Kurt Dehne

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Father Kurt Dehne SJ (born May 30, 1901 in Hanover ; † March 2, 1990 in Münster ) was a German Roman Catholic priest and Jesuit and an opponent of National Socialism .

Life

Kurt Dehne came from a Catholic family of doctors and grew up in Hanover. At the request of his father, he began after the High School at the local Goethe-Gymnasium , a medical school in Freiburg , which he broke off after a short time at the University of Muenster , a theological studies to begin. On April 29, 1924, he joined the Jesuit order in ’s-Heerenberg, the Netherlands . He continued his studies in the religious house in Valkenburg aan de Geul , where he was ordained a priest on August 27, 1932 after the second year of study . He made his last vows in 1939.

After a homiletic training, Dehne was employed in the speaker team of the Düsseldorf Order House in 1935 and entrusted with regular lectures on current ideology issues, which led him to many pulpits in Germany. Because of his criticism of the church policy of the Nazi regime, the Gestapo banned him from speaking in 1939 .

Thereupon Dehne was appointed spiritual and professor for rhetoric and ascetics at the Philosophical-Theological University of Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt am Main . In 1939, after a denunciation by a theology student, he was arrested by the Gestapo for copying sermons and letters from the Münster bishop, Clemens August Graf von Galen , and sent to the Dachau concentration camp on December 26, 1943 , where he suffered liver damage . In April 1945 he was liberated by American soldiers .

After the Second World War, Dehne worked in his hometown of Hanover, where, as superior, he led the reconstruction of the order's branch in Hildesheimer Strasse. By acquiring a neighboring property, he expanded the building complex and the Friedrich von Spee-Haus was created , an apprentice and student residence and the spiritual center of the city.

From 1945 until his retirement in 1989, Dehne was, among other things, male pastor in the diocese of Hildesheim and police pastor for Lower Saxony .

The Jesuit spent his old age in the order's own nursing home Haus Sentmaring in Münster. He was buried in the cemetery in the park of the home, where the street preacher Father Johannes Leppich, known as the “machine gun of God”, found his final resting place.

Honors

Father Dehne's work has been recognized by numerous high awards from the federal government, the state and the diocese.

Fonts

  • Fate or redemption (= questions of time 159). Bercker, Kevelaer 1936.
  • Is Religion Possible Without God? Verlag Gebr. Steffen, Limburg an der Lahn 1937.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Georg Aschoff, Thomas Scharf-Wrede (Ed.): Catholic in Hanover (see literature).
personal data
SURNAME Stretch, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German priest
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1990
Place of death Muenster