Heribert Kluger

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Heribert Kluger (born July 25, 1881 in Neu Zechsdorf , Austrian Silesia ; † January 18, 1945 in the Dachau concentration camp ) was an Austrian priest and professor of religion. Kluger is counted among the martyrs of the 20th century .

Life

After studying theology in Olomouc, Eduard Kluger joined the German Order on September 15, 1903 and was given the name Heribert. In 1905 he was ordained a priest in Brixen. Father Heribert Kluger has been teaching in Freudenthal as a religion professor at the grammar school there since 1911 and has been head of the Teutonic Order Hospital there since 1931. In 1933 the student association KDStV Nordgau Prague made him an honorary member of the Cartell Association of Catholic German Student Associations . Kluger had been a member of the General Council of the Teutonic Knight Order since 1936, and a little later he was even proposed as Grand Master .

On the night of September 30, 1938, the heads of government of Great Britain , France , Italy and the German Reich signed the Munich Agreement . With this treaty, through which the Sudeten German territories in Czechoslovakia were connected to the German Reich, the Sudeten crisis was to be ended and a war prevented. After German troops marched into the Sudetenland on October 1, 1938, a standstill commissioner was appointed, whose sphere of influence had included the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia since March 16, 1939 . On February 27, 1939, the Standstill Commissioner Albert Hoffmann issued a decree to dissolve the Teutonic Order in the Sudetenland. The Teutonic Order Castle in Freudenthal had to be cleared. Father Heribert Kluger was forced to retire as a religion teacher due to his public rejection of National Socialism . Among other things, Kluger had expressed his disgust after the pogroms against the Jews on November 9 and 10, 1938. In September 1944 he was arrested by the Gestapo for preaching hostile to the state and allegedly listening to enemy radio stations and imprisoned in Troppau . There he was first used as a slave laborer in road construction, later transferred to the Dachau concentration camp. Father Heribert Kluger died there on January 18, 1945.

In the book “Die Toten von Dachau” published by the Public Prosecutor's Office for Reparation in Munich, it is classified under the heading “Despair, exhaustion, hunger, epidemics, etc.”. Decades later, a relative remembered how one of Heribert Kluger's released inmates described the father's death: He was beaten so hard that his blood smeared the floor. When they tried to force him to lick his blood, he refused. He was then beaten to death by his tormentors.

Father Heribert Kluger was one of the martyrs of the Roman Catholic Church in the 20th century. and has been included in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

literature

  • Kurt Augustinus Huber: Catholic Church and Culture in Bohemia : Selected Treatises, Religious and Cultural History in East Central and Southeastern Europe, Volume 5, Münster 2005
  • Helmut Moll (publisher on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference), witnesses for Christ. The German Martyrology of the 20th Century , 6th, expanded and restructured edition Paderborn u. a. 2015, ISBN 978-3-506-78080-5 , Volume I, pp. 904-905.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.deutscher-orden.at/content/site/home/article/125.html
  2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from December 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hrb.at
  3. ↑ http://www.deutscher-orden.at/content/site/home/article/125.html
  4. ↑ http://www.deutscher-orden.at/content/site/home/article/125.html
  5. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from December 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hrb.at
  6. ↑ http://www.deutscher-orden.at/content/site/home/article/125.html
  7. ↑ http://www.selige-kzdachau.de/start/martyrer
personal data
SURNAME Kluger, Heribert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian priest of the Teutonic order, victim of the Nazi regime
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH New Zechsdorf
DATE OF DEATH January 18, 1945
Place of death Dachau concentration camp