Irmgard Behrendt

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Irmgard Behrendt , religious name Sister Fides (born January 5, 1924 in Rudzisken , Ortelsburg district ) is a German religious sister ( SSpS ) and non-fiction author . In November 2010 she received the Federal Cross of Merit in São Paulo .

Youth and education

Irmgard Behrend was born in 1924 as the daughter of a village teacher in Warmia who taught in Rudzisken, Jonkendorf and most recently in Nerwigk . After elementary school in Jonkendorf, she attended the humanistic high school in Allenstein . After graduating from high school, she got an engagement as a dancer in the Treudank-Landestheater, which was initiated by Max Worgitzki and built in 1925. In the war year 1944 she was committed to the Reich Labor Service (RAD) and then in January 1945 to the War Aid Service (KHD) as a school assistant at the village school in Langenwiese, around 20 km south of Wolfsschanze . When most of the residents fled from the approaching Red Army, she decided to look for her parents, who lived in the elementary school in Nerwigk from 1939–1945. After a few days of walking, on May 20, 1945, in Nerwik, where her father was already a primary school teacher, she found the school building empty and desolate - her parents had been on the run since January. She lived with a few Nerwigk families for over three months, obtained a pass (Polish: przepustka) from the Polish administration in Olsztyn, left for good on August 30 by train from Warmia and arrived in Kostrzyn on September 5, 1945 and then across the Oder Bridge in the Soviet occupation zone . Via Berlin-Friedrichsfelde , Salzwedel , Oebisfelde-Weferlingen , she arrived across the zone border on September 15, 1945 in the British occupation zone with her relatives on her father's side in Essen-West. Shortly thereafter, she was diagnosed with pleurisy .

Religious sister

From October 1945 to January 1946 she was sick in the hospital in Essen-Süd, after which she came to Haan on March 18, 1946 , to a hospital run by the Steyler Mission Sisters . Then she came to a monastery in Vallendar and on November 21, 1947 to Oberdischingen . She learned that her mother lived in Quedlinburg after fleeing East Prussia . From 1949 she lived in the cloister and after retreats , novitiate and postulate she burned the ballet shoes from home and put on the black habit . In June 1952 she solemnly took the perpetual religious vows in Steyl ( Netherlands ) , took the religious name Fides and was sent to Brazil as a missionary sister in September 1952 . After several weeks of shipping, she arrived in Belo Horizonte . In order to have the German Abitur recognized, Sister Fides learned Portuguese at the Sagrado Coração College in Belo Horizonte and then studied religious studies , mathematics and physics at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo from 1954 to 1963 . In the years 1958–1963 she taught at the college in Belo Horizonte and from 1963 she was entrusted with the training of the Brazilian novices of the Steyler Missionary Sisters in the megacity of São Paulo.

Sister Fides renounced the academic teaching she had actually qualified for in order to take care of the plight of the neglected children and had to withstand the constant threat of young and older bandidos . From 1966, Sister Fides lived in São Paulo , where she grew into community work, looked after children in the favelas and, from 1976, founded over 25 day-care centers (Portuguese: Creches) . The judicial authorities in São Paulo gave her a plot of ruins in Embu Guaçu . With German support, Sister Fides was able to build the “Lar Irmã Inês” (Sister Agnes House) youth and community center there, whose school has already helped well over 1000 underprivileged students graduate from school.

She has lived in the Heilig-Geist-Kloster Wickede-Wimbern since 2013 .

Awards

At the suggestion of the Lions Club in Schmallenberg - Hochsauerland , the Federal President Christian Wulff awarded her the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon (with the lady's bow) , which was ceremoniously presented by the German Consul General in São Paulo Matthias von Kummer on November 17, 2010 in the Santíssima Trinidade monastery .

Publications

The editor-in-chief Hermann Multhaupt of the church newspaper Der Dom for the Archdiocese of Paderborn traveled to Brazil in December 1994, visited Sister Fides in São Paulo, read her notes from 1945–1946, revised them and prepared a book that was published in 1995 and 1996 Gerhard Fittkau published in the Paderborn Bonifatiuswerk . The extended third edition was published in 2015 by Media Maria Verlag in Illertissen .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mais de 1,000 alunos freqüentam as atividades do Lar of June 16, 2006 (Portuguese, accessed May 17, 2013)
personal data
SURNAME Behrendt, Irmgard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sister Fides (religious name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German religious sister, author
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Rudzisken , Ortelsburg district