Hugo Arrow

Hugo Pfeil (born September 21, 1885 in Bassenheim , near Koblenz; then Prussian Rhine Province; † May 21, 1967 in Monzel , Germany ) was a Roman Catholic priest. As a pastor in the Saar area, he was in religiously motivated opposition to the Nazi regime and was therefore imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp from 1939 . He was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for his special achievements .

biography

Hugo Pfeil was born in Bassenheim near Koblenz. He was the eldest son of Gerhard Pfeil, senior rent master at Eltz Castle. After attending grammar school in Koblenz, he studied theology in Innsbruck and Trier .

On August 1, 1912 he was Bishop Michael Felix Korum in Trier Cathedral for priests ordained. For the next nine years he worked as a chaplain in Mettlach , Rübenach and Linz am Rhein . On July 14, 1921, he was appointed pastor of St. Laurentius in Laufersweiler . In this small diaspora community in the Hunsrück he was the first pastor after 50 years and did immense religious and economic development work. During this time he translated the book of St. Francis de Sales (1567–1622) Instructions for a Truly Pious Life , also known in the German-speaking world under the title Philothea , which he published in 1927. Since 1928 he asked several times to be transferred to a Catholic area. He wanted to go to a parish on the Moselle. He soon came into conflict with the burgeoning National Socialism because he turned against it in his sermons. Increasing conflicts caused him to stand out in 1932 for a transfer to the route at the time of a government commission of the League Saar endeavor.

On July 30, 1933 he became pastor in Humes in the Saar region. There, too, it was a time of political upheaval. In the same year an NSDAP local group was founded in Humes. The Catholic Church adapted to the trend of the time. In 1934 most of the priests gave up their former anti-Nazi stance upon intervention by the bishops of Speyer and Trier. Not so arrow. In 1935 the Saar area was annexed to the German Reich.

For Hugo Pfeil, the secular authorities were always of secondary importance after the religious ones. This attitude brought him into conflict with the local representatives of the Nazi regime in Humes. He was once arrested on the charge that he never used the “ German greeting ”. Pastor Pfeil preferred to greet with " Grüß Gott ". With this “old German greeting”, as he called him, he made public who was the authority for him.

In March 1936, during the Reichstag elections and the referendum to authorize the occupation of the Rhineland , Pastor Arrow demonstratively stayed at home. He was the only one in Humes to oppose the electoral farce, despite compulsory voting. The local SA responded promptly. Shortly before the polling station closed, they dragged him from the rectory across the street to the urn.

There were also differences with the members of the church council and the teachers of the elementary school about the attitude towards National Socialism. Then in September 1939 an open conflict broke out. In his sermon on the first Sunday after the start of the war, he correctly described the alleged Polish attack on German territory as a propaganda lie. A citizen from his community reported him. As a result, Hugo Pfeil was arrested on September 20, 1939 by the Saarbrücken Gestapo on suspicion of making statements dangerous to the state. He was initially held in the Ottweiler prison and from October 11, 1939 in the St. Wendel District Court prison . On February 15, 1940, he was taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin and later on December 15, 1940, to the pastor's block in the Dachau concentration camp near Munich.

For a long time, church representatives and family members were left in the dark about his whereabouts. Efforts of his brother Dr. Thomas Pfeil, Saarbrücken, to learn something and to get him free were unsuccessful. It was not until March 1944 that the Episcopal Vicariate General in Trier was officially given Pfeil's address: “Dachau, 3k, Block 26/3 No. 22644 ". Requests for Pfeil's release from so-called protective custody were repeatedly rejected with reference to his behavior in the camp. He was held as a political prisoner for a total of five years and seven months without a judicial investigation or conviction. On April 9, 1945, one day after the unconditional surrender of the Wehrmacht , his SS henchmen had him sign a waiver of any subsequent claims for recourse and released him from prison.

Hugo Pfeil went back to Humes. He was reinstated in office on July 1, 1945. But he had changed a lot and increasingly closed himself off from other people. In 1946 he wrote a manuscript that was unpublished until 2012: The life, suffering and death of the priests in Dachau . He couldn't really gain a foothold in Humes. In his parish he met former SS men whom he had met in Sachsenhausen and Dachau. Finally, hostile to the old Nazis and no longer accepted by the community, he asked for his transfer.

Hugo Pfeil's grave in the churchyard in Monzel in front of a crucifixion group .

From April 20, 1951 to October 1, 1966 he was pastor of St. Nikolaus in Monzel on the Moselle . Before his retirement he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit and the honorary title of clergyman . Hugo Pfeil died on May 21, 1967 in Monzel, where he was buried in the churchyard of St. Nicholas.

2012 was the life, suffering and death of the cath. Priest in the Dachau concentration camp as a revised version from 1960 by the Eppelborn Community Cultural Property Foundation, edited and commented by Bernhard Haupert, Hans Günther Maas and Franz Josef Schäfer. Prelate Hermann Scheipers (* 1913), the only living Dachau priest, wrote the foreword.

Works

• François (de Sales.), Hugo Pfeil: Des hl. Francis of Sales Philothea or Guide to a Truly Pious Life . Gebr. Steffen, Limburg 1927.
• Gregorius Rippel , Hugo Pfeil: The beauty of the Catholic Church represented in its external customs . 2nd Edition. Steffen, 1930.
• Hugo Pfeil: The life, suffering and death of the priests in Dachau . Humes 1945 (unpublished manuscript in the Trier diocese archive: BA Trier, Dept. 86, No. 69).

literature

• Bernhard Hauptert, Franz Josef Schäfer: Reconstruction of the biography of Pastor Hugo Pfeil, Dachau inmate No. 22644 . In: Landesarchivverwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz (Hrsg.): Yearbook for West German State History . tape 20 . Self-published by the State Archives Administration Rhineland-Palatinate, 1994, p. 319-349 ( books.google.de ).
• Johanna Davis-Ziegler: Home under the Southern Cross: Memories of a Missionary Doctor in Zimbabwe . Ed .: Adalbert Ludwig Balling . Mariannhill, 2004, ISBN 3-935700-19-9 ( books.google.de ).
• Bernhard Hauptert, Franz Josef Schäfer: Youth between cross and swastika . Biographical reconstruction as an everyday story of fascism. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1991, ISBN 3-518-28552-1 , pp. 99 f . ( books.google.de ).
• Hugo Arrow. In: Trier Memorial - In memory of people in the Trier region who were victims of National Socialist rule. Friends of the former synagogue Könen e. V., accessed on February 14, 2010 (with a photo by Hugo Pfeil). 
• Joachim Conrad: Arrow Hugo. In: Saarland biographies. Retrieved February 14, 2010 .