Josef Lenzel

Memorial on the church property at Platanenstrasse 22 in Berlin-Niederschönhausen

Josef Lenzel ( Joseph August Max Lenzel ) (born April 21, 1890 in Breslau , Lower Silesia , † July 3, 1942 in Dachau concentration camp ) was a German Roman Catholic priest , pastor , resistance fighter against National Socialism , pastor and defender of the rights of the Polish Forced laborers and is considered a martyr .

Life

Josef Lenzel was born in Breslau in 1890 as the son of the stone setter August Lenzel and his wife Franziska, née Ruta. After attending the Matthias Gymnasium in Breslau , he passed his Abitur in 1911 and began studying theology in his hometown . On 13 June 1915 Josef Lenzel received by Bishop Adolf Bertram the priesthood in Wrocław Cathedral . In the following years Lenzel took on various pastoral tasks : became a vicar in Wohlau , from 1916 he was chaplain in the parish of St. Georg in Pankow near Berlin . On May 15, 1929 Lenzel was appointed curate of the new chapel parish of St. Maria Magdalena in Niederschönhausen .

He was also President of the Kolping Family Berlin-Zentral. As part of his office and beyond, Josef Lenzel took care of the well-being of his parishioners and, in particular, of the construction of the new church in Niederschönhausen. Lenzel also made extensive donations of his own to equip the church. a. he paid for the casting of the bells , the production of the figures and donated a measuring cup . Pastor Oskar Feige, who headed the Georgsgemeinde in Pankow, later wrote: "His expenses for the beautiful church in Platanenstrasse were considerable."

During the time of National Socialism , Lenzel remained committed to Christian-humane goals in life, for example he refused the Hitler salute , associated with Jewish families and skillfully included precarious situations in his sermons. This did not remain a secret from the Gestapo for long, they spied on him and also interrogated him repeatedly.

In the late summer of 1940, Pastor Lenzel learned that a camp for Polish forced laborers had been set up on the grounds of Schönholz Palace . These around 450 boys and girls (as it was called in the chronicle) had to work in the German arms and ammunition factory in Borsigwalde . He obtained approval from both the camp management and the senior officials of the factory that services could take place in his Magdalenenkirche for these young people, who were predominantly Catholic and had been sent here by the Posen employment office , but separately from the German national comrades . Therefore, on November 10th, the Poles came to church for the first time and heard the sermon in Latin. Pastor Lenzel had previously notified the Catholic Ordinariate and the Pankow police station; Nevertheless, a few days later he received a summons to the police headquarters because it had been reported that German Catholics had been present at the service. In other purely Polish services, Lenzel allowed the churchgoers to sing songs in Polish and had an interpreter inform them that he could give them general absolution . That was gratefully received and accepted in large numbers. When no one was able to go out later because of a camp closure, a group of 20 Polish women from Kanonierstrasse in Berlin-Mitte came to the church service. In this context, Lenzel also found out about other forced laborers from different nations who were not housed in camps, but with farmers or inns, and invited these people to church as well. Only a few accepted the friendly offer. Pastor Lenzel's Christian charity went so far that he lent liturgical cult items for services that a priest was allowed to hold in a French prisoner-of-war camp on Wartenbergstrasse in Lichtenberg .

In 1941 Lenzel entrusted the chronicle with the following message:

“Today, on the feast of the Holy Family, I learn that a man in our church who means ill to me is collecting material against me. It would soon be ready for me to be placed against the wall. [..] Lord, your will be done! I have only one request: let me die confessing your St. Name, grant me the grace of martyrdom ! "

He was not given the name of the informant, but Lenzel writes that he knows him and knows what he is planning against “his pastor. He claims to be an 'Apostle Luise', but he is a Judas ”.

Finally, Pastor Josef Lenzel was arrested on January 7, 1942 on charges of "offenses against the treachery law". He then had to do forced labor himself in the labor camp in Wuhlheide , but the Nazis soon took him to the Dachau concentration camp , where the brutal methods affected his health. He died there shortly after his transfer on July 3, 1942. The death certificate issued on July 20, 1942 by the Dachau II registry office does not contain any specific cause of death.

Commemoration

Memorial plaque of the martyrs of the Nazi era in the crypt of St. Hedwig's Cathedral in Berlin-Mitte

• A memorial for Lenzel has stood in front of the St. Maria Magdalena church in Berlin-Niederschönhausen since 1980. This replaced a memorial plaque that the organization VVN had attached to the church in 1946 .
• Lenzel's name can also be found on the memorial plaque on Bebelplatz, in the crypt of St. Hedwig's Cathedral, Berlin-Mitte.
• In Berlin-Neukölln the Lenzelpfad and on April 21, 1990 in Pankow-Niederschönhausen the Pfarrer-Lenzel-Straße were named after him.
• In 1999 the Catholic Church accepted Pastor Josef Lenzel into the German martyrology of the 20th century as a witness of faith .

literature

• Karl-Joseph Hummel , Christoph Kösters: Forced Labor and the Catholic Church 1939-1945. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2008, ISBN 978-3-506-75689-3 .
• Helmut Moll (Ed. On behalf of the German Bishops' Conference): Witnesses for Christ. The German martyrology of the 20th century . Paderborn u. a. 1999. 7th revised and updated edition 2019. ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 . Vol. IS 129-132.
• Pastor Joseph Lenzel. April 21, 1890-3. 7. 1942 ; Published in 1982 by Pastor Zoda, marked “Only for internal church use”.
• Heinz Kühn: martyrs of the diocese of Berlin. Klausener, Lichtenberg, Lampert, Lorenz, Simoleit, Mandrella, Hirsch, Wachsmann, Metzger, Schäfer, Willimsky, Lenzel, Froehlich. Berlin 1952.
• Oskar Feige: Joseph Lenzel. In: Petrusblatt No. 26–28, Diocese of Berlin 1947.
• Kurt Willig: Berlin priest in the concentration camp. In: Petrusblatt No. 4, Diocese of Berlin 1945.

Web links

Commons : Josef Lenzel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Archdiocese of Berlin: Victims of unjust violence
• Diocese of Münster: A calendar of saints
• Entry about Josef Lenzel in the dictionary of saints

Source and individual references

• Chronicle of the St. Maria Magdalena Congregation, led by Pastor Lenzel between 1927 and 1942; digitized on 190 pages, handwritten 377 pages.

1. ↑ ^{a b} Wroclaw II registry office : birth register . No. 1931/1890.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Thomas Vieweg: Joseph Lenzel. A courageous pastor who died for his beliefs. In: Festschrift for the 75th Kirchweih anniversary 2005, p. 45 ff.
3. ↑ Chronicle, pp. 333–336.
4. ↑ Chronicle, pp. 337–341.
5. ↑ Chronicle, p 346ff.
6. ↑ Diocesan Archives Berlin: Joseph Lenzel. ( Memento of March 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Retrieved May 6, 2011.