Johann Baptist Knebel

Johann Baptist Knebel (born December 15, 1871 in Uissigheim , † November 27, 1944 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German Catholic clergyman.

Johann Baptist Knebel was born in Uissigheim , today part of the city of Külsheim (Main-Tauber-Kreis). Here he attended elementary school. He was sponsored by the local pastor Bernhard Joseph Mayland for the secondary school, the Lender Institute in Sasbach . He spent the last two years of school at the Grand Ducal Gymnasium in Tauberbischofsheim , where he graduated from high school in 1890. After studying theology at the University of Freiburg from 1890 to 1893 and a year of practical training, Johann Baptist Knebel was ordained a priest on July 4, 1894 in the St. Peter Seminary near Freiburg. Thanks to his sermons and lectures during the vicar years in Ettlingen and Furtwangen, as well as his winning dealings with people, he was transferred to Mannheim- Neckarvorstadt in 1899 , first to the parish curate of St. Laurentius, which was dissolved, and then from 1903 to 1916 as pastor to the newly founded Sacred Heart of Jesus Congregation with the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, completed in 1904 and consecrated in 1908, in the neo-Romanesque style.

In this workers 'parish he had to deal with the socialist and religiously hostile workers' movement and tried to persuade them through articles in the magazine “Arbeiterfreund”, one of the first organs in Germany for the social and religious concerns of workers. These attempts, as well as his sermons and lectures, resulted in him being elected for the center in the second chamber of the Baden state parliament from 1909 to 1912 . In the first session of 1909/10 he campaigned for improved working conditions and an improved collective agreement for workers. In the second session of 1911/12 Knebel did not appear so often in the state parliament, and if in a polemic against the Social Democrats , who had always been against the Catholic Church.

As a spiritual adviser to the Catholic social workers in Germany and religious supervisor of the Catholic teachers, he took on the women's issue . Johann Baptist Knebel also held a leading position in the Marian Congregation .

From 1916 to 1924 he was in charge of the parish of St. Martin in Freiburg as the successor to pastor Heinrich Hansjakob and then went to Kiechlinsbergen am Kaiserstuhl as a village pastor . There he arranged the renovation and neo-baroque refurbishment of the parish church of St. Petronilla ; he also founded the local winegrowers' cooperative. From 1933 to 1939 he was dean of the Landkapitel Endingen am Kaiserstuhl .

In addition to being appointed ecclesiastical councilor and dean by the archbishop, Johann Baptist Knebel received an honorary theological doctorate from the University of Freiburg on July 3, 1924 . On April 11, 1933, he was also one of the first four clergy of the Archdiocese of Freiburg to receive the title of Honorary Cathedral Capitular created by Archbishop Conrad Gröber on October 12, 1932 by the Holy See .

In 1939 he retired in Freiburg, where he was killed in a bomb attack on November 27, 1944 .

literature

• Helmuth Lauf, Otto Uihlein: Uissigheim in the mirror of its 1200-year history . Self-published by the municipality of Uissigheim, 1966.
• Christoph Schmider , Clemens Siebler: Knebel, Johann Baptist . In: Badische Biographien NF 6, 2011, pp. 203–205.
• Konrad Exner: eloquent priest and politician . In: here in Germany , ed. Home Care Working Group, Administrative Region Karlsruhe eV, 31, 2016, pp. 23–31.

Web links

• Literature by and about Johann Baptist Knebel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Speeches by Johann Baptist Knebel in the Baden State Parliament in the digital collections of the Baden State Library