Laurenz Schmedding

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Laurenz Hubert Schmedding (born August 6, 1894 in Senden ; † March 21, 1972 in Warendorf ) was a German Catholic clergyman and imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp .

Life

Laurenz Schmedding was the son of a teacher. He graduated from high school in Münster , studied Catholic theology at the Borromäum seminary there and was drafted into military service in 1915, from which he was only released on February 7, 1919. On December 18, 1920 he was ordained a priest from Bishop Johannes Poggenburg in Münster Cathedral . Two months later he was sent for a year to the Polish Śrem (dt .: Srem ), there to learn the Polish language. From March 1922 he was able to acquire this language skills on his first job as chaplain in Gladbeck at the parish church Use the Holy Cross in the pastoral care of the numerous immigrant Polish miners and their families. From April 1925 he worked as a spiritual teacher at the girls' high school St. Ursula in Dorsten , where soon after 1933 he came into conflict with the National Socialist regime because he refused to advertise the BDM to his students or to display the swastika flag on the tower of the St. Hang up Ursula. In 1939 he was transferred to the Collegium Augustinianum Gaesdonck near Goch as a teacher . When this was converted into a military hospital in 1942 , he returned to Dorsten as rector of the Ursuline monastery church . Although he was already under surveillance by the Gestapo , he devoted himself to the forbidden pastoral care of Ukrainian forced laborers and carried out intensive church youth work.

Because of an excursion with schoolgirls to Marienthal , he was taken into protective custody by the Gestapo on August 6, 1943 , initially imprisoned in the prison in Münster and on November 19, 1943 sent to the pastor's block of the Dachau concentration camp. There he was released on April 10, 1945 without giving any reason.

From 1946 until he retired, Schmedding worked as a clergyman at the Laurentianum grammar school in Warendorf.

literature

  • Christian Frieling: priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp. 38 biographies. Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung Münster 1992, ISBN 3-402-05427-2 , p. 166f.
  • Bernhard Frings, Peter Sieve: Forced laborers in the diocese of Münster. Church action in the field of tension between work, pastoral care and nursing. Dialogverlag Münster, 2003, p. 158. ISBN 3-933144-64-7 .
  • Ulrich von Hehl (Ed.): Priest under Hitler's terror. A biographical and statistical survey. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh Paderborn 1996³, Bd. II, Sp. 1087. ISBN 3-506-79839-1
  • Gregor Schwake : Monk behind barbed wire. Memories of the Dachau concentration camp. Aschendorff Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-402-00210-8 .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ Christian Frieling: Priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp . Aschendorff, Münster 1993, p. 166.
  2. ^ Christian Frieling: Priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp . Aschendorff, Münster 1993, p. 167.
personal data
SURNAME Schmedding, Laurenz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmedding, Laurenz Hubert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Catholic clergyman and imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH August 6, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Send
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 1972
Place of death Warendorf