Klemens Maria Hofbauer

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Portrait relief of Klemens Maria Hofbauer in the church of St. Klemens in Triberg (bronze sculpture by Wolfgang Eckert )
Klemens Maria Hofbauer (painting by P. Rinn)

Klemens Maria Hofbauer (born December 26, 1751 in Taßwitz , South Moravia , † March 15, 1820 in Vienna ) was a Czech-Austrian priest , preacher and member of the Redemptorist Order . He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church and is the patron saint of Vienna (called the Apostle of Vienna ). Until 1945 he was also the patron saint of South Moravia.

Life

Hofbauer was born as one of twelve children of the Bohemian cattle breeder and butcher Pavel Dvořák and the German mother Maria (nee Steer, of rural origin) and baptized with the name Johannes. The father, who immigrated to South Moravia, changed his name to a German-speaking one on the occasion of the wedding, with Hofbauer being an equivalent of Dvořák. Klemens Maria Hofbauer lost his father at the age of six.

The house in Znojmo where Klemens Maria Hofbauer worked as a baker
150th anniversary of Hofbauer's death: Austrian postage stamp from 1970
Bust of Hofbauer near the Minorite Church in Vienna

As a child he was an altar boy in the local parish church. Since his mother could not finance a priestly training, he first became a baker's apprentice in Znojmo at the age of 16 . After completing his apprenticeship, he managed to get a job in the Premonstratensian Monastery of Klosterbruck , which enabled him to attend the local monastery school. During this time he made three pilgrimages to Rome and went to the Hermitage .

In 1780 he came to Vienna as a baker. As part of another pilgrimage to Rome in 1783, he took the name of Clement Maria as a hermit with the consent of Barnabà Chiaramonti, Bishop of Tivoli and later Pope Pius VII , and led it from then until his death.

After returning to Vienna, he was finally able to begin studying theology at the University of Vienna , where he met his friend Thaddäus Hübl in 1784 , with whom he made the acquaintance of the Redemptorist Order in Rome. The two entered and were ordained a priest on March 29, 1785 in Alatri ( Latium ) , only to be sent to the empire to set up a settlement . Due to the prevailing Josephinism , this undertaking turned out to be extremely difficult, whereupon they went to Poland-Lithuania , where in 1787, at the request of the nuncio, the parish of St. Benno in Warsaw was made available by King Stanislaus Poniatowski . Hofbauer and his friars founded a school for the poor , a handicraft school for girls and an orphanage there . Foreign language masses were read in the church .

Via Schaffhausen he came to Jestetten , where he saved the Berg Tabor monastery from decline and founded his own community; Here in 1805 a delegation of believers from Triberg asked him to take over the pastoral care of the pilgrimage church Maria in der Tanne , which he did from May to mid-August 1805.

The first mercy on him tuned Ignaz Wessenberg , vicar general of the diocese of Constance and representatives of the idea of a national church had become at this time to his bitter opponent, partly because he let consecrate three of his theology students in Lucerne by the Papal Nuncio to the priesthood; a petition brought no change, so that he had to leave Triberg and his school in Berg Tabor was closed. He tried to continue working in Babenhausen (see his house in Gänsberg 2 ) and to establish a foundation, but the minister and enlightener Maximilian von Montgelas prevented this and so he returned to Warsaw in January 1807.

Thaddäus Hübl died of typhus in 1807 , and in 1808, after Marshal Devoust Napoleon had previously written a negative report about the Redemptorists in a letter, the Redemptorists were expelled from there on Napoleon's orders , Hofbauer returned to his home in Vienna via Küstrin .

As a chaplain and rector with the Ursulines , he dealt with religious renewal in Vienna. In the Sankt Ursula Church he became so well known for his sermons that he was nicknamed the Apostle of Vienna . He was spied on by the police because his sermons in their peasant, coarse manner attracted the masses and he thus set himself in opposition to the state doctrine of Josephinism . At this time he maintained close contact with German romantics such as Clemens Brentano , Joseph von Eichendorff and Friedrich von Schlegel .

The politician Josef von Penkler (1751–1830) and the Canon Joseph Anton Siegmund von Beroldingen (1738–1816) were among his most notable supporters.

Klemens Maria Hofbauer died of exhaustion in his room at the age of 68.

funeral

Hofbauer's body was originally buried in the " Romantic Cemetery Maria Enzersdorf " near Mödling . He could no longer experience that the Redemptorists were re-admitted by Emperor Franz I on April 19, 1820 , and that the Church of Maria am Gestade was handed over to the Congregation. In the course of the beatification process, on November 4, 1862, his remains were transferred to this church as relics . His grave was initially adorned with a gravestone (1859–1862) by Josef Gasser .

In 1987 the sculptor Oskar Höfinger created a marble reliquary altar, which contains a reliquary with the remains of the Hofbauer. The grave slab from 1862 was then placed on the wall in the immediate vicinity. The grave in Maria Enzersdorf still exists today.

  • Memorial plaque at the Romantic Cemetery in Maria Enzersdorf, Lower Austria

  • Grave in the romantic cemetery in Maria Enzersdorf, Lower Austria

  • Gravestone by Josef Gasser , 1859–1862, Maria am Gestade Church, Vienna

  • Reliquary altar by Oskar Höfinger, 1987, Maria im Gestade church, Vienna

Adoration

St. Klemens Maria Hofbauer as the patron saint of Vienna; Painting by August Wörndle von Adelsfried
Church window in the parish church of Liesing by Martin Häusle

Pope Leo XIII. beatified him on January 29, 1888, on May 20, 1909 he was canonized by Pius X. He has been the (second) city ​​patron of Vienna since 1914 and the second patron of the Catholic Journeyman's Association since 1913.

In 1894 the Clemens-Hofbauer-Platz in Vienna- Hernals was named after him.

Using his inheritance, Clemens August Graf von Galen donated the Church of Saint Clemens Maria Hofbauer in Berlin, which was consecrated in 1911, just two years after Hofbauer was canonized .

A Catholic church has been consecrated to him in Happurg (Kuratie Pommelsbrunn, Greater Nuremberg Area). Many expellees from Bohemia and Moravia found a new home in this village after the Second World War and consecrated their new Catholic church to St. Clement Maria Hofbauer. The church was consecrated in 1972.

Clemens Maria Hofbauer was elected patron of the Triberg town church in 1958 . During the renovation of the city church in 2005, the entrance area was redesigned by the sculptor Elmar Hillebrand and the painter Clemens Hillebrand with themes from the life of Clemens Maria Hofbauer.

Remembrance day

literature

Web links

Commons : Klemens Maria Hofbauer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joachim Schäfer: Klemens Maria Hofbauer. In: Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints . November 28, 2019, accessed March 16, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Josef Heinzmann: Klemens Maria Hofbauer 1751–1820, Apostle of Vienna - Life and Work: Called by Name - Called a Priest (1751–1785). In: cssr.at. May 13, 2001, accessed March 16, 2020 .
  3. ^ Deceased in Vienna on March 15, 1820. In:  Wiener Zeitung , March 20, 1820, p. 3 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wrz
  4. ↑ Clement M. Hofbauer - Stadtaptron Vienna: certificate of appointment. (jpg, 97 kB) In: redemptoristen.com. January 14, 1914, archived from the original on July 14, 2015 ; accessed on March 16, 2020 . Klaus Graf: Museum for the (second) Viennese city patron Klemens Maria Hofbauer. In: twoday.net. January 11, 2014, accessed March 16, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Diethard H. Klein: The great house book of the saints. Munich, 2000.
personal data
SURNAME Hofbauer, Klemens Maria
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hofbauer, Clemens Maria; Hofbauer, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian preacher, member of the Redemptorist Order and patron saint of Vienna
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1751
PLACE OF BIRTH Taßwitz , South Moravia
DATE OF DEATH March 15, 1820
Place of death Vienna