Gernot Wottawah

Gernot Wottawah OSB (* February 12, 1940 in Seifen , Sudetenland as Roland Wottawah ; † September 15, 2007 in St. Ottilien , Eresing , Bavaria , Germany ) was a German clergyman who served as a missionary in Africa from the 1970s and in from 1982 to 2002 the first abbot of the Sacred Heart Abbey Inkamana in Vryheid , South Africa .

Life

Gernot Wottawah was born on February 12, 1940 as the son of the businessman Hans Wottawah and his wife Rosa in the mining village of Seifen in the Sudetenland and was subsequently baptized with the name Roland . A year later his brother Erich (religious name: Herbert Wottawah ; 1941–2009) was born, who also became a priest and as such worked as such from the early 1970s, especially in South Korea . Her father, who served on the Eastern Front during World War II , never returned from the war and was reported missing. At the end of the war, the expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia forced the family to leave their homeland, whereupon the mother and two sons moved to Wellheim in Upper Bavaria . The two brothers also attended elementary school there before Roland Wottawah came to the St. Ottilien Humanist High School in 1951 , to which his younger brother Erich also moved a year later. The brothers completed their schooling with the Abitur at the Humanistic Gymnasium and then entered the Archabbey of St. Ottilien . Here Roland Wottawah received the religious name Gernot and made his simple profession on September 25, 1961 . After just this he studied for two years philosophy at the university of his order St. Ottilien and then four more years of theology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich . During this time he also made his solemn profession on September 27, 1964.

On September 4, 1966 , Wottawah was ordained a priest in St. Ottilien under Aurelian Bilgeri , the then bishop of Eshowe ( Zululand ) . Soon afterwards he continued his studies at the Munich Institute for Canon Law and finished his studies in 1972. After he returned to his monastery, Wottawah became prefect in the seminary and a little later also congregation secretary of the Benedictine Congregation of St. Ottilien . He replaced Viktor Josef Dammertz , who had held this position from 1960 to 1975. As congregational secretary, Wottawah accompanied Archabbot Notker Wolf in 1978 to the canonical visit of the Inkamana conventual priory to Vryheid in South Africa . There, after the resignation of Prior Elmar Kimmel (1914-1980) on August 16, 1978, he succeeded him as Prior in the following January 1979. When the monastery was elevated to an abbey by the conventual priory on February 25, 1982 , Wottawah was elected first abbot and designated as such on March 20, 1982. In this capacity he led the monastery through a period of transition in the 1980s and 1990s. When the monastery was taken over as prior, Inkamana was still a mission country. At that time the convent had 54 monks, of which 52 were Europeans and only two were Africans. It was only under Wottawah's leadership that the aim was to make Inkamana “African”, which meant that many Africans were accepted into the convent.

During Wottawah's work, independent parishes emerged from the previous mission stations and the tasks of missionaries were largely taken over by the diocesan clergy over time. The abbey developed into a monastic center from which other monasteries, such as the Benedictine monastery Waldfrieden in the Namibian community of Omaruru , whose founder is Wottawah, arose. In addition to the Waldfrieden Monastery, which opened in 1998, a study house was built in Cedara in 1992 . Between 1982 and 1993, Wottawah had the abbey expanded several times in order to meet the growing space requirements of the convent and the school, the high point of these activities from 1995 to 1997 being the extensive renovation of the monastery church, which was built in the 1950s. Wottawah also took care of the monastic liturgy by collecting liturgical texts and melodies and compiling a new series of choir books from them. He played a major role in ensuring that large parts of the Office , as was customary up until then, were not only recited, but could also be sung. When Wottawah resigned at Christmas 2002 after suffering several minor strokes, half of the convent of the monastery was already made up of Africans (25 of 52 monks). A total of 150 candidates entered the monastery during his twenty-year term. Wottawah's successor as Abbot of Inkamana was Gottfried / Godfrey Sieber .

He spent most of his last years in the Benedictine monastery Waldfrieden (also St. Boniface Monastery ) and died on September 15, 2007 during a recreational stay in St. Ottilien, where he had been since mid-June 2007. Restricted in his movement due to the strokes, he wanted to seek medical treatment in Germany. One week after his death, Wottawah was buried on September 22, 2007 in the monastery cemetery of St. Ottilien. Almost two years later, his brother died unexpectedly at the age of 68.

Web links

• Gernot Wottawah in the Biographia Benedictina (Benediktinerlexikon.de)
• Entry to Gernot Wottawah on Orden online

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Abbot Gernot Wottawah on the official website of the Archabbey of St. Ottilien, accessed on February 16, 2020
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Parte of Abbot Gernot Wottawah , accessed on February 16, 2020
3. ↑ Requiem Abbot Gernot Wottawah OSB , accessed on February 16, 2020
4. ↑ P. Herbert Wottawah died unexpectedly , accessed on February 16, 2020

predecessor	Office	successor
-	Abbot of the Sacred Heart Abbey of Inkamana 1982–2002	Gottfried Sieber