Hermann Scheipers

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Hermann Joseph Scheipers (born July 24, 1913 in Ochtrup ; † June 2, 2016 there ) was a Roman Catholic priest and one of the last living spiritual inmates of the Dachau concentration camp .

Life

Scheipers grew up with his twin sister Anna in Ochtrup in western Munsterland, where he attended elementary school and grammar school in Rheine. He studied Catholic theology at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster . Then in 1936 he entered the pastoral seminary of the young, poor diocese of Meißen in Schmochtitz near Bautzen. Already in his school days and until his death he was a member of the Catholic Bund New Germany . He was ordained priest on August 1, 1937 by Bishop Petrus Legge in the Cathedral of St. Petri in Bautzen . His first chaplaincy took him to Hubertusburg / Wermsdorf . He was arrested on October 4, 1940 because he was an open pastor for Polish forced laborers and wanted to celebrate a church service with them. From the police prison in Leipzig he was sent to Dachau concentration camp in March 1941. In the Dachau concentration camp he was classified as an enemy of the state. He wore the red bar of the political, which communists and social democrats also wore.

His twin sister Anna maintained contact with her imprisoned brother in the years that followed, and smuggled letters, food and medicine into the camp. In 1942 she rescued him and at the same time many other priests through a courageous intervention at the SS Reich Security Main Office in Berlin from being "unfit for work" from the disability block of the Dachau concentration camp to the Nazi killing center in Hartheim near Linz. In the Dachau concentration camp, Scheipers was housed in a room in the pastor's block with the Evangelical Dresden martyr Paul Richter , the Sorbian chaplain Alois Andritzki and other Evangelical and Catholic clergymen . The strength he drew from the daily celebration of the Eucharist in the makeshift chapel in the pastor's block was life-saving for him.

On April 27, 1945, two days before the Dachau concentration camp was liberated by American forces, Scheipers managed to escape to freedom on a death march . In 1946 he returned to the Diocese of Meißen, where he soon came into conflict with the SED regime.

Scheipers worked after the Second World War in what is now the diocese of Dresden-Meißen as a pastor in Radebeul , Berggießhübel , Dresden-Johannstadt , Freital , Wilsdruff and Schirgiswalde . From 1960 to 1983 he was pastor in the Schirgiswalder parish of St. Mariä Himmelfahrt. In 1983 Hermann Scheipers retired and returned to the diocese of Münster . He later lived again in his hometown Ochtrup. At the beginning of August 2007 he celebrated his first grace , the 70th anniversary of his ordination.

In the last few decades he reported to school classes and at educational events about his experiences under the Hitler regime and in the SED state . Lecture tours took him to Spain and the USA, and he was also invited to France and the Netherlands. The Munich filmmaker David Menzhausen made the film Dir belongs my life about his life and that of his sister Anna on a joint assignment from MDR and LWL-Medienzentrum für Westfalen , which was also released on DVD in German, English and Polish.

He was 102 years old.

Honors

Publications

  • Rudolf Siegel, Johannes Lubczyk, Hermann Scheipers: martyrs of truth. A memorial sheet for the youth chaplain of the Meißen diocese who died in the Dachau concentration camp, Dr. Bernhard Wensch . More -Verlag, Berlin 1949, OCLC 73684045 .
  • Hermann Scheipers: A tightrope walk. Priest under two dictatorships. Benno-Verlag, Leipzig 1997, ISBN 3-7462-1221-9 .
  • Hermann Scheipers. In: Susanne Hahn [Ed.]: Hubertusburger Peace - Eternal Peace ?! 1st Hubertusburg Peace Talks. 21.-23. September 2006. Turnshare, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-903343-99-9 .

literature

  • Christian Frieling: priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp. 38 biographies. Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster 1992, ISBN 3-402-05427-2 . In it pp. 49–58: Hermann Scheipers .
  • Joachim Seeger: Hermann Scheipers (1913–2016) - Resistance of the Church to National Socialism and GDR Communism. A biography . Peter Lang, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-631-82636-2 .

Movie

  • LWL media center for Westphalia (ed.): You own my life. The story of Anna and Hermann Scheipers. Civil courage and trust in God between two dictatorships. DVD, Münster 2011, ISBN 978-3-939974-22-2 .
  • Ikarus-Film (Ed.): Between criminals and saints. Hermann Scheipers - The last priest from the Dachau concentration camp. DVD, Munich 2013.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.wn.de/Welt/Kultur/2397529-Trauer-um-Praelat-Hermann-Scheipers-Priester-unter-zwei-Diktaturen
  2. ^ Christian Frieling: Priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp . Münster 1992, p. 50.
  3. ^ Christian Frieling: Priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp . Münster 1992, pp. 54-55.
  4. ^ Christian Frieling: Priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp . Münster 1992, p. 54.
  5. ^ Christian Frieling: Priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp . Münster 1992, p. 53.
  6. ^ Christian Frieling: Priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp . Münster 1992, pp. 57-58.
  7. a b RP awards the Federal Cross of Merit 1st class to Hermann Josef Scheipers ( memento from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  8. bistum-dresden-meissen.de ( Memento from June 3, 2016 in the web archive archive.today )
  9. https://web.archive.org/web/20060216120835/http://www.bistum-dresden-meissen.de/Detailed/678.html
  10. This is where his ordeal began: Honorary citizenship for Hermann Scheipers
  11. Excellent commitment! Diocese of Münster, district dean of Steinfurt, May 14, 2012. Accessed October 27, 2013.
  12. “They laid the foundation stone for German-Polish reconciliation” in: Westfälische Nachrichten , local edition of the Steinfurt district, February 27, 2013, accessed on March 13, 2013