Joseph Spillmann

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Father Joseph Spillmann, from the obituary, “ City of God ” , year 1906, page 255

Joseph Spillmann (born April 22, 1842 in Zug , † February 23, 1905 in Luxembourg ) was a Swiss writer and Jesuit .

Live and act

Joseph Spillmann was the son of a master tanner and mill owner. He grew up in Zug and attended grammar school there. After his father's death, he continued to run his business at the age of 15. A little later, in 1858, the mother died and the boy resumed his high school studies - also due to health problems; now at the Jesuit college in Feldkirch .

In 1862 Joseph Spillmann zu Gorheim entered the novitiate of the Jesuit order. He then came to the religious offices in Münster and Maria Laach . In 1870 he took part in the Franco-German War as a volunteer nurse and returned seriously ill in January 1871. Spillmann was with the German 1872 War Medal for non-combatants awarded and received in the same year his expulsion decree, since one part of the Kulturkampf the Jesuit order by virtue of the Jesuit law banned in Germany. So the young brother went to England and completed his studies at Ditton Hall near Liverpool . In 1874 he was ordained a priest in Wales.

Then the clergyman worked as a writer in Tervuren (Belgium), spent the period from 1876 to 1878 in England again and returned to Belgium. In Tervuren he worked as an editor of the Jesuit magazines "Der Hausfreund" , The Catholic Missions and Voices from Maria Laach . In "Hausfreund" he published numerous stories and from 1880 to 1890 he was the editor of the "Catholic Missions" . There he also wrote articles himself in the accompanying “supplements for young people” . His short stories were later published in book form, he also wrote several novels, mainly on church and missionary events and a very well-founded, 5-volume "History of the Persecution of Catholics in England" among the Tudors and Stuarts . His works have been translated into several languages.

Joseph Spillmann moved with the magazine editors from Tervuren to Blyenbeck , then to Exaten near Roermond and finally to Luxembourg . There he died in 1905 after a “short sick camp” , as the obituary states.

He was one of the most famous Catholic writers of his time.

Works

Book cover 1897
Book cover 1911
  • Lucius Flavus
  • The black shoemaker
  • The Yang brothers and the boxers
  • Love your enemies
  • The cross over Japan
  • Cross and Chrysanthemum - An Episode from the History of Japan; 2 volumes, Herder, Freiburg, 1902
  • The feast of Corpus Christi of the Chiquites
  • A victim of the confessional secret
  • The wonder flower of Woxindon
  • The train to Nicaragua
  • The shipwrecked
  • Over the South Seas
  • The sultan's slaves
  • The Marienkinder
  • Blessed are the merciful
  • The Queen's nephew
  • History of the Persecution of Catholics in England from 1535 to 1681 (5 volumes)
  • Brave and Faithful 1 + 2
  • For the life of a queen 1 + 2

literature

  • " City of God " : Obituary for the 1st anniversary of death, year 1906, page 255 (with picture).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The contemporary illustrated magazine "Stadt Gottes" names February 23 as the date of death, as does Kosch's German Literature Lexicon ( Deutsches Literaturlexikon (1930), Vol. II, p. 2527). In the Catholic Encyclopedia , however, the date of death is given as February 20.
personal data
SURNAME Spillmann, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss writer and religious
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1842
PLACE OF BIRTH train
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1905
Place of death Luxembourg