Hans Carls

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Hans Carls (born December 17, 1886 in Metz , † February 3, 1952 in Munich ) was a German Catholic priest who resisted during the Nazi era .

Charitable work

Hans Carls studied theology and joined the KDB Winfridia zu Bonn in the RKDB in 1913 . He was ordained a priest in Cologne Cathedral in 1915 . In the First World War he was division and corps pastor . In 1918 he was transferred to the Elberfeld parish of St. Laurentius as a chaplain . There he was involved in the economically difficult years between the wars in a variety of ways and also across denominational boundaries: As managing director of the local Caritas , he founded a Catholic men's welfare association, introduced food vouchers, opened a home for apprentices and a home for the homeless and set up several advice centers.

time of the nationalsocialism

Registration card of Hans Carls as a prisoner in the National Socialist concentration camp Dachau

With the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in January 1933, Kaplan Carls' facilities were blocked from all public funds. Now he began to collect money for his Caritas work with sermons all over Germany. It is estimated that he gave around 3,000 sermons in the years that followed, in which he also criticized the ruling regime. In 1941 he was banned from speaking anywhere in Germany and was only allowed to preach in Wuppertal . After giving a sermon in which he spoke out against a planned euthanasia law and it was discovered that he was helping Jewish citizens and distributing sermons by the Bishop of Munster , Carls, who was diabetic, was arrested in November 1941 and imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp . Later his secretary Maria Husemann was arrested because of her correspondence with Carls and deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp .

After the war

Both Carls and Maria Husemann († 1975) survived the end of the war . The chaplain returned to Wuppertal and began to rebuild his facilities. He also sat for three years as a member of the CDU in the Wuppertal city council. At the end of March 1951 he retired as director of the Wuppertal Caritas and died the following year. The mayor of Wuppertal, Robert Daum, paid tribute to him with the words “a man who we could orientate ourselves by and who gave us new courage when we wanted to despair”.

Publications

  • The Catholic apprentice home in Elberfeld , 1929
  • Dachau, memories of a Catholic clergyman from the time of his imprisonment 1941–1945 . Cologne, 1946.

literature

  • Reichs Handbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft - The handbook of personalities in words and pictures . First volume, Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930, ISBN 3-598-30664-4
  • Heinz Wolff: "Hans Carls". In: Wuppertal Biographies 7th episode from contributions to the history and local history of the Wuppertal . Volume 15. Born-Verlag Wuppertal 1967, pp. 17–26 ( online ; PDF; 292 kB)
  • Hans Carls. Resistance fighters against the crimes of the Hitler dictatorship . Published by the city dean of Wuppertal, 1983
  • Peter Reinicke : Carls, Hans , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 122f.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fritz Aldefeld (ed.): Total directory of RKDB Neuss 1,931th
  2. ↑ Maria Husemann on denkmal-wuppertal.de
  3. ↑ Heinz Wolff, p. 25
personal data
SURNAME Carls, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German clergyman and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH December 17, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Metz
DATE OF DEATH 3rd February 1952
Place of death Munich