Johanna Etienne

Johanna Etienne (born April 1, 1805 as Maria Magdalene Etienne in the then independent community of Grimlinghausen (today part of the city of Neuss ); † March 28, 1881 in Neuss) was the founder of the Neuss Augustinian nuns .

Life

In 1968 the Johanna Etienne Hospital was opened in Neuss .

Entry into the religious community

On April 1st, 1805 Maria Magdalene was born as the legitimate daughter of Mathias Etienne and his wife Anna Maria geb. Linnarz, born in Grimlinghausen, a suburb of the city of Neuss . She was baptized on April 2nd in the parish church of St. Cyriakus in Grimlinghausen. Nothing is known about details of her childhood, adolescence or family conditions.

On February 27, 1822, Maria Magdalena Etienne joined the Elisabeth Monastery of the Düsseldorf Cellitinnen at the age of 16 and received the dress of the order as sister Johanna on February 27, 1827 . After she had made the perpetual vow on February 20, 1830 , she was entrusted with organizational tasks by her superior. When the city of Neuss asked the Cellites in Düsseldorf to send two sisters to the local hospital, on January 27, 1844, Sister Johanna Etienne and a fellow sister with four aspirants started their service in Neuss.

Establishing a new community

As the work of the sisters quickly turned out to be extremely fruitful, the hospice administration asked the Düsseldorf monastery to let the two sisters take over the establishment of a new monastic community. Despite the lack of nurses, the mother house decided to grant the application, but demanded that the sisters formally renounce any legal claim.

On January 29, 1846, Sister Johanna agreed to all of the conditions that were placed on her to start a new community. She became the founder of the “Cooperative of the Sisters of Mercy according to the Rule of St. Augustine ”. With this she broke the bond with her mother house . This was a courageous step because difficult negotiations with the Prussian authorities were imminent. The Prussian bureaucracy wanted the principles of the state church to be applied. These uncertainties prevented Sister Johanna's co-sister from making the waiver. She returned to Düsseldorf.

In 1848 mother Johanna took on a novice; some aspirants also worked in the monastery. With the consent of the Upper President of the Rhine Province , the first postulants could be dressed. Mother Johanna proved successful in negotiations with the authorities and the Archbishop of Scourge . In 1852 the cooperative finally received state recognition.

Internal expansion of the community

Mother Johanna now devoted herself increasingly to the internal expansion of the community. She cultivated the community life and expanded the small circle with new members. With regard to the candidates, she had to make a selection and some candidates were rejected. She placed particular emphasis on the vow of poverty and made sure that work and prayer were practiced daily as a unit. She also made sure that the sisters were not viewed as cheap labor. The professional training of the sisters was also very important to her. Your suggestions and innovations were necessary, because many communities were in decline due to lack of renovations.

Mother Johanna recognized the lack of specialist departments as a serious shortcoming in nursing. New land could be acquired through a sponsor. A chapel was set up which, together with the institution, was consecrated to St. Joseph. Mother Johanna founded a nursing home for the mentally ill female and set up a branch in the neighboring town of Viersen. The good management of the facilities was unanimously praised by the state. In the war of 1866 between Prussia and Austria, Mother Johanna also sent six sisters to the front to care for the wounded and sick. This also brought the community into contact with the Prussian Queen Augusta . The Queen was impressed with the work of the sisters and encouraged them.

Mother Johanna was at the height of her creativity. Outwardly a considerable sphere of activity had grown and the spiritual life was in order. The community grew. At the height of her work she renounced her office as superior . With her will she withdrew the monastery property from state control. The cooperative was able to manage its monastery property alone and independently.

Kulturkampf

When Bismarck completed the establishment of the German Empire in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 , the community again sent sisters to the front. But the political and social climate in the new German Reich deteriorated. With almost morbid suspicion, Bismarck believed that the Catholic Church and the Catholics wanted to destroy Prussia. In the following years he ruled with the National Liberals, who viewed Catholicism as a superstition. It was the doctor and member of the Progressive Party, Rudolf Virchow , who described the struggle against the Catholic Church as the Kulturkampf . Step by step the influence of the churches was pushed back. Bishops and priests were arrested, monasteries closed and expropriated.

The effects of this struggle were also felt in Neuss. The taking of the vows was now dependent on the state permit, a change of the sisters between the motherhouse and the branch was forbidden. No more aspirants could be accepted. When the fathers of the Lazarists were expelled in 1873 and the city of Neuss set up a home for the disabled in the old monastery walls, the city notables asked Mother Johanna to act as superior there. It is likely that Empress Augusta helped the sisters. Augusta was considered a patron of the Catholic Church and Bismarck himself complained that the Protestant Empress was undermining his policy towards the Catholic Church.

Death and aftermath

When the conflict between church and state eased somewhat in the late 1970s, mother Johanna was almost 75 years old. In 1880 she celebrated her golden jubilee. The citizens thanked her with donations and a big party. When her life ended on March 28, 1881, an unmistakable funeral procession accompanied the donor's body. This was also a visible sign to the outside world that, despite the culture war, the faith was unbroken.

In 1844, Mother Johanna had shown the courage to start over. From its humble beginnings, its work has become one of the foundations of the hospital system in today's sense and one of those charitable institutions that are now part of the overall picture of social performance. The level of respect for mother Johanna Etienne in Neuss and the surrounding area became clear once again on the occasion of the celebration of her 200th birthday on April 1, 2005. About 300 guests came to the Augustinian nuns' monastery.

After mother Joan's death, the community continued to grow. In the heyday of the order, around 900 sisters worked in over 60 charitable institutions. In 2004 the Augustinians from Neuss founded the Cor Unum Foundation - Preservation of Heritage . The foundation had become necessary because many of the sisters had become too old for the arduous work in the institutions.

literature

• Georg Arnold:  Johanna Etienne. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 29, Bautz, Nordhausen 2008, ISBN 978-3-88309-452-6 .
• Georg Arnold: Johanna Etienne (1805–1881) founder of the order; in: The new order, 59th year, issue 6, December 2005, special edition, Institute for Social Sciences Walberberg 2005. You can read an article in the archive 6/2005 by clicking on it .
• Georg Arnold, Johanna Etienne (1805–1881), nun and founder of the Neuss Augustinian Sisters , Saarbrücken 2007. ISBN 3-8364-2770-2 .
• Georg Arnold / Sister M. Angelina Claeßen: Johanna Etienne - founder of the order - woman at the side of the poor, Augustinian convent Neuss 2005. This 56-page biography can be obtained for a small nominal fee in the Augustinian convent in Neuss. Contact: Immaculata Monastery, Augustinusstr. 46, 41464 Neuss.
• Claudia Chehab: On the 200th birthday of the founder of the Neuss order, Johanna Etienne. In: Novaesium 2005, pp. 222–226. PDF

Web links

• Literature by and about Maria Magdalene Etienne in the catalog of the German National Library