Heinrich Weber (Caritas scientist)

Heinrich Weber (born October 20, 1888 in Röllinghausen, today part of Recklinghausen ; † August 29, 1946 in Münster ) was a German Catholic theologian , social ethicist and Caritas scientist as well as a university professor .

Life

Heinrich Weber was the offspring of a family of teachers that had lived in the Recklinghausen region for generations. He had three siblings. First he went to the elementary school run by his father as the main teacher, then to the humanistic high school Petrinum Recklinghausen .

After graduating in 1908, Weber studied philosophy and theology at the University of Münster . On June 1, 1912, Felix von Hartmann , then Bishop of Münster and later Cardinal and Archbishop of Cologne, ordained him as a priest. He then worked as a chaplain in Münster. During the First World War he was employed as a medic, in the search for missing persons and as a hospital chaplain.

On December 17, 1916 Weber became diocesan secretary of the Caritas Association of the Diocese of Münster, which was founded in the same year . There he organized the sending of around 60,000 city children to Kinderland . From 1916 he taught economics and welfare studies at the Social Women's School (one of the forerunners of today's KatHo NRW ) in Münster. At the same time he gave many lectures in church circles on topics from the field of social affairs and welfare. At the same time, in the same year, he began to study law and political science at the University of Münster. His doctorate as Dr. rer. pole. took place in 1919 with the economist Josef Schmöle (presentation) and the sociologist and political scientist Johann Plenge (supplementary presentation ). In his dissertation “The right to life in welfare” he advocated free welfare in addition to an exclusively state-controlled organization.

In 1920 he was initially appointed managing director of the newly established committee for youth and welfare care at the "Political Science Institute" and shortly afterwards director of the Caritas Association of the Diocese of Münster. In this function he was a member of the Central Council and Central Board of the German Caritas Association . In the following year he completed his habilitation, again in Münster, as a private lecturer for “social welfare”. In his habilitation thesis "Academics and welfare in the German People's State" he called for the introduction of the subject of welfare studies at universities. He held his inaugural lecture on December 13, 1921 on "Welfare as a result of economic and state development". Also in 1921 Weber became chairman of the Caritas Science Committee of the German Caritas Association. A year later, he received his doctorate from the University of Tuebingen in the moral and pastoral theologian Otto Schilling Dr. theol. with the topic "The religious-ethical foundations of care work in Judaism and Christianity". In 1922 he received from the Prussian minister of education Carl Heinrich Becker the appointment to a full professorship at the law and political science faculty in Münster, combined with a teaching position for Christian social studies at the catholic-theological faculty (successor of Franz Wärme , the weaver himself for the had suggested a short-term vacant position). Benedikt Kreutz , President of the German Caritas Association, did his doctorate with him as early as 1922 .

From 1923 to 1936 Heinrich Weber was first chairman of the Diocesan Caritas Association in Münster. In 1923 he wrote a commentary on the Reich Youth Welfare Act , which came into force in 1924 , in which he emphasized the importance of supplementing purely reactive "youth welfare" with prevention ("youth care", today one would say youth social work). In 1924, together with Werner Friedrich Bruck , he took over the management of the "Institute for Economic and Social Sciences" founded in 1924, the successor to the "Political Science Institute" led by Johann Plenge. In collaboration with Werner Friedrich Bruck and others, he edited numerous series and individual publications, especially on the subject of welfare and the labor market. Together with Richard Woldt , he also ran the trade union seminar at his institute.

In 1924 Weber was also given the teaching of economic political science (economics). Together with Bruck, Weber became head of studies as well as a member of the administrative board of the newly founded Westphalian Administrative Academy, which was closely associated with the Institute for Economic and Social Sciences. In 1925 he moved to the position of managing director.

In 1929 Weber also initiated the "Westphalian Wanderer Service" ( migrant workers and homeless support), a specialist department of the diocesan associations of Münster and Paderborn, and became its chairman. Also in 1929 he was appointed chairman of the finance commission of the German Caritas Association.

In 1930 he wrote the textbook "Introduction to the Social Sciences", in which he designed his own system of social science, which is regarded as the forerunner and important basis of scientific social work, the new sub-discipline of practical social sciences. Since he linked them with moral theological and pastoral theological knowledge, he also contributed significantly to the foundation of Caritas science .

Together with the hygienist Karl Wilhelm Jötten , who later also used racial hygiene formulations, Weber published a “textbook on health care” in 1932 in which, in addition to emphasizing health care and the care of the handicapped, he set social hygiene as a counterpoint to racial hygiene.

After the seizure of power , at the instigation and threats of the National Socialists , he was transferred to the Catholic theological faculty and had to relinquish the management of the Institute for Economic and Social Sciences. In December 1934 Weber defended the right of the church to carry out Caritas work as "an essential part of the church's tasks and purposes" , referring to the Reich Concordat of July 20, 1933. “Whoever wants to smash the Caritas of the Church must first smash the Church itself” (Caritas magazine, December 1934). In 1935, under pressure from the NSD student union , Weber gave up a job in the “funding committee of the Münster Student Union”. In the same year Cardinal Karl Joseph Schulte appointed him as honorary head of the Episcopal Finance Chamber of the Church Province of Cologne , based in Münster. Also in 1935 Weber publicly criticized an office manager in the main office for people's welfare , who wanted to limit the church Caritas to the care of the "hereditary sick and asocial".

In the winter semester Weber was then forcibly transferred to a chair for Caritas Studies at the Catholic theological faculty of the University of Breslau , probably to prevent his great influence in Westphalian. Peter Tischleder took over his chair in Münster . However, Weber still left the church to manage the Münster finance chamber from Breslau. In November 1936, he began his first training in Wroclaw for clergymen who would be active in church administration. He also carried out extensive research and worked as an expert. In 1937, he was also given the professorship for pastoral theology. Until 1938 Weber worked on the publication of a multi-volume teaching and manual on Caritas Science. In this he again emphasized the contrast between the views of National Socialism and the Catholic Church on Caritas: “In the sense of Christianity, every person is also the most distant, our neighbor, no matter on which part of the world he lives, which people, which race, which nation, what rank and what class he belongs to ”(p. 145ff.). Due to circumstances caused by the war, only the first volume of this work has survived today. Cardinal Adolf Bertram from Breslau entrusted Weber with the organization and planning of the “Institute for Church Administration and Finance”, which published several series on church administration. In 1940/41 alone the institute produced more than 800 reports on a wide variety of legal issues. Together with Benedict Kreutz, Weber also contributed to the financial survival of the Caritas Association until 1945, which until 1938 had gradually canceled all subsidies and denied non-profit status and which was also subject to high tax payments.

After the end of the war Weber took over the chair for "Economics with special consideration of the social Caritas studies" at the Faculty of Law and Political Science of the University of Münster. After Weber's death, the chair for Christian social sciences remained vacant for several years and was then transferred to Joseph Höffner , the later Bishop of Münster and Cardinal of Cologne.

In 1946, Weber, together with entrepreneurs from industry and local politicians from the Ruhr area, founded the Dortmund-based social research center at the University of Münster , initiated by the sociologist and ergonomist Otto Neuloh , and became its first director. At Weber's request, the research center was affiliated to the Institute for Economic and Social Sciences in Münster.

Afterlife

In Hamburg there is a Heinrich Weber Research Circle, which aims to research the life and work of Heinrich Weber. The association's president is Manfred Hermanns . In Recklinghausen, Weber's former school, the Petrinum grammar school, honors particularly committed students with the Heinrich Weber Prize.

Fonts (selection)

• Social-charitable women's professions. Freiburg i.Br .: Caritas-Verl. 1918, 2nd edition 1919.
• The right to life of welfare (Political Science Articles 6). Essen: Baedeker 1920.
• Academics and welfare in the People's State (Habil.Schr.). Essen: Baedeker 1922.
• The welfare nurse (Am Scheidewege. Job profiles, edited by Hans Vollmer). Berlin-Wilmersdorf: Paetel 1922.
• The religious and ethical foundations of care work in Judaism and Christianity. Theol. Diss. The Univ. Tübingen 1922 (unpublished manuscript in the University Archives Tübingen UAT 184).
• Child welfare in the German Reich. Introduction to the nature and tasks of child welfare and the new Reich Youth Welfare Act (Writings on German Politics 6/7). Freiburg i. Br .: Herder 1923.
• Fundamental to the new regulation of the public support system. In: Social Practice and Archives for People's Welfare, Vol. XXXII (1923), Sp. 131–136.
• The local youth welfare office. Cologne: Kommunal-Schriften-Verl. 1924.
• The cooperation of public and private welfare. In: Gegenwartsfragen der Wohlfahrtspflege (contributions to social welfare 1), Münster: Aschendorff 1925, pp. 109–122.
• The Westphalian Administrative Academy. In: The civil service training system and the Westphalian Administrative Academy. H. 1 of the series of publications of the Westf. Verwaltungsakademie, ed. von W [erner], F [riedrich] Bruck u. H [einrich] Weber, Münster: Verl. Der Westf. Verwaltungsakademie 1925, pp. 25–38.
• Dismantling of the welfare system (publications of the local political association 4). Cologne: Kommunal-Schriften-Verl. undated [1926].
• The rule of Christian principles in economic life. In: The speeches held in the public and closed meetings of the 65th General Assembly of Catholics in Germany in Breslau 21. – 25. August 1926. Würzburg: Franconian Company Printing Office 1926, 91–97. Reprinted in: Franz Furger (Ed.), Akzente Christian Sozialethik. Focus and change in 100 years of "Christian Social Sciences" at the Univ. Muenster. Münster: Lit 1995, pp. 41-48.
• The local youth welfare office. 2nd edition Cologne: Kommunal-Schriften-Verl. 1927.
• Catholic institutional welfare in the diocese of Münster. Düsseldorf: Lindner undated [1928].
• Caritas and economy. Freiburg i. Br .: Caritasverl. 1930.
• Introduction to the social sciences. Berlin: Gersbach & Sohn o. J. [1930].
• together with Peter Tischleder: Handbuch der Sozialethik. Vol. 1 Business Ethics. Essen: Baedeker 1931.
• Dispute and truth about the German social security. Freiburg: Caritas-Verl. 1931.
• Management in charitable institutions (Der Wirtschaftsprüfer 5). Berlin: Julius Springer 1933.
• The essence of Caritas (Caritaswissenschaft Vol. 1). Freiburg: Caritas-Verl. 1938.

literature

• Barbara Dünkel, Verena Fesel: Wohlfahrtspflege, Volkspflege, welfare: regional and supra-regional research results of social work between 1920 and 1970. Lit, Münster 2001, ISBN 978-3825854096 .
• Manfred Hermanns : Heinrich Weber. Social and Caritas scientist in a time of upheaval. Life and work. Echter, Würzburg 1998, ISBN 3-429-01971-0 (Studies on theology and practice of Caritas and social pastoral care; 11).
• Manfred Hermanns: Heinrich Weber (1888-1946). In: Jürgen Aretz , Rudolf Morsey , Anton Rauscher (Eds.): Contemporary history in life pictures. Volume 10. Aschendorff, Münster 2001, ISBN 3-402-06122-8 , pp. 91-112.
• Manfred Hermanns : Social ethics through the ages. Personalities - Research - Effects of the Chair for Christian Social Studies and the Institute for Christian Social Sciences at the University of Münster 1893–1997. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. ISBN 978-3-506-72989-7 , in particular pp. 117-225 and pp. 465-474.
• Manfred Hermanns:  WEBER, Heinrich. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 18, Bautz, Herzberg 2001, ISBN 3-88309-086-7 , Sp. 1477-1491.
• Elli Reichert: Welfare - Economy - Caritas. The welfare scientist Heinrich Weber. Bautz, Nordhausen 2008, ISBN 978-3-88309-473-1 .
• Manfred Hermanns : Heinrich Weber. Theologian, social ethicist and Caritas scientist (1888–1946). In: Soziale Arbeit, magazine for social and socially related areas, 63rd year, 2014, no. 4, pp. 122–132.
• Otto Gertzen: In memory of Heinrich Weber , hall talks, University of Münster, 2015.
• Manfred Hermanns : Weber, Heinrich Wilhelm, social and Caritas scientist. In: Historical Commission at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (ed.), New German Biography. 27. Vol., Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2020, pp. 492-394.

Footnotes

1. ^ Hans-Georg Kollmann: On the village environment of Heinrich Weber and his family in Oberröllinghausen . In: Vestischer Kalender , vol. 75 (2004), pp. 150–166.
2. ↑ Heinrich Weber Prize of the Friends of the Gymnasium Petrinum zu Recklinghausen , PDF, 82 kB, accessed on June 27, 2020.

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinrich Weber in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website about Heinrich Weber