Jakob Neureuter
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Jakob Neureuter (* approx. Mid-1830; † 1908 in Kesten ) was a Catholic clergyman who was the pastor of the Saarland village of Marpingen during the apparitions of Mary in Marpingen in 1876/1877 , which at that time belonged to Protestant Prussia. He was sentenced to prison for supporting the apparitions.
Live and act
Jakob Neureuter was the son of a painter from Trier. In the 1860s he was a chaplain in Koblenz. He became the parish priest of Marpingen in 1864, and the Marpingen parish was his first parish. He initially lived there with his sister, who took care of the household for him. She died in 1871 during a smallpox epidemic .
Pastor Jakob Neureuter became a matter of public interest after three eight-year-old girls claimed on July 3, 1876 that the Virgin Mary had appeared to them in the Härtelwald forest adjacent to the community. The alleged apparitions, which are not recognized as credible by the Catholic Church, dragged on until September 3, 1877 and in 15 months led to thousands of people making a pilgrimage to Marpingen to witness the apparitions themselves. Pastor Neureuter found relative support in dealing with this phenomenon from his responsible diocese of Trier . Because of the clashes in the Kulturkampf, Trier Bishop Matthias Eberhard was sentenced to several months in prison in 1874. He died on May 30, 1876, a few weeks before the apparitions began in Marpingen. Because of the Kulturkampf, the office of bishop remained vacant for several years. It was not until 1881 that Michael Korum was appointed to succeed Bishop Eberhard. An official condemnation of the Marpinger apparition on the part of the diocese was omitted, not least because the competent Trier cathedral provost refused to cooperate with the Prussian state. On July 13th, the Prussian authorities tried to use the military to prevent the consequences of the apparitions of Mary in Marpingen. This led to the billeting of soldiers in his house, the confiscation and interception of his mail as well as house raids up to his arrest on October 27, 1876 and a court hearing. Jakob Neureuter always behaved cautiously and cautiously in his statements before official bodies and already used a formula on July 14, during his first interrogation by District President Wolff in Trier, which he was to repeat on other occasions:
- If it is the work of man, it will fall apart; if it is God's work, you, Mr. President, will not prevent it.
He himself indicated individual elements of the appearance that struck him as strange. This included the occasional seated position of the Virgin Mary, the appearance of the Holy Spirit and the Devil.
Contemporary witnesses mostly give Jakob Neureuter a positive character testimony. Among other things, he expanded the village library and built a grotto over the place's traditional Marian veneration, Our Lady of Marpingen . He lived needlessly and gave little value to material things. When he was released from prison on December 1, 1876, his congregation prepared him the festive welcome that dozens of Kulturkampf priests received at that time. The young men of his Marpinger parish rode towards him on the road to St. Wendel and gave him the honorary escort.
literature
- David Blackbourn: Marpingen - The German Lourdes in the Bismarckian Age (= historical contributions from the Saarbrücken State Archives, Volume 6), Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-9808556-8-6
Web links
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Neureuter, Jakob |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Catholic clergyman who was the village pastor of the Saarland village of Marpingen during the apparitions of Mary in Marpingen in 1876/1877 |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1830 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1908 |
| Place of death | Kesten |