Hermann Joseph Vell

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Hermann Joseph Vell (* 17th November 1894 in Cochem ; † 19th July 1965 in Erfurt ) was a German Redemptorist - Father and resistance fighters .

life and career

Hermann Joseph Vell was born as the son of the married couple Mathias Joseph Vell and Maria Vell. Gartz was born in Cochem in 1894. After attending an elementary school, he switched to the Redemptorist High School in Vaals in the Netherlands . In the First World War he did his military service, but came on June 2, 1915 in French. Captivity of war, this lasted until January 27, 1920. Afterwards he attended the Ordensgymnasium in Bonn . On March 15, 1922, he first took the religious vows and was ordained a priest on April 24, 1927. In the following years until 1941 he was active in popular missions and with retreats . When the Bonn monastery was dissolved during the Nazi dictatorship in April 1945, he moved to St. Joseph in Gelsenkirchen as vicar to the honorary dean Pastor Konrad Hengsbach. Hermann Joseph Vell had a good working relationship with his nephew Franz Hengsbach , who later became the first bishop of Essen and cardinal.

On February 1, 1944, Pastor Vell was denounced by SS storm man Wilhelm Ferlmann, who was also a member of his parish, and he was arrested. The pastor was now taken into protective custody in the Dachau concentration camp , like so many other priests. He was later placed in solitary confinement in Moabit and was thrown in front of leaflets from the Scholl siblings of the resistance movement "The White Rose ". The competent senior realm attorney at the People's Court had the indictment changed three times so that on April 6 the death sentence was established. This completely unfounded injustice judgment was at the end, "Preparation for high treason and the destruction of military strength". The so-called " blood judges " Dr. Bernhard Bach and Dr. Leo Kraemer conducted this farce-degenerated trial without any witnesses. Father Vell defended himself with only two sentences, since the death sentence by beheading had already been fixed. Another 30 prisoners had already met this fate under the scaffold . On April 27, 1945, however, all prisoners, including Father Vell, were released by the Red Army .

He then worked first as a pastor in the Winterberg and Bochum monasteries, then as a parish pastor in Arenshausen ( Eichsfeld ) and in Jena Land. From 1963 to 1965 he worked as a confrater (official brother) with chaplain Joachim Meisner in St. Aegidien (Heilbad Heiligenstadt) . Father Vell died in the Catholic Hospital St. Johann Nepomuk in Erfurt. When he was buried on July 23, 1965 in the monastery cemetery in Heiligenstadt Thuringia , the future Cardinal Joachim Meisner was also present. Until shortly before his death, Father Vell corresponded with Joseph Israel Ben Gal in Nazareth in Galilee , at whose request the Public Prosecutor I overturned the judgment against the clergyman.

literature

  • Alfons Friderichs (Ed.): Vell, Hermann Joseph . In: Personalities of the Cochem-Zell District, Kliomedia, Trier 2004, ISBN 3-89890-084-3 , p. 367.
  • Benedicta Maria Kempner: Priest before Hitler's tribunals. Licensed edition with permission from Rütten & Loening Verlag Munich for Bertelsmann, Reinhard Mohn, Gütersloh. undated, page 437. First original edition by Rütten Loening 1966; second, unchanged original edition by Rütten, Loening 1967. (BM Kempner was the wife of the US deputy chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, Robert W. Kempner. August Cardinal Bea wrote the foreword to priests before Hitler's tribunals on February 22, 1966. )
  • Alfons Friderichs: home between the Hunsrück and the Eifel. Supplement to the Rheinzeitung für Schule und Elternhaus, Koblenz, No. 2, May 2005, 53rd year, page 4, Father Vell was sentenced to death .
  • Sönke Zankel: With leaflets against Hitler. The resistance group around Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell. Böhlau Verlag Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-412-20038-1 , pp. 21, 464, 543-548, 555, 561.
  • Reimund Schnabel: The pious in hell. Clergy in Dachau. Clergy Verlag, 1996, p. 321.
  • Josef´Musiol: Czlowiek i zbrodnia (German "man and crime") World War 1939–1945. Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej, 1990, ISBN 8311078122 , p. 261.
  • Gelsenzentrum, Internet portal on the city and contemporary history of Gelsenkirchen: places of remembrance board for Father Hermann Vell. March 2010, addendum August 2011.
  • Amendment on January 4, 2006: Deposit of the Hermann Joseph Vell dossier from Joseph Israel ben gal: Yad Vashem, Yerushalayim. The Holocaust Matyr's and Heroes Remembrance Authority , Reg.-No .: 5654192 according to the letter Yad Vashem dated December 21, 2005, Valerie Ben-Or, Registrar of the Archives. Post Office Box 3477, Jerusalem, Israel 91034, holocaust.resources@yadvashem.org.il
  • Hans Jürgen Brandt: Schalke 91.Bonifatius , Paderborn, 2nd edition 1992, p. 466 f.
  • Jürgen Dzudzek, Jörg Reimann (ed.): 750 years of Schalke, history of a world-famous district. Heimatbund Gelsenkirchen e. V., Verlag Gelsdruck, n.d., p. 394 ff.
  • Heinz Siebert: The Eichsfeld under the swastika. A documentation. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1982, pp. 68/69.
  • Joseph P. Krause: "J'acuse". Historical documentation. Nazareth in Galilee (Israel) 1965, pp. 6, 38, 42, 69.
  • Richard Weishuhn: In memoriam Mathilde Krause. In: Rößeler Heimatbote, Kaltenkirchen, No. 4/1979, p. 94.
  • Central Association of Democratic Resistance Fighters and Organizations of the Persecuted, ZDWV (Hrsg.): Freedom and Law. The voice of the resistance fighters for a free Europe, Bonn-Oberkassel 1964, p. 27.
  • Bernhard Sacrificial Man : The Diocese of Fulda in the Third Reich. Priests, religious and lay people bearing witness of Christ. Verlag Parzeller, Fulda 1987, p. 183.
  • Internet "Thuringian Ministry of Culture", press release of April 12, 2005, 2 pages, Thuringian schools take part in the Israel Education Day. Statement on Father Hermann Joseph Vell.
  • Internet: Lehrer-Online: Thuringia takes part in the Israel Education Day - On the trail of a resistance, Hermann Joseph Vell. Editorial press of April 13, 2005, 3 pages.
  • Internet homepage www.puffbohne.de , erfurt-web.de , Hermann Joseph Vell, 5 pages.
  • Internet homepage www.puffbohne.de - Erfurt Portal, 1 page, Thuringian schools take part in the Israel Education Day , April 29, 2005.
  • Church newspaper for the Archdiocese of Cologne.
  • No. 47 of November 23, 1984, p. 24: Friends of Father Vell researching contemporary history - Nazziterror in Neuss.
  • No. 13 of March 25, 1988, p. 24: In the shadow of the People's Court.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Landgericht Berlin, judgment of February 2, 1999, Az.2 P Aufh. 6/98.
personal data
SURNAME Vell, Hermann Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Redemptorist pater and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Cochem
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 1965
Place of death Erfurt