Gustav Görsmann

Ferdinand Friedrich Gustav Görsmann (born September 27, 1873 in Osnabrück , † September 15, 1942 in Dachau ) was a Roman Catholic priest. Because of the pastoral care of prisoners of war by the pastor, he was arrested in the summer of 1941 and deported to the Dachau concentration camp , where he died a year later. The Catholic Church commemorates his ministry on September 15th.

biography

Görsmann was born as the only son of the master carpenter Heinrich Görsmann. At the age of 17, he made his mother's deathbed promise to become a priest. After graduating from high school Carolinum in Osnabrück in 1895, he first studied theology in Freiburg, later he moved to Münster. In Freiburg he became an active member of the Catholic student union K.St.V. Brisgovia Freiburg and in Münster the KStV Germania , both in the KV . For the practical and ascetic training of the secular priests, he came to the seminary in Osnabrück. On September 25, 1898, he was ordained a priest in Osnabrück Cathedral. In the same year he took up his first position as chaplain in the parish of St. Marien in Blumenthal . Eight years later, his second chaplain took him to Wellingholzhausen in the parish of St. Bartholomew. He stayed here until 1915. On December 1, 1915, the Osnabrück bishop entrusted him with the newly founded parish in Gellenbeck near Osnabrück as the first parish office . He worked here until 1941.

Görsmann was opposed to National Socialism from the start. Although he did not seek open controversy with the NSDAP , he made no secret of his convictions. It is said that at the entrance to the rectory - in a departure from the greeting Heil Hitler customary at the time - a sign designed by him with the inscription Your greetings be grüß Gott! hung.

During the Second World War , Görsmann looked after French prisoners of war who were employed by the farmers in Gellenbeck as pastors. In mid-1940 he applied to the parish priest to be allowed to hold church services for the prisoners on Sundays. Approval was given to him on August 29, 1940. Since then, Görsmann has regularly held masses for prisoners of war, to which he personally invited them. He addressed them as “My brothers” and talked to them about their personal circumstances, their work and food, etc. a. However, this was expressly prohibited in the guidelines for spiritual care for prisoners of war. This was the reason for his arrest. Görsmann was arrested in March 1941 and sentenced to four weeks in prison in April. Because of the offsetting of the pre-trial detention, the sentence itself was considered to have been served. In June 1941 the Gestapo put him in custody again. During his stay in prison in Osnabrück, Görsmann was called in to clean up rubble plots, among other things. On October 3, 1941, he was transferred from Osnabrück to the concentration camp in Dachau. There he died of malnutrition on September 15, 1942 in the infirmary of the camp.

Appreciation

The Catholic Church accepted Pastor Gustav Görsmann as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

literature

• Helmut Moll (publisher on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference), witnesses for Christ. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhundert , Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Volume I, pp. 565-568.
• Obituary in the Brisgoven papers
• Siegfried Koß, Wolfgang Löhr (Hrsg.): Biographical Lexicon of KV. 1st part (= Revocatio historiae. Volume 2). SH-Verlag, Schernfeld 1991, ISBN 3-923621-55-8 , p. 41.

Web links

• Gustav Görsmann