Julius Dinder

Julius Dinder as a priest

Heraldic shield of the Primate Poloniae ,
Archbishop Julius Dinder

Julius Dinder (born March 9, 1830 in Rößel ; † May 30, 1890 in Posen ) was the first and only German Archbishop of Gniezno and Primate of Poland .

Life

Dinder, whose father was a master tailor, first attended the Progymnasium in Rößel after elementary school and then graduated from the grammar school in Braunsberg . After studying theology at the Lyceum Hosianum in Braunsberg, he was ordained a priest in 1856. Since he also spoke the Polish language, he first got the Polish-speaking chaplain in Bischofsburg , then the pastor in Großlienen , and in 1868 he became provost in Königsberg in Prussia . Because the Königsberg provost was also responsible as pastor for the few Catholics in Samland , Dinder had to look after a very large community, and he was also the military pastor for Königsberg and Pillau .

After the proclamation of the dogma of infallibility by the 1st Vatican Council , there was considerable tension within the Catholic communities in Königsberg, as some became independent as Old Catholics . In 1876 Dinder even had to leave “his” provost church in Königsberg to the Old Catholics.

In 1886 Dinder was appointed Archbishop of Gnesen-Posen with the seat in Posen. In this double diocese, German speakers, who were also predominantly Protestant, were only a minority, the majority consisted of Catholic Polish speakers, Masurians and Kashubians . Polish speakers did not want to come to terms with a German-speaking archbishop. The Polish-speaking provost Jadzewski, who was a member of the German Reichstag, even put it: "The dinder will be fetched by the flayer".

But Dinder did not receive any special support from the Prussian state either, the Prussian minister of education Goßler called Dinder a politically "dubious" and in the sense of the state of affairs "insecure" bishop.

Since 1875 Dinder supported the newly founded Catholic student union Borussia in the KV and became its honorary member, Dinder remained closely connected to the KV until his death.

Dinder died after a long and serious illness, in the end he was almost completely blind. His tenure as Archbishop of only four years left no significant marks in Poznan, his successor in office was again an ethnic Pole in Florian Stablewski .

Dinder's grave is located in Poznan Cathedral , his gravestone was designed by Władysław Marcinkowski .

literature

• Siegfried Koß in Siegfried Koß, Wolfgang Löhr (Hrsg.): Biographisches Lexikon des KV. 2nd part (= Revocatio historiae. Volume 3). SH-Verlag, Schernfeld 1993, ISBN 3-923621-98-1 , p. 30 f.
• H.Neubach: Julius Dinder - the only German Archbishop of Gnesen-Posen in: Yearbook Weichsel - Warthe, 1965
• H. Preuschhoff: Bad advice? Government grades for bishops of Warmia In: Our Warmth Home, 1977
• Hermann Cardauns : Fifty Years of the Cartel Association (1913)