Joseph Höffner

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Special stamp for the 100th birthday of Joseph Cardinal Höffner ( Germany 2006 ). With lettering Justitia et Caritas (justice and love)
Signature of Joseph Cardinal Höffner
Cardinal Höffner's coat of arms

Joseph Cardinal Höffner (born December 24, 1906 in Horhausen (Westerwald) ; † October 16, 1987 in Cologne ) was the 73rd Bishop of Münster from 1962 to 1969  , Archbishop of Cologne from 1969 to 1987 and Chairman of the Germans from 1976 to 1987 Episcopal Conference .

Life

Joseph Höffner was born on December 24, 1906 as the eldest son of seven children of the farmer Paul Höffner and his wife Helene, née. Schug, born in Horhausen in the Westerwald, in the south-western, Catholic part of the Altenkirchen district. He attended the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Montabaur and, from 1922, the humanistic Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Trier , where he passed the school leaving examination in 1926.

From 1926 to 1934, Höffner studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome , where he also obtained his first doctorate ( Dr. phil. ) In 1929 . He was ordained a priest on October 30, 1932 . In 1934 Höffner obtained his second doctorate degree ( Dr. theol. ) In Rome. His dissertation is entitled Social Justice and Social Love ; In it he differentiated between "legal demands of the state community", which he equates with social justice, and an "affirmative appreciation of the state community and all citizens", which he sees in social love. From 1935 to 1936 Höffner was chaplain in the Saarbrücken parish church of St. Johann , where the later Nazi resistance activist of the “ White Rose ” group, Willi Graf, was one of his acolytes. After this brief activity in pastoral care, Höffner studied in Freiburg im Breisgau from 1937 to 1939 . There he received his doctorate in theology again in 1938 because the Nazi regime did not recognize his Italian doctorate. His dissertation is entitled Farmer and Church in the German Middle Ages . He pointed out here that the Church has never in its history "been able to issue a ban on bondage or the feudal system." In 1939 a diploma in economics followed . In 1940 he was promoted to Dr. rer. pole. PhD. He examined the positions of mostly Spanish scholastics on the subject of business ethics and monopolies in the 15th and 16th centuries and pointed out that the economy functions "independently of the law". Until his death in 1987, he was one of the few Germans who is known to have received four doctorates.

In 1945 he completed his habilitation in Freiburg im Breisgau. His habilitation thesis was entitled Christianity and Human Dignity. The concern of Spanish colonial ethics in the Golden Age . In it, he examined the positions of Spanish scholastic scholars on the colonization of Latin America and came to the conclusion: "In true Spanish idealism, one dreamed of the triumph of Christianity all over the world." Afterwards, Höffner became professor of pastoral theology and Christian social doctrine in Trier . From 1951 he was the successor to Franz Wärme and Heinrich Weber Professor of Christian Social Sciences at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster . In the same year he founded the Institute for Christian Social Sciences . Höffner's curriculum included: Fundamentals of Christian social doctrine (social philosophy), economic, social, state, work and professional ethics, marriage and family sociology, sociology of religion, social policy, in particular social security in industrial society, history and theory of capitalism, liberalism and socialism. In the seminars, new political concepts for land and spatial planning, pension reform, socio-political problems of the craft and peasantry as well as topics relating to the sociology of religion were discussed.

Höffner's teaching and research were closely linked to his duties as a scientific policy advisor to the federal ministries for family and youth issues, for housing, as well as for labor and social affairs. In this capacity he had a decisive influence on the further development of social policy, on the reorganization and expansion of social insurance in the Adenauer era. His concept of the social order was in harmony with the economic order of the social market economy .

Bishop Joseph Höffner (right) in 1962 in the Catholic rural community college “Schorlemer Alst” in conversation with Bernhard Schulte (left) and participants in a young farmer's course.

On September 14, 1962, Joseph Hoffner by the Bishop of Trier, Matthias Wehr , the Bishop of Munster consecrated. On January 6, 1969, he was appointed coadjutor- archbishop of the almost blind Archbishop of Cologne, Joseph Cardinal Frings , and at the same time titular archbishop of Aquileja . On February 23, 1969, he succeeded Frings as Archbishop of Cologne; on April 28 of the same year, Pope Paul VI. him as a cardinal priest with the titular church of Sant'Andrea della Valle in the college of cardinals .

In 1971 he was appointed Knight of the Order of Knights of the Holy Sepulcher by Cardinal Grand Master Eugène Cardinal Tisserant and invested on December 6, 1971 by Lorenz Cardinal Jaeger , Grand Prior of the German Lieutenancy , and Hermann Josef Abs , Lieutenant in Germany. He was a Grand Cross Knight of the Order. As President of the German Association of the Holy Land , he was involved in numerous social projects in the Holy Land .

Cardinal Höffner with Pope John Paul II in Cologne (1987)

From 1976 to 1987 he was, like his predecessor Joseph Cardinal Frings, chairman of the German Bishops' Conference. After the money laundering scandal surrounding the Vatican Bank became known in 1982, he asked in vain for the curial archbishop involved, Paul Casimir Marcinkus, to be deposed . In 1986 he received the Görres Society's ring of honor for his work . In the same year Höffner found that the " dangers emanating from unleashed atomic energy " were "of a special kind because of their terrible nature and because of their harmful effects on many generations". For this he received criticism from the ranks of the CDU and from Bavaria's Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss . In January 1987 he declared that the Greens were a party that Christians could not vote for. In the face of social upheaval, he had already spoken of the “confusing pluralism of permissive society” and “subjectivism”. Cardinal Höffner explained that “being able to obey” belongs “to the Christian image of man”. After Pope John Paul II had rejected his repeated offer of resignation on his eightieth birthday , he resigned the office of Archbishop of Cologne on September 14, 1987, one month before his death. He died in Cologne's St. Hildegardis Hospital of an incurable brain tumor that had only been discovered a few months earlier. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger held the spiritual office . Cardinal Höffner found his final resting place in the archbishop's crypt in Cologne Cathedral . He was succeeded in February 1989 by Cardinal Joachim Meisner .

Joseph Cardinal Höffner was one of the founders of Christian Social Doctrine (CGL) as a science. Since the founding of the Association of Catholic Entrepreneurs (BKU) in 1949, he was its scientific and first spiritual advisor.

Honors and namesake

As Bishop of Münster in 1962, Höffner became an honorary member of the Catholic student association Westfalia-Mazenod in the KV , to which he already had contacts as a professor. As Archbishop of Cologne he became an honorary member of the Catholic student association KDSt.V. Ripuaria Bonn in the CV .

In  1993, members of the CDU-CSU parliamentary group in  the German Bundestag founded the Kardinal-Höffner-Kreis , which aims to give Catholicism greater weight in politics.

The Joseph Höffner Society , founded in 2002 and chaired by Father Johannes Zabel, and the Friends' Association founded in 2001 to commemorate Joseph Cardinal Höffner in the Flammersfeld community, chaired by Bernhard Meffert, are dedicated to the memory and work of the scientist and bishop . A Cardinal Höffner memorial was inaugurated in Horhausen on May 8, 2004.

On October 31, 2003, Joseph Höffner - together with his sister Lena Hesseler, b. Hoffner, from Horhausen - by the Israeli Holocaust -Gedenkstätte Yad Vashem posthumously the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations awarded. In 1943, when he was a pastor in Kail, Höffner was able to hide a Jewish girl from the regime. Esther Sarah Meyerowitz (alias Christa Koch) could be found by Cologne historians in the USA. At the request of her brother, his sister brought an endangered couple into her apartment in Horhausen.

further honors

In 2008, a small square in front of Cologne Cathedral was named Kardinal-Höffner-Platz.

Quotes

“If we turn to God in sickness, we will see that sickness is like a carpet on the wrong side. We only see knots and tangled threads and don't know what it all means. But God will lay the carpet on the right side at the time He will determine. Then we see that God's own providence is present even in sickness. "

- Joseph Höffner : on the immunodeficiency disease AIDS , published in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger 1985

Publications

Fonts

  • Christian social teaching. New edition, ed., Edited and supplemented by Lothar Roos . Butzon & Bercker, Kevelaer 1997, ISBN 3-7666-0107-5 . The work has now been translated into ten languages ​​(including Russian and Chinese).
  • Farmer and Church in the German Middle Ages . Paderborn 1938, dissertation.
  • Business ethics and monopolies in the 15th and 16th centuries . Jena 1941, dissertation for Dr. sc.pol., 2nd edition: Darmstadt 1969.
  • Christianity and human dignity. The concern of Spanish colonial ethics in the Golden Age . Trier 1947, also habilitation thesis, University of Freiburg 1944.
  • The start of a new social policy . Cologne 1955.
  • Social Policy in German Mining . Münster 1955, 1956 2 .
  • Wilhelm Emmanuel Ketteler and the Catholic Social Movement of the 19th Century . Wiesbaden 1962.
  • Marriage and family. Nature and change in industrial society . Münster 1959, 1965 2 .
  • In the power of faith , 2 volumes. Freiburg i.Br. 1986. ISBN 3-451-20878-4 .

Editing

literature

  • Norbert Trippen : Joseph Cardinal Höffner (1906–1987) (= publications of the Commission for Contemporary History, Series B: Research, Volume 115 and Volume 122). Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn.
  • Manfred Hermanns: Appointment of Joseph Höffner and foundation of the Institute for Christian Social Sciences. In: Gabriel, Karl (Ed.), Church - State - Economy on the way into the 21st century. 50 years of the Institute for Christian Social Sciences (= writings of the Institute for Christian Social Sciences; 45). Münster-Hamburg-London: Lit 2002. pp. 49-84.
  • Manfred Hermanns : Social ethics through the ages. Personalities - Research - Effects of the Chair for Christian Social Studies and the Institute for Christian Social Sciences at the University of Münster 1893–1997 . Paderborn u. a .: Schöningh, 2006. ISBN 3-506-72989-6 .
  • Manfred Hermanns: Höffner, Joseph, Christian social scientist, Bishop of Münster, Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal, Chairman of the German Bishops' Conference . In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, Vol. XXXIV. Verlag Bautz, Nordhausen 2013, Sp. 550-584.
  • Ursula Nothelle-Wildfeuer : Joseph Cardinal Höffner and Christian Society. His contribution to their further development (Church and Society Green Series No. 448, edited by the Catholic Social Science Center) . JP Bachem Medien, Cologne 2018, ISBN 978-3-7616-3200-0 .

Web links

Commons : Joseph Höffner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Social justice and social love: attempting a determination of their being. Saarbrücken 1935, here p. 100.
  2. ↑ Peter Goergen: Willi Graf - A Path in the Resistance, St. Ingbert 2009, p. 19.
  3. ^ Peasants and Church in the German Middle Ages . Paderborn 1938, here p. 122.
  4. ↑ Business ethics and monopolies in the 15th and 16th centuries . Jena 1941, here p. 164.
  5. ↑ Keßler, Peter Josef - Catholic Theological Faculty - LMU Munich. In: www.kaththeol.uni-muenchen.de. Retrieved December 25, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Memory of Cardinal Joseph Höffner. For the 100th birthday of the former Archbishop of Cologne. wdr.de, December 24, 2006, archived from the original on September 29, 2007 ; Retrieved November 29, 2012 .
  7. ↑ Domradio.de: Commemoration of Cardinal Höffner - 20th anniversary of the death of the popular Cologne shepherd - Commemorative Pontifical Office on domradio October 18, 2007.
  8. ↑ Christianity and human dignity. The concern of Spanish colonial ethics in the Golden Age . Trier 1947, also habilitation thesis, University of Freiburg 1944, here p. 307.
  9. ^ Höffner's curriculum vitae in the "Portal Rheinische Geschichte" of the Rhineland Regional Council , accessed on November 30, 2011.
  10. ↑ Contribution to the history of the institute on the homepage of the institute for Christian social sciences at the catholic-theological faculty of the WWU Münster , accessed on November 30, 2011.
  11. ↑ a b OBITUARY: JOSEPH CARDINAL HÖFFNER. Der Spiegel 43/1987, October 19, 1987, accessed on July 28, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Die Zeit : On the death of Cardinal Höffner ( memento of February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), October 23, 1987.
  13. ↑ The Kardinal-Höffner-Kreis in the German Bundestag (PDF; 77 kB), Wolfgang Bosbach's website , accessed December 13, 2011.
  14. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20160109165215/http://cms.bistum-trier.de/bistum-trier/Integrale?MODULE=Frontend&ACTION=ViewPageView&Filter.EvaluationMode=standard&PageView.PK=7&Document.PK=27095 Diocese of Trier: Cardinal Joseph Höffner monument inaugurated in Horhausen.
  15. ↑ Joseph Höffner on the website of Yad Vashem (English).
  16. ^ Report of the Catholic News Agency , January 18, 2007 (2:54 p.m.).
  17. ↑ Acta Studentica, Volume 158, December 2006, pp. 12-13.
  18. ↑ Kardinal-Höffner-Platz ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
predecessor Office successor
Michael Keller Bishop of Münster
1962–1969 		Heinrich Tenhumberg
Joseph Cardinal Frings Archbishop of Cologne
1969–1987 		Joachim Cardinal Meisner
Julius Cardinal Döpfner Chairman of the German Bishops' Conference
1976–1987 		Karl Cardinal Lehmann
personal data
SURNAME Höffner, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Höffner, Joseph Cardinal
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cardinal and archbishop of Cologne
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Horhausen (Westerwald)
DATE OF DEATH October 16, 1987
Place of death Cologne