Johannes Schulz

Pastor Johannes Schulz

Johannes Schulz , often also Johann Schulz (born April 3, 1884 in Völklingen , Luisenthal district ; † August 19, 1942 in Dachau ), was a German Roman Catholic priest of the diocese of Trier , persecuted by the Nazi regime , prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camps , Sachsenhausen and Dachau as well as victims of Nazi arbitrariness.

Live and act

Johannes Schulz was born in Völklingen in the Saarland as the son of the railway station master Conrad Schulz and his wife Louise, nee. Born Schwartz. He attended grammar schools in Trier and Saarbrücken , where he passed the Abitur in 1907 and entered the Trier seminary in the same year .

On August 12, 1911 he received from Bishop Michael Felix Korum the priesthood . The new priest came as a chaplain to Lebach , Holy Trinity and St. Marien (1911–1913) and to Wadgassen , St. Mary's Visitation (1913–1914). When the First World War broke out , Schulz reported to the field and in 1917 became a divisional pastor in the 255th Infantry Division ; he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class. After the war, John Schulz worked as chaplain of Bous (Saar) , St. Peter (1918-1919) and received July 14, 1919, the pastor in Derlen , St. Joseph, where he remained until 1935 and the takeover of the Nazis experienced. Even here he became known as a dedicated and active opponent of this worldview, as well as in his next parish, Nickenich , St. Arnulf, where he was transferred in 1935. From 1939 he also served as the Definitor of the Andernach deanery .

On the afternoon of May 27, 1940, Pastor Schulz and his confrater Josef Zilliken from Wassenach were sitting on the terrace of the Waldfrieden inn near Maria Laach when Hermann Göring and his entourage suddenly appeared there as a guest. While the others present got up immediately and greeted the marshal with the Hitler salute, the two priests took no notice of what was going on and ignored Goering.

Both pastors were arrested that same evening. In June and July 1940 they were incarcerated in Buchenwald concentration camp, and from August to December of that year in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. At the end of 1940 the clergy were transferred to the pastors' block of the Dachau concentration camp. There they had to constantly march past a cap ( Gessler hat ) that was supposed to symbolize Göring with their arms raised in the Hitler salute . As a further chicane, they had to write on a slate countless times: "Every German is obliged to greet the Reichsmarschall ."

From spring 1942 Schulz had to work in a nearby moorland until he was completely exhausted. On August 5, 1942, he was admitted to the camp hospital and, according to a fellow prisoner, both legs were amputated. Strongly weakened by hard forced labor , lack of food and abuse, Pastor Johannes Schulz died on August 19, 1942. His last words were: “I am dying for my community so that everyone will be saved for eternity”. His brother Josef Zilliken succumbed to concentration camp imprisonment in autumn 1942.

Posthumous commemoration

On August 28, 1942, a requiem for Schulz took place in his last place of employment, Nickenich, which, with the participation of many clergymen from near and far, turned into a demonstration against National Socialism. The mayor of Nickenich did not want the urn of the cremated priest in the community cemetery, which is why it was buried in Saarbrücken in 1943.

In 1949 the Catholic youth in Elm-Derlen (penultimate place of employment) erected a memorial stone for Pastor Schulz on the nearby Hermesberg. He was followed in 1954 by a plaque on the Church of St. Arnulfus in Nickenich (last place of employment); 1977 a memorial plaque on the priest's grave in Elm-Derlen. In 2003 a memorial was inaugurated in Elm-Derlen and the “Pfarrer-Johannes-Schulz-Platz” was named after the priest. Finally, the urn of the deceased was raised in Saarbrücken and Bishop Reinhard Marx personally buried it on March 7, 2004 in the priestly grave of the Elm-Derlen community.

Pastors Schulz and Zilliken are venerated as witnesses and confessors in the diocese of Trier.

For a long time there were doubts as to whether the arrest of the two pastors actually went back to Göring himself or whether the incident in the garden restaurant was just a welcome hook for overzealous local politicians to get rid of the two disagreeable clergy. In an NKVD intelligence protocol that has only recently become available , interrogation statements by Hitler's personal adjutant Otto Günsch and his valet Heinz Linge were recorded. It contains - as a historical marginal note - a passage about a meeting between Hitler and Göring in June 1940. There it says u. a .:

“ Goering was also in high spirits. While waiting for the car in front of the shelter, he described his most recent 'adventure' to Hitler. A few days earlier he had been to a restaurant on the Rhine. All the guests got up, except for two Catholic priests. 'But I showed them. I sent them to the concentration camp, 'said Goering with a laugh. 'And I ordered a pole with an old cap of mine to be set up there. Now they have to march past it every day and practice the National Socialist salute. "

- From the NKVD protocol, quoted from the website of the parish Nickenich given as the source

At the location of the dramatic event, the Waldfrieden inn , a memorial plaque was placed in the summer of 2010, which the bishops Felix Genn and Stephan Ackermann unveiled. Bishop Ackermann grew up in Nickenich, Johannes Schulz's last pastor, where the memory of the priest is kept alive by an annual memorial service, Bishop Genn in Wassenach , Josef Zilliken's last place of employment.

The Catholic Church accepted Pastor Johannes Schulz as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

literature

• Johannes Maria Lenz : "Christ in Dachau" , 10 editions (1956–1974), self-published, Vienna
• Helmut Moll (publisher on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference), witnesses for Christ. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhundert , Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th updated and revised edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Volume I, pp. 680–683.
• Hans-Karl Seeger, Gabriele Latzel: " Karl Leisner : Ordination and Primacy in the Dachau Concentration Camp" , LIT Verlag, Münster, 2004; ISBN 3-8258-7277-7 ; Page 210; Scan from the source
• Albrecht Zutter and Richard Elsigk: "Because he did not greet Göring - The fate of the Saarland priest Johannes Schulz" , Wassermann Verlag, St. Ingbert, 1995, ISBN 3-928030-22-1

Web links

• Web portal of the parish of St. Arnulf, Nickenicht, to Pastor Johannes Schulz
• Commemorative page of the Trier seminary to Pastor Johannes Schulz

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Website for the Hotel Waldfrieden near Maria Laach
2. ^ Website of the parish of Saarbrücken, St. Joseph, on the imprisonment of Pastor Schulz
3. ^ Website of the Diocese of Trier for the solemn reburial of the urn in Elm-Derlen
4. ↑ Website of the cath. Parish Nickenich on research into the death of Pastor Johannes Schulz
5. ↑ Website of the Diocese of Trier on the memorial plaque at the Waldfrieden inn
6. ↑ Website for the book