Joseph Vogt (Bishop)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joseph Heinrich Peter Vogt (born September 8, 1865 in Schmidt (Nideggen) ; † October 5, 1937 in Monschau ) was a German priest and church lawyer , long-time lecturer at the seminary , canon and vicar general in the Archdiocese of Cologne and became the first bishop of the re-established diocese in 1931 Aachen .

Life

Education and career

Vogt's father was a municipal official and became mayor of Monschau in 1870 . Joseph Heinrich Vogt attended secondary school in Monschau and Malmedy and then switched to the renowned Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium in Aachen , where he graduated from high school in 1884. He then studied theology in Bonn and Eichstätt . Due to the tense church political situation during the Kulturkampf in Prussia, many candidates for priesthood from the Rhineland were studying in Eichstätt. After the end of the Kulturkampf Vogt stepped into the reopened Cologne Seminary and received on August 19, 1888 sacrament of Holy Orders . He was installed as a chaplain in the Elberfeld parish of Sankt Laurentius , where Adolph Kolping had worked 40 years earlier . In 1889 he began studying canon law in Rome and obtained his doctorate in 1891 at the Gregoriana , which enabled him to pursue a rapid and rapid career after his return to Cologne . As early as July 17, 1891, he became cathedral vicar in Cologne. From 1893 to 1899 he was the secret secretary of the ailing Archbishop of Cologne, Philipp Krementz . From 1898 to 1916 he held a professorship for canon law at the Cologne seminary, where he was greatly appreciated by the students; from 1900 he was also active in the official office of the archdiocese as a marriage bond defender and from 1905 as a judge. In 1914 the Archbishop of Cologne, Felix von Hartmann , appointed him to the sub-rain of the seminary, which, however, soon emptied due to the war situation. In 1916 Vogt became cathedral chapter and on June 1, 1918 Cardinal Hartmann appointed him his vicar general .

After the cardinal's death on November 11, 1919, Vogt was made capitular vicar and headed the archdiocese during the vacancy . In this function he took part in preliminary negotiations on the envisaged Prussian Concordat, where he was a sought-after advisor as an expert on ecclesiastical property law. Among other things, during the concordat negotiations (concluded in 1929) the downsizing of the Cologne diocese by separating a diocese of Aachen, which was also advocated by the papal nuncio Eugenio Pacelli , was envisaged, as it had already briefly existed from 1802 to 1809.

When the new Archbishop of Cologne was elected to the cathedral chapter in 1920, the vicar capitular Vogt, popular with the clergy, received the third highest number of votes, right behind the two favored foreign candidates, Bishop Karl Joseph Schulte of Paderborn and Bishop Adolf Bertram of Breslau . Schulte, who became Hartmann's successor, confirmed Vogt in the office of vicar general, which was not a matter of course, since this personal position of trust of the archbishop is usually filled again when there is a change of bishops. Soon afterwards Vogt received the papal honorary title of Apostolic Protonotary ; In 1922 he became cathedral dean and from 1930 to 1931 he was provost of Cologne cathedral .

Appointment as bishop of Aachen

In his previous offices, the now 65-year-old priest had gained extensive experience with the management tasks of a diocese and, due to his expertise and his obliging and humorous nature, enjoyed a high reputation and great popularity in the Cologne archdiocese. Nevertheless, the appointment of Joseph Vogt as bishop of the newly established diocese of Aachen by Pope Pius XI. a surprise on January 30, 1931. This was due on the one hand to the advanced age of the vicar general, who also suffered from a chronic illness, and on the other hand to the fact that he had represented the Cologne side in the negotiations on the separation and re-establishment of the diocese of Aachen. He was introduced to the office on March 25, 1931. Six days earlier he had received the episcopal ordination from Cardinal Schulte in Cologne Cathedral . As a motto, Vogt chose the word Caritas urget : "Love is urgent" ( 2 Cor 5,14  EU ).

It was actually expected that the auxiliary bishop of Cologne and previous provost of the Aachen cathedral monastery, Hermann Josef Sträter , would be appointed the first diocesan bishop of Aachen. This Aachen priest, who had been friends with the Vogt of the same age since they went to school together in Aachen, had received episcopal ordination in Aachen Cathedral in 1922 and had since been responsible for the Aachen area of ​​the archbishopric. Vogt, who, as an experienced administrative specialist, had been given preference over the Strater, who appeared more strongly as a pastor , although he had not aspired to the office, made him his vicar general, who was also able to relieve him of genuine episcopal tasks such as visitations and confirmations . Sträter was known for his harsh rejection of National Socialism .

Administration and time of National Socialism

The early years of the pontificate were characterized by the politically and economically unstable situation and social hardship. In view of the very high number of unemployed, Bishop Vogt called for monthly donations for those in need and organized charitable aid organizations. The Diocesan Caritas Association was established in the Diocese of Aachen in his first year as a bishop . Another focus of Vogt was the training of priests. Since its introduction, he pursued the establishment of his own training center for the Aachen priesthood candidates, the number of which had skyrocketed since around 1930. In order to give the Aachen clergy its own profile that is more independent of Cologne, he established the Aachen seminary in 1932 ; A few months before his death, Vogt inaugurated the new (albeit still unfinished) seminar building in Aachen's Mozartstrasse in June 1937. Despite the difficult conditions for the Catholic Church in the early days of National Socialism , he significantly increased the number of parishes and had new churches built.

In the Reichstag elections of 1932 and 1933, the NSDAP performed well below average in the Catholic constituency of Cologne-Aachen; in the Reichstag election in March 1933 , she received the worst result in the entire German Reich. As a strict anti-communist and aware of the strong support of the Catholic Church and the relatively low popularity of the Nazi ideology in his diocese, Joseph Vogt initially took a wait-and-see attitude towards the new regime. Gregor According to fire he hoped after in July 1933 concluded between the Holy See and the German Reich Concordat similar to many other churchmen to a "prosperous living" with the new rulers and the repression of communism while improving the economic situation. On July 27, 1933 Vogt took the side of Hermann Goering , the honorary citizenship of Aachen was awarded a parade of SA organizations in front of the Aachen City Hall.

Hermann-Josef Scheidgen rates Vogt's stance overall as a “moderate” opposition, with which Vogt wanted to protect the Roman Catholic Church against the National Socialist “errors of faith” and against the policy of harmonization . The National Socialist conformity did not stop at the church structures, which were firmly rooted in society, in the Rhenish diocese. The Volksverein for Catholic Germany , based in Mönchengladbach , was liquidated in retaliation for anti-Nazi agitation in the run-up to the November 1933 election. In January 1934, the celebration of the Charles jubilee in Aachen Cathedral was disrupted by the Hitler Youth , as the National Socialists fought the worship of Charlemagne traditionally cultivated in the diocese of Aachen under pseudo-historical pretexts to justify their anti-Catholic actions (Karl was discredited as a "Saxon butcher"). The Catholic criticism of National Socialism in these years concentrated, in addition to the demand for church autonomy, mainly on fundamental ideological questions, emphasizing the incompatibility of Alfred Rosenberg's “neo-pagan” anti-Christian ideas with Catholic doctrine. Against Rosenberg's myth of the 20th century , Vogt wrote a sharp pastoral letter in April 1934 , which historical research evaluates as an act of resistance (“level: public protest”). Vogt was then monitored more closely than before by the Gestapo and the party. After the "Ordinance on Political Catholicism" issued by Hermann Göring as Prussian Prime Minister, the state fight against Catholic customs and associations became increasingly aggressive at the local level from 1935 onwards. Vogt was confronted with official expulsions of unpopular priests and numerous obstacles to church activities, which he described as violations of the Concordat and protested unsuccessfully to government agencies. In his pastoral letter of April 1935, he defended the retention of denominational schools and Catholic youth organizations, which were banned two months later.

In 1936 and 1937 he was confronted with allegations of abuse against Catholic clergy, including pastors and religious from the diocese of Aachen. They were systematically disseminated by the National Socialists and used for propaganda purposes to show the “moral depravity of the Catholic Church” ( Joseph Goebbels ). Bishop Vogt defended himself against such allegations and viewed the morality and show trials directed by the Nazi state as targeted anti-Catholic propaganda and attacks on the faith. Nonetheless, according to Scheidgen, he was one of the Catholic bishops who massively condemned the actually proven cases of abuse.

End of life and succession

In the last year of his life, the bishop's criticism of the Nazi regime was more clearly accentuated. So he attacked the racial policy of the National Socialists with the argument that God was the creator of all races. He also joined the theological criticism of the propaganda concept of "positive Christianity" used by Hitler , which had previously been used by Catholic theologians critical of the Nazi regime such as Otto Kuss (in dealing with the so-called "volkish Jesus literature" e.g. Dietrich Klagges ') had contradicted.

In 1937, the Aachen Shrine Tour, largely organized by Auxiliary Bishop Sträter, was announced by church newspaper articles and circulars as a Catholic demonstration against the Nazi regime and to which foreign church representatives and numerous groups from Belgium and Holland were invited. Despite hindrances from the police and the Reichsbahn, more than 800,000 people took part in the pilgrimage , which the Jesuit Friedrich Muckermann interpreted as a "silent protest" against the Nazi regime. The seemingly unbroken Catholic piety in his diocese was regarded by Vogt as comforting.

As early as 1936, Vogt was affected by increasing age-related complaints in the exercise of his office. He spent the last months of his illness in his homeland in Monschau, according to his death slip, in the same hospital in whose chapel he had been an altar boy as a child and where he had celebrated his first silent mass after his ordination ; there he also read his last holy mass . Joseph Heinrich Vogt died in Monschau on October 5, 1937. He is said to have prayed the rosary regularly until the end of the day and to have died around noon while the Angelus was ringing .

The Kevelaer pilgrimage director Wilhelm Holtmann (1882-1949), elected by the Aachen cathedral chapter from a list of three ( Terna ) of the Vatican as successor to Vogt, was considered a potential critic of the regime and was rejected by the Reich government on the basis of Article 6 of the Prussian Concordat of 1929. As a sign of protest, on May 15, 1938, the Pope appointed the incumbent vicar capitular Hermann Josef Sträter as Apostolic Administrator of Aachen with the rights of a diocesan bishop. This did not require the consent of the Prussian government. Johannes Joseph van der Velden , who was elected the next Aachen bishop after Sträter's death in 1943 (and was accepted by the government) belonged to the Nazi-critical spectrum of the Aachen clergy and had personally suffered reprisals during Vogt's tenure as general director of the Catholic Volksverein, which was broken up in 1933 .

After the liberation, in January 1945, Bishop Velden spoke in retrospect - also on the role of Joseph Vogt - of a failure of the church during the Nazi era. There was a lack of courage for more active resistance, because: "The Church did not want martyrs."

Honors and memberships

Fonts

  • Church marriage law , Cologne 1902
  • Church property law , Cologne 1903
  • Intercourse with God , Regensburg 1921

See also

literature

Individual evidence

Note: All information that is not individually documented can be substantiated from the descriptions by Gregor Brands and Hermann-Josef Scheidgens in the literature section.

  1. ^ A b c Wolfgang Löhr: Hermann Josef Sträter (1866-1943), Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Aachen , in the Rheinische Geschichte portal of the LVR .
  2. ^ Robert A. Krieg: Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany. New York 2004, ISBN 0-8264-1576-8 , pp. 52f.
  3. ↑ Christoph Kösters: The German Catholic Bishops 1933-1945. In: the other, with Mark Edward Ruff (Ed.): The Catholic Church in the Third Reich. An introduction. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2011, pp. 79-91 (here: pp. 83f.).
  4. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: resistance map ) in the Rheinische Geschichte portal of the LVR , accessed on January 27, 2016.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.rheinische-geschichte.lvr.de
  5. ↑ Dietmar Süß : National Socialist Religious Policy. In: Christoph Kösters, Mark Edward Ruff (ed.): The Catholic Church in the Third Reich. Freiburg / B. 2011, pp. 50–63 (here: p. 56).
  6. ^ A b Christoph Kösters: The German Catholic Bishops 1933–1945. In: the other, with Mark Edward Ruff (Ed.): The Catholic Church in the Third Reich. Freiburg / B. 2011, p. 85.
  7. ↑ Jan Ross: Kabale und Triebe , in: Die Zeit 20/2002 of May 8, 2002; accessed on January 27, 2016.
  8. ↑ Dietmar Süß: National Socialist Religious Policy. In: Christoph Kösters, Mark Edward Ruff (ed.): The Catholic Church in the Third Reich. Freiburg / B. 2011, p. 53.
  9. ↑ Otto Kuss : The heroic image of Jesus in the present, in: Theology and Faith. Journal for the Catholic clergy. 26th vol. (1934), pp. 685-711.
  10. ^ The life picture of Wilhelm Holtmann in the Kevelaerer encyclopedia by Martin Willing.
  11. ↑ a b Wolfgang Löhr: Johannes Joseph van der Velden (1891-1954), Bishop of Aachen (1943-1954) , in the portal Rhenish History of the LVR .
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Burr (ed.): Unitas manual . tape 1 . Verlag Franz Schmitt, Siegburg 1995, p. 367 .

Web links

predecessor Office successor
- Bishop of Aachen
1931 - 1937 		Hermann Joseph Strater
Peter Carl Aloys Kreutzwald Cologne Vicar General
1918 - 1931 		Emmerich David
Arnold Middendorf Cologne Cathedral Provost
1930 - 1931 		Otto Paschen
personal data
SURNAME Vogt, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vogt, Joseph Heinrich Peter (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theologian, Bishop of Aachen
DATE OF BIRTH September 8, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Schmidt (Nideggen)
DATE OF DEATH October 5, 1937
Place of death Monschau