans-Otto Mühleisen (Ed.): The legacy of the abbey. 900 years of St. Peter in the Black Forest. Badenia Verlag, Karlsruhe 1993, ISBN 3-7617-0297-3 , pp. 39-55.
  • Philipp Jakob Steyrer, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter in the Black Forest, and its importance for the art-historical work of the abbey. In: Bernd Mathias Kremer (ed.): Art and spiritual culture on the Upper Rhine. Festschrift for Hermann Brommer on his 70th birthday. Kunstverlag Josef Fink, Lindenberg 1997, ISBN 3-931820-01-7 , pp. 127-141.

Discoveries

His research led Kern to (re-) discoveries. The altar in the abbot's chapel of St. Peter's monastery, carved by Matthias Faller and decorated with a painting by Franz Ludwig Herrmann, was lost. Kern discovered him in the parish church of St. Benedikt in Eisenbach (Upper Black Forest) . “However, there it has become a 'Benedictine altar'. Well preserved, it is undoubtedly the jewel of the church. The tabernacle from Faller's workshop is a so-called rotating tabernacle with four carved depictions: the birth of the Savior, crucifixion, burial and resurrection, an astonishing, delicate and precious work. The main sheet, which up to now incomprehensibly as the death scene of St. Benedict was valid, shows in the upper right half the religious father Benedict and St. Scholastica , at their feet a dying monk, surrounded by confreres. A monk dressed in a Rochett is just strengthening those who have passed away with the last provisions on the way, another is reading from St. Font before. In the upper half angels who fly towards the departing soul, above Maria, the queen of heaven, with her divine son. “The dying person is Saint Ulrich von Zell , the altar is not a Benedictine but an Ulrich altar. “The pseudo-Benedictine altar of Eisenbach, because of which the new church dedicated to St. Benedictus had to be consecrated, is thus identified as the former Ulrichs altar from the abbot's chapel of the St. Petrischen Stift, a masterpiece of Faller and Herrmann. "

Kern also discovered the altar of the sick chapel of the St. Peter monastery in the parish church of All Saints in Wieden (Black Forest) .

In the granary of St. Urban in Freiburg-Herdern he found a painting by Johann Caspar Brenzinger , showing the church patron Pope Urban I. It's now hanging in the church again. “The two painted puttos, both of which are busy creating the symbols of St. Urban to carry the grapes. While one puts his hand on a wicker basket that is filled with blue and light-colored grapes, the other carries what is known as a 'handle' - twigs each with two grapes hanging in his hands. "

Kern's grave in the Sölden cemetery

Artistic support for his churches

During Kern's pastor's time, St. Urban in Freiburg-Herdern, St. Gallus in Kirchzarten and the Giersberg chapel belonging to St. Gallus were thoroughly renovated . In St. Gallus there was no representation of St. Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine order , to whose monastery St. Gallen the Kirchzarten parish had belonged for over five hundred years. Kern had Otmar Kleiser (* 1930) from Vöhrenbach-Urach make copies of a statue of Benedict and a statue of his sister Scholastika on the high altar of the former abbey church of St. Peter, both by Joseph Anton Feuchtmayer , and placed them on the south wall of the ship of St. Gallus stand on both sides of an old statue of St. Gallus . Similarly, he had Kleiser re-carve a Pietà Faller in the church of St. Jakobus (Stegen-Eschbach) for the Giersberg chapel. During his time in Kirchzarten, Hortense von Gelmini also designed the chapel of the new cemetery on Giersberg .

Honors

In 1963 the community made Sölden Kern an honorary citizen . On January 9, 1997, he received the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon. In 2000 the Kirchzarten community awarded him the Golden Badge of Honor. At the diamond (60-year) priest jubilee on July 2, 2010, Kern's pastoral care and local research were praised, his down-to-earth attitude, his cosmopolitanism gained on many trips, alone and as a group leader, and his lecture activities, with which he “the Audimax down to the last seat filled. "

literature

  • Andreas Hall: Obituary of the Kirchzarten community. In: Badische Zeitung of July 10, 2012.
  • Hans Sigmund: In memoriam Dr. Franz Kern. In: Bulletin of the pastoral care unit Freiburg-Nord from July 15 to 29, 2012.
  • Hans Sigmund: Franz Kern . In: 1000 years of Herdern. From the former winegrowing village to the “Little Nice” of Freiburg, Lavori Verlag, Freiburg, 2008. ISBN 9783935737562 , pp. 410-412.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Freyer 2010.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Franz Kern: Sölden. The story of a small village. Sölden municipal administration 1995, pp. 158, 210, 359, 360 and 415.
  3. ↑ St. Benedikt Eisenbach on the website of the pastoral care unit Friedenweiler-Eisenbach . Retrieved July 28, 2013.
  4. ^ Franz Kern: Philipp Jakob Steyrer, 1749–1795 abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter in the Black Forest. In: Freiburg Diocesan Archive. Volume 79, 1959, pp. 1–234, here p.? ( Digitized version ).
  5. ^ Franz Kern: A rediscovered work by JC Brentzinger in the Herderner Urbanskirche . In: Schau-ins-Land . 93, 1975, pp. 93-96.
  6. ↑ Freyer 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Kern, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kern, Franz Alfons
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Roman Catholic clergyman and local researcher
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Sölden (Black Forest)
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 2012
Place of death Ehrenkirchen