Joseph Roth (priest)

Joseph Roth (born August 2, 1897 in Ottobeuren , † July 5, 1941 near Rattenberg , Tyrol ) was a Catholic priest and ministerial conductor in the Reich Ministry of Churches .

Life

Joseph Roth came from a very Catholic family and grew up in Munich . His father was the master brewer Joseph Roth. His two brothers Leonhard (1904–1960) and Franz (1899–1985) also became Catholic priests. From February 1, 1917, he took part in the First World War. He became a non-commissioned officer and aspiring officer. After the war he began to study theology at the universities in Munich and Passau.

At this time he already had connections to ethnic and anti-Semitic circles, for example he was a member of the student association of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and joined the Oberland Bund in 1919 . Contacts with the NSDAP also existed from the beginning of the 1920s. In 1923, Roth was the author of the work published by Franz-Eher-Verlag : “The Church and the Jewish Question”.

In 1922 he was ordained a priest and he took on a church function in Indersdorf . In 1924 he became a catechist at the Church of St. Ursula (Munich) and in 1925 a chaplain. On January 1, 1934, Roth changed from church service to a full-time job for the NSDAP: He was appointed to a class council and was employed as a religion teacher at a National Socialist educational institution for national politics (Napola). There he proved himself so much that in August 1935 he was appointed to the newly constituted Reich Church Ministry (RKM). Here he developed u. a. his polemic against the Reich Concordat from a National Socialist perspective, in which he a.o. a. could agree with Catholic theologians close to the state like Hans Barion . On April 1, 1936, Roth was promoted to Ministerial Counselor.

Roth was in close friendship with the priest Albert Hartl , who was suspended from the Catholic Church in 1934 and who was the department head for political churches in the SS Security Service (SD). In contrast to Hartl, Roth was never reprimanded by his church for his Nazi activities.

Roth, a member of the SA since 1934 , headed the Catholic department in the RKM from 1937 and was promoted to ministerial conductor in 1939. In 1938 the Committee for Religious Law was formed at his suggestion . Roth was also a member of the Reich Institute for the History of New Germany , where Roth represented the Reich Church Minister Hanns Kerrl .

In July 1941, Roth spent his vacation in Tyrol and drowned on a boat trip.

Fonts

• The Catholic Church and the Jewish Question . In: Research on the Jewish question , Vol. 4, Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt 1940, pp. 163–176.

literature

• Kreutzer, Heike: The Reich Ministry of Churches in the structure of the National Socialist rule. Düsseldorf 2000 (= publications of the Federal Archives, Volume 56).
• Denzler, Georg: Resistance is not the right word. Catholic priests and theologians in the Third Reich. (with a chapter on Joseph Roth) Zurich 2003
• Marschler, Thomas, Canon law under the spell of Carl Schmitt. Hans Barion before and after 1945. Bonn 2004. ISBN 3-936741-21-2 .
• Kevin Spicer: Hitler's Priests. Catholic Clergy and National Socialism. Dekalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press 2008, published in Association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . (Updated 2nd edition).
• Ludwig Brandl:  ROTH, Josef. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 8, Bautz, Herzberg 1994, ISBN 3-88309-053-0 , Col. 742-744.

Web links

• Literature by and about Joseph Roth in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 510.
2. ↑ Review.
3. ↑ Review.