Hans Barion

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hans Barion (born December 16, 1899 in Düsseldorf , † May 15, 1973 in Bonn ) was a German Catholic canon lawyer .

Life

In 1917, Hans Barion passed his matriculation examination at the Rethelstrasse municipal high school in Düsseldorf. From 1917 until the end of the war he was a soldier and began studying philosophy, history and theology at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in the winter semester 1919/1920 , the focus was on canon law .

After his ordination on August 14, 1924 in Cologne Cathedral , he worked as a teacher in Honnef , as a chaplain in Menden and as rector in Elberfeld .

From December 1928 he studied canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and lived in the German College of Campo Santo at the Vatican. After completing his theological doctorate with Albert Michael Koeniger in Bonn in 1929, he did a canonical doctorate in Rome in 1930. He received his habilitation in November 1930 in Bonn with the expanded version of his doctoral thesis on the Franconian-German synodal law of the early Middle Ages .

The lecture on Rudolph Sohm and the foundations of canon law showed a formative source for his canonical thinking and founded, among other things, his anti-ecumenical fundamental theory of canon law, of which he was convinced throughout his life.

The fundamental theologian Karl Eschweiler placed him as a lecturer at the State Academy in Braunsberg (in East Prussia ) for the winter semester of 1931/1932 . In 1933 he was appointed full professor of canon law.

Barion during the Nazi dictatorship

Carl Schmitt and Eschweiler influenced him to join the NSDAP in 1933 . The essay church or party? from 1933 was one of the few publications in favor of the National Socialists , but it was secretly active in more intensive form for Berlin ministerial circles, especially through contact with the Schmitt student Werner Weber in the Ministry of Science, as an expert on questions of state church law, as has only recently been certain could be proven. As the main opponent, Barion named the Roman Curia and all forms of “political Catholicism” and tried to show the state ways to reduce their influence in Germany as much as possible. At the same time, Barion tried to maintain and support the state theological faculties. It was possibly the covert expert activities and public lecture statements that led to the suspensio a divinis by the Roman Council Congregation on August 20, 1934 , which Barion met with his colleague Eschweiler. After a declaration of submission and the promise not to contravene the ecclesiastical spirit anymore , both were allowed to exercise their offices again in October 1935. Since then, Barion has remained unopposed as a priest by the church.

When Barion, with the support of the responsible Reich ministries, tried to change to the vacant canon law professorship at the University of Munich in 1937 , he encountered fierce resistance from Bavarian government circles and from Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber . Because of the appointment on July 1, 1938, Faulhaber caused a protest note from the Holy See, which then led to months of diplomatic disputes over Barion and in February 1939 resulted in the Bavarian Ministry of Culture closing the Munich Catholic theological faculty, which lasted until the end of the war.

The Cologne Cardinal Karl Joseph Schulte had no objection, Barion in the summer semester 1939 as successor of his teacher Albert Michael Koeniger to the Catholic Theol. Faculty in Bonn, where he was professor of canon law until the end of the war and dean supported by the state for several years. His participation in the "Committee for Religious Law" at the " Academy for German Law " from 1939 to 1940 confirmed the closeness to the National Socialist government during this time.

Barion after World War II

After the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945, Barion was relieved of his chair in Bonn. He was unsuccessful in lengthy processes to regain it; especially the Munich Catholic Theological Faculty held against him for his commitment to National Socialism, while the Bonn faculty was deeply divided towards him. From then on, Barion lived as a private scholar and journalist in Bonn (including pseudonymous publications in the journal Priester und Arbeiter , many theological and canonical articles in the Great Brockhaus in the 1950s and 1960s, of which he was a permanent contributor to earn a living). In close friendship he was u. a. with the writer Gustav (Hillard) Steinbömer (1881-1972), but above all with the constitutional lawyer Carl Schmitt and other people from his intellectual circle, which was reflected in the extensive corpus of letters in the Schmitt estate. Barion acted as co-editor of the highly regarded commemorative publication Epirrhosis for Schmitt's 80th birthday in 1968.

Within his church, the astute canonist, who was inclined to polemics and cynicism, was increasingly considered an outsider, although he lived and worked as a priest of the Archdiocese of Cologne until his death. Barion always presented himself as a strictly conservative theologian on theological issues, while he insisted on a clear separation of the areas with regard to the state-church relationship and undiminished his rejection of all forms of direct or indirect political commitment by the church, which was already recognizable under National Socialism. In his not too numerous but qualitatively outstanding canonical contributions, he criticized the concordats between state and church or the German church tax practice as well as the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and their consequences for theology, liturgy and religious life.

Barion's estate is considered lost. From 1933 until his death, Barion was in close contact with the constitutional lawyer Ernst Forsthoff .

Publications

  • The constitution of the Frankish-German synods of the early Middle Ages. Diss. Bonn, 1929.
  • Rudolph Sohm and the Foundation of Canon Law. Tubingen, 1931.
  • The Franconian-German synodal law of the early Middle Ages (= KStT 5/6). Bonn, 1931 / reprint Amsterdam, 1963.
  • The national synod in the Franconian-German synodal law of the early Middle Ages. In: List of lectures at the State Academy in Braunsberg, summer semester 1934, Königsberg 1934.
  • The observance-like obligation of the Mennonites in the Marienburger Werdern to carry the evangelical church building load. Braunsberg 1936.
  • Church and Canon Law. Collected Essays. Edited by W. Böckenförde. Paderborn et al. 1984.

literature

  • Art. Hans Barion . In: Brockhaus-Enzyklopädie, 17. A., Vol. 22, Wiesbaden 1975, S. 155f.
  • Heinrich Flatten: Hans Barion † . In: AfkKR 142 (1973), pp. 71-79.
  • Thomas Marschler:  Hans Barion. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 22, Bautz, Nordhausen 2003, ISBN 3-88309-133-2 , Sp. 53-56.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Thomas Marschler: Canon law under the spell of Carl Schmitt: Hans Barion before and after 1945. Nova and Vetera, Bonn, 2004, ISBN 3-936741-21-2 .
  • Gerhard Reifferscheid: The Diocese of Warmia and the Third Reich (= Bonn contributions to church history, 77). Böhlau, Cologne / Vienna 1975, ISBN 978-3-412-10874-8 .
  • Wolfgang H. Spindler : "Humanistic Appeasement"? Hans Barion's criticism of the political and social doctrine of the Second Vatican Council (= Sozialwissenschaftliche Schriften, 46). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-428-13588-2 .
  • Dominik Burkard : The other Catholicism: Comments on current church events in the 1950s and 1960s in the correspondence between Hans Barion and Karl August Fink. In: Dominik Burkard, Nicole Priesching (Ed.): Catholics in the long 19th century: Actors - Cultures - Mentalities. Otto Weiß on his 80th birthday. Regensburg 2014, pp. 349–449.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition u. a. of the extensive report on the Reich Concordat from the late summer of 1933 by Thomas Marschler : Canon law under the spell of Carl Schmitt. Bonn 2004.
  2. ↑ Florian Meinel : The lawyer in industrial society. Ernst Forsthoff and his time. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-05-005101-7 , p. 11 f.
personal data
SURNAME Barion, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Catholic canon lawyer
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1973
Place of death Bonn