Fritz Seitz

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Pastor Fritz Seitz

Fritz Seitz , often also Friedrich Seitz (born January 28, 1905 in Mayen ; † March 18, 1949 in Schallodenbach ), was a German priest in the Speyer diocese , persecuted by the Nazi regime and long-term prisoner in the Dachau , Mauthausen and Gusen concentration camps . He was the first Reich German priest to be imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp.

Live and act

Fritz Seitz was born in Mayen, put in Saarbruecken his High School and studied in Munich . On July 1, 1928, he was ordained a priest by Bishop Ludwig Sebastian in Speyer Cathedral . From 1928 to 1932 the new priest worked as a chaplain in Meckenheim (Palatinate) , Edenkoben and Herxheim near Landau .

From January 16, 1932, he took up a chaplaincy in Zweibrücken Hl. Kreuz, where he officiated until June 30, 1933, where he also experienced the takeover of power by the National Socialists. Since Seitz was known as a center activist and Nazi opponent, the parsonage was searched early by the SA and the Hitler Youth to intimidate them .

Seitz was then transferred to the Hildegard parish in St. Ingbert in the Saarland diocese. The League of Nations still ruled there at that time and Seitz publicly advocated the so-called status quo solution , which meant that the status quo of the rule of the League of Nations in the Saar area should be preferred to a re-connection to the German Reich as long as the National Socialists rule there. The representatives of this group, which acted openly against National Socialism, were very unpopular with the authorities in the Reich and were also politically persecuted after the Saar Anschluss in 1935.

In mid-July 1934 Seitz came to Ludwigshafen am Rhein , in the parish of St. Dreifaltigkeit , where he stayed until the end of 1936. Here the clergyman was again targeted by the Gestapo when he demonstratively tore up a copy of the SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps during a parish event. Criminal proceedings for violating the so-called Heimtückegesetz were discontinued by the Frankenthal Special Court , but Seitz was banned from meeting and speaking in the entire Palatinate.

With effect from December 1, 1936, the priest took the position of parish administrator, later pastor of Schallodenbach in the West Palatinate , which he held until his death. On April 1, 1937, National Socialists threw in the windows of his parsonage, the authorities refused to confirm that he was the pastor of the village and banned him from teaching at schools.

After Polish forced laborers visited him in the parsonage and he enabled them to attend church services, the Gestapo took Fritz Seitz into protective custody on March 16, 1940 ; first in the Neustadt an der Weinstrasse prison , from June 11 of that year in the Dachau concentration camp, where he was the first prisoner of priests in Germany. Here in Dachau he remained - apart from a stopover in the Mauthausen and Gusen I concentration camps - in the pastor's block until the liberation on April 29, 1945. Among other things, he was used as a porter in the infirmary . While he was in prison, Seitz was at great risk to continue his pastoral work among the prisoners. He heard confession, provided the dying with the final unction and set up a secret network of support for the prisoners.

After his release, Seitz returned to his parish in Schallodenbach, where he died in 1949 as a result of his imprisonment in a concentration camp. Since 1946 he was dean of the dean's office in Kaiserslautern . Pastor Seitz's statements also clarified the fate of his brother Wilhelm Caroli, who died in a concentration camp in 1942 .

Immediately after his return, the priest began to come to terms with his Nazi experiences. On June 29, 1945 he preached in his former pastoral care center St. Ingbert u. a. about the concentration camp detention. Here he said: "... these are not fairy tales, this is not propaganda, this is the truth and whoever does not believe this today, oh I wish him, he has only seen it for a few days. I stand here and give testimony An Adolf Hitler once said: “Everything that happens in Germany, I am responsible for it.” He was informed and everything was tolerated from above. And if there were one of us who still excuses these things, here in the black St. . Ingbert, he belongs in the row of these murderers too. "

In the first post-war editions of the Speyer diocese newspaper Der Pilger , Seitz published an impressive series of articles in 1946 entitled Priest in Dachau .

In the diocese of Speyer Fritz Seitz is venerated as a witness and confessor, the political community Schallodenbach raised his grave in 2005 to an honorary grave and the local Catholics named their parish home in his honor "Dean Seitz House" .

literature

  • “Historical Notes - Supplement to the Schematism of the Diocese of Speyer 1947” , Pilger-Verlag Speyer 1947, also published in reprint.
  • Thomas Fandel: Persecution and Resistance: Pastor Friedrich Seitz (Schallodenbach), the first “Reich German” clergyman in the Dachau concentration camp . In: Mitteilungen des Historisches Verein der Pfalz , Vol. 104 (2006), pp. 367–391.
  • Johannes Maria Lenz : Christ in Dachau . self-published, Vienna, 10 editions (1956–1974).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans-Karl Seeger, Gabriele Latzel: Karl Leisner : Ordination and primacy in the Dachau concentration camp . Lit Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7277-7 , p. 210 .
  2. ^ The fate of Pastor Wilhelm Caroli , former website rheingoenheim-info.de, November 29, 2011.
  3. ^ Commemorative page in the web portal of the responsible diocese of Speyer ( Memento from January 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ On the honorary grave and the naming of the parish home after Fritz Seitz
personal data
SURNAME Seitz, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Seitz, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German, Catholic priest, Nazi victim and concentration camp prisoner
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Mayen
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1949
Place of death Schallodenbach