Friedrich Karl Petersen

Friedrich Karl Petersen

Friedrich Karl Petersen (born April 6, 1904 in Dortmund , † November 8, 1944 in Dachau ) was a German Catholic clergyman who was tortured to death in the Dachau concentration camp .

Origin and education

Friedrich Karl Petersen was the youngest son of nine children in a family of craftsmen from Dortmund. Because of the untimely death of his parents, he was only able to begin higher education at an advanced age. After attending the city school in Fredeburg in the Sauerland and the Dortmund city high school, he passed the Abitur in 1927 at the Mission School of the White Fathers in Linz am Rhein . He then studied theology at the universities of Bonn , Tübingen and Münster . Because of the extraordinarily high number of applicants at the time, his efforts in several dioceses to be accepted into a seminary failed at the beginning of the 1930s . Through the mediation of conveyors, he was in the on in October 1935. Dominicans led a theological Albertinum in Swiss Friborg added. There Petersen concluded his studies and was on 27 March 1938 to the French diocese of Soissons for priests ordained .

Act

In June 1938, Bishop Ernest Victor Mennechet gave him a job at the parish de la Nativité-de-la-Sainte-Vierge in Cuisy-en-Almont , which Petersen took up on August 15, 1938. Since he received only a two-month residence permit instead of a work permit from the French authorities, he moved to the community of Le Bourg d'Oisans in the diocese of Grenoble-Vienne . After the outbreak of the Second World War , he had to leave France and went back to Switzerland. Despite several extensions of his stay, no diocese was prepared to accept him permanently as a priest, and in late January 1943 Petersen was expelled from Switzerland.

Arrest and deportation to Dachau

After he had found accommodation for a short time with one of his sisters in Schmallenberg , the Archbishop of Paderborn Lorenz Jaeger gave him a job at the parish of St. Pankratius in Reiste in February 1943 , which he could no longer take on. On February 12, 1943, Friedrich Karl Petersen was arrested for "incriminating correspondence". He was initially imprisoned in the Fredeburg police prison and then taken to the Karlsruhe district prison, where he was interrogated several times. On May 27, 1943, the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) in Berlin issued a protective custody order with the additional order that Petersen be transferred to the Dachau concentration camp.

There he was admitted on July 9, 1943, received the prisoner number 45595 and was housed in the so-called pastor's block . In the camp he mainly suffered from the prisoners' excessive working hours. In autumn 1944 he fell so seriously ill that he had to be taken to the infirmary, where he died a little later - according to the camp management allegedly from the consequences of an inflammation of the small and large intestines and from a weak heart. Other priests managed - presumably through bribery - that the clergyman's body was cremated separately in the crematorium of the Dachau concentration camp and that they could hide the ashes until the end of the war. After the liberation by American troops on April 29, 1945, Heinrich Rupieper , who was also imprisoned, brought the urn with Karl Petersen's ashes to Schmallenberg, where it was buried in the priest's crypt on August 29, 1945.

Honors

• The Catholic Church accepted Friedrich Karl Petersen as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

literature

• Gerhard Baumjohann: World priest of the Archdiocese of Paderborn in the dispute with National Socialism , in: Paul-Werner Scheele (Ed.): Paderbornensis ecclesia. Contributions to the history of the Archdiocese of Paderborn. Festschrift for Lorenz Cardinal Jaeger on the occasion of his 80th birthday on September 23, 1972 , Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh Paderborn 1972, ISBN 3-506-77624-X , pp. 711-746, here pp. 731 and 740.
• Ulrich von Hehl (Ed.): Priest under Hitler's terror. A biographical and statistical survey. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, 3rd edition 1996, ISBN 3-506-79839-1 , Vol. II, p. 1203.
• Helmut Moll (published on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference): Witnesses for Christ - The German Martyrology of the 20th Century. Paderborn et al. 1999, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , pp. 580-582.
• Peter Bürger : “When everything around us starts to totter ...” The fate of the concentration camp priest Friedrich Karl Petersen (1904–1944), for which nobody felt responsible. , in: Ders .: Sauerland witnesses of life. Peace workers, anti-fascists and martyrs of the Electoral Cologne Sauerland , Volume 2, Edition Leutekirche Sauerland 9, Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt 2018, ISBN 978-3-7460-9683-4 , pp. 247-268.