Heinrich Richter (priest)

Heinrich Richter (born December 23, 1898 in Mülheim am Rhein ; † April 4 (?) 1945 in Ohrdruf (?)) Was a German Catholic clergyman, local president of the Kolping Families in Cologne . He died in the concentration camp .

Life

Heinrich Richter studied Catholic theology in Bonn and at the seminary in Cologne and was on 5 March 1922 along with 52 other deacons by Archbishop Karl Joseph Cardinal Schulte in Cologne Cathedral for priests ordained. He found his first job as a chaplain in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, St. Joseph. He then worked as a chaplain at Heilig Geist and from 1925 to 1929 at St. Peter in Düsseldorf. At the same time he worked as a religion teacher at the municipal vocational schools and was vice-president of the Kolping Family. In 1929 judge became chaplain at St. Michael in Cologne. On September 28, 1931 he received his appointment as local president of the Kolping Family Cologne-Zentral and as vicar at the Minorite Church . One of his tasks was to support the General Praeses of the Kolping Society , Monsignor Theodor Hürth , in his work.

During the Second World War , Richter, along with his friends Theodor Babilon and Leo Schwering, was part of a discussion group at the Kolping Society's headquarters, which usually met at weekly intervals to discuss the current political situation. In the summer of 1944, an employee of the Kolping House denounced this group to the Cologne district leadership of the NSDAP .

Arrest and death

On August 15, 1944, Richter was arrested by the Gestapo together with Babilon and Schwering in the Kolping House , held for several days under inhumane conditions in the notorious EL-DE house in Elisenstrasse and then taken to the Deutz transit camp. Like Babilon and Schwering, he did not take advantage of an opportunity to escape following a devastating bomb attack on October 14th, but returned to the camp after visiting a family friend. After the Deutz concentration camp was completely destroyed in December 1944, Richter was transferred to the Klingelpütz prison and subjected to further interrogations. Interventions by the Cologne city dean Dr. Robert Grosche at the Gestapo and Archbishop Joseph Frings from Cologne at the Reich Security Main Office failed to release the judge. In January 1945 Richter was admitted to the Buchenwald concentration camp or his branch in Ohrdruf , where he died in the hospital a few weeks before the end of the war . It has not yet been clarified whether he died as a result of exhaustion or whether he was murdered by guards when the camp was evacuated as the Allies approached. The official notice of death in the official journal of the Archdiocese of Cologne noted: "executed in Berlin" .

Appreciation

• In the Cologne district of Mülheim, the Preses-Richter-Platz is named after Richter.
• In 1999 the Catholic Church accepted Vicar Heinrich Richter as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

literature

(Selection)

• Bernhard Ridder: Men of the Kolping Society. Cologne 1955, pp. 145–152.
• Robert Steimel: Cologne heads. Cologne 1958, Col. 339.
• Heinz-Albert Raem: Catholic journeyman association and German Kolping family in the era of National Socialism. Publications of the Commission for Contemporary History, vol. 35. Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag 1982, p. 232ff.
• Leo Schwering : In the clutches of the Gestapo. Cologne 1988, especially pp. 231-238.
• Ulrich von Hehl : priest under Hitler's terror. A biographical and statistical survey. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1996³, Bd. I, Sp. 779.
• Helmut Moll (Ed. On behalf of the German Bishops' Conference): Witnesses for Christ - The German Martyrology of the 20th Century. Paderborn-Munich-Vienna-Zurich 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Vol. I, pp. 265-370.
• Ekkart Sauser :  Heinrich Richter. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 18, Bautz, Herzberg 2001, ISBN 3-88309-086-7 , Sp. 1198-1199.

swell

1. ↑ Kirchlicher Anzeiger for the Archdiocese of Cologne, 85th year, item 5 of October 1, 1945, p. 38

Web links

• Heinrich Richter in the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne
• Heinrich Richter in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints