Korbinian Aigner

Korbinian Aigner , called the apple pastor (born May 11, 1885 in Hohenpolding , † October 5, 1966 in Freising ), was a Bavarian Catholic pastor and pomologist .

Life

Aigner was born on the Poldingerhof in Hohenpolding in the Erding district in Upper Bavaria . As the eldest son, he was the heir to the court, but turned down his inheritance in favor of his ten siblings in order to become a priest.

School and study time

From 1891 Aigner attended elementary school in Hohenpolding. In the fall of 1896 he switched to the archbishopric high school in Freising . In 1904 he was not transferred due to insufficient performance in Greek and Latin . Aigner took this as an opportunity to switch to the Luitpold-Gymnasium in Munich . With the support of the director Georg von Orterer , Aigner was able to easily pass his Abitur in the summer of 1906.

On November 2nd of the same year he entered the seminary in Freising and began studying theology .

Aigner became interested in fruit growing at an early age, and on August 15, 1908, he and the Weber Franz Hausladen founded the Hohenpolding Fruit Growing Association in Hohenpolding . On the day it was founded, 44 members joined the association and elected Aigner as its first chairman. In the following year, Aigner's association was subsidized by the Bavarian state with 1,000 marks. This amount enabled the association to set up a wine press. The building of this cider cellar is still used today by the Hohenpolding volunteer fire brigade as a clubhouse.

After the ordination

In the summer of 1911, Aigner was ordained a priest by Archbishop Franziskus von Bettinger . His first Mass celebrated Aigner in Hohenpolding. In the summer of the same year he was sent to Ilmmünster as coadjutor and at the same time appointed as a teacher at the boys' seminar in Scheyern Abbey . There were among others Alois Hundhammer , Josef Schwalber and Josef Martin Bauer for his students.

Aigner's career led him to Grafing near Munich in 1916 as coadjutor and to Haimhausen in 1921 in the same position . In 1925 he was appointed as a cooperator in Söllhuben and one year later in Dorfen for over five years . In July 1931 he was promoted to vicar in Sittenbach . There he was appointed pastor on August 19, 1931.

During these years, Aigner was out and about every free minute to give lectures on fruit growing and to advise interested parties. When he was elected President of the Upper Bavaria Fruit and Horticultural Association in 1930 , he began to publish more in the association's magazine.

Arrest and concentration camp

In addition to fruit growing, Aigner was also very interested in daily politics. In 1916 he joined the Bavarian Center Party. In 1923, out of interest, he attended an NSDAP event and heard a speech by Adolf Hitler there . Since that time he fought against National Socialism . In his sermons in particular, he took a clear stand and resisted. Some fines were imposed on him, and in January 1937 Aigner was transferred to Hohenbercha near Freising.

Aigner used the assassination attempt by Georg Elser on November 8, 1939 as an opportunity to speak about the Fifth Commandment ( you should not kill ) in religious education on November 9 . The sentence “I don't know whether this is sin is what the assassin had in mind. Then maybe a million people would have been saved ”. This quote from Aigner was reported to the local group leader of Hohenkammer , Münsterer, by his colleague (a line-loyal auxiliary teacher) Charlotte Gerlach on November 12th . On November 22nd, Aigner was arrested and taken to Freising prison.

The indictment was a violation of § 2 of the Treachery Act of December 20, 1934. On May 7, 1940, Aigner was sentenced to seven months' imprisonment and taken to the Stadelheim prison. Since his pre- trial detention had been credited to him , he was released on June 23, 1941 and deported to the Dachau concentration camp . From there he was on 12 September as prisoner no. 32779 into the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . There he almost died of pneumonia. A bon mot from Aigner is rumored about it: "I'm not doing you a favor, to die up there in Prussia."

On October 3, 1941, he was transferred to Dachau as inmate No. 27,788 and housed there in the priests' block. In Dachau he did his forced labor mainly in agriculture . He planted apple trees between two barracks, and he even succeeded in breeding the new varieties KZ-1, KZ-2, KZ-3 and KZ-4. Of these varieties, only the KZ-3 variety remained until 2016.

On the night of April 26-27, 1945, Aigner had to march to South Tyrol with around 10,000 prisoners . He was able to flee on April 28 in Aufkirchen am Starnberger See and hide in the local monastery .

After the war

After the end of the war, Aigner returned to his community in Hohenbercha as a pastor. There he devoted himself again to his great passion, apples. He procured apples of all the apple varieties available to him and painted two apples of each variety side by side in postcard size. The result was an extensive photo documentation that was exhibited in dOCUMENTA (13) . The pictures are part of the archive of the Technical University of Munich .

In October 1945 he was elected regional chairman of the Bavarian State Association for Fruit and Horticulture and held this office for five years.

In September 1966 he fell ill with severe pneumonia and died at the age of 81 on October 5, 1966 in the Freising Hospital. He found his final resting place in the cemetery in Hohenbercha.

Honors

Korbinian apple

Korbinian Aigner was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit and the Bavarian State Medal in Gold.

The KZ-3 variety, which has been bred to this day, was officially christened Korbiniansapfel in 1985 for Aigner's 100th birthday .

On June 28, 2010, the Erdinger district council decided to name the Erding II grammar school after Aigner.

Aigner's apple pictures were exhibited at the dOCUMENTA 13 art exhibition in 2012. The artist Jimmie Durham and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev planted a Korbinian apple tree and an Arkansas Black Apple tree in the Karlsaue in Kassel . Both trees create a connection between German history and Durham's childhood in Arkansas .

In 2013 three Korbinian apple trees were planted at the memorial for the victims of the euthanasia murders during the Nazi era in Berlin-Buch, Hobrechtsfelder Chaussee 150 (formerly Dr. Heim Heilstätten).

See also

• List of pomologists

Publications

• Apples and Pears: The Complete Works. Edited by Judith Schalansky . Verlag Matthes & Seitz Berlin, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-88221-051-4 .

literature

• “The apple pastor reaps the thanks of the fruit growers. Korbinian Aigner is one of the most famous Bavarian fruit growers. “Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 224 of September 18, 1958, 11.
• The “apple pastor” Korbinian Aigner: the gallery in Munich's town hall showed the life's work of this “pomologist” and former prefect in Scheyern (1912/16). In: Der Scheyrer Turm 49 (1992), 15-16.
• Ulrich Chaussy: The poetry of agriculture: the life of the apple pastor Korbinian Aigner. Munich (Bayerischer Rundfunk, Land und Menschen) 1994. 17 pp.
• Hans Niedermayer: The apple pastor Korbinian Aigner: cathedral high school student, pastor, pomologist, concentration camp prisoner. In: Annual report (Dom-Gymnasium Freising) 1996/97, 8–30.
• Gesche Cordes, Christian Mürner: Apples: Instructions for handling a delicacy, the apple pastor Korbinian Aigner. European Publishing House, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-434-50526-1 .
• Peter J. Brenner: Korbinian Aigner. A Bavarian pastor between church, orchard and concentration camp . Bauer, Thalhofen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95551-017-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Korbinian Aigner in the catalog of the German National Library
• Josef Hofstetter after Hans Niedermayer: Hohenpolding: History of the “apple pastor” August 24, 2011 (PDF; 1.4 MB), biographical summary (with picture) on the website of the Hohenpolding community.
• Bernt Engelmann, Gisela Wunderlich: Korbinian Aigner. A Bavarian village pastor between fruit growing and high treason . Presentation of a film documentary, tasca films munich, 2004.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Vanessa Loewel: Died 50 years ago - pastor and apple scientist Korbinian Aigner. Deutschlandfunk , October 5, 2016, accessed on October 5, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Who preached to the apples . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , July 17, 2013, p. 29.
3. ↑ Holdings: Korbinian Aigner . Archive of the Technical University of Munich , accessed on October 5, 2016.
4. ↑ Korbinian Aigner . Information on the documenta13 website, June 2012, page 99.
5. ↑ https://bildhauersymposion.jimdo.com/
6. ↑ Dirk Hohnsträter: Nature customers . Review of the book “Apples and Pears” on Inventur-blog.de, September 9, 2013.