Lorenz Werthmann

Postage stamp from 1954 from the series Helpers to Mankind

Postage stamp for the 150th birthday in 2008

Lorenz Werthmann (born October 1, 1858 in Geisenheim ; † April 10, 1921 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a Catholic priest and social politician . Lorenz Werthmann was the founder and first president of the German Caritas Association .

Life

Lorenz Werthmann was born in Geisenheim and attended high school in Hadamar . He studied at the Collegium Germanicum in Rome and was awarded a Dr. phil. and Dr. theol. PhD . In 1883 Lorenz Werthmann was ordained a priest in Rome. After a short stint at Frankfurt Cathedral , Werthmann became secretary to Bishop Peter Josef Blum in Limburg an der Lahn . He also took the same position with his successor Christian Roos . When he was elected Archbishop of Freiburg in 1886 , he followed him and built up the Caritas Association from there in 1895. As a clergyman, he was given the title of “ Papal Secret Chamberlain ” and “Archbishop's Clergyman Council ”. On November 9, 1897, Werthmann founded the Caritas Association for Catholic Germany (DCV) in Cologne , which has been known as the German Caritas Association (DCV) since 1921 .

It was Werthmann's concern to provide an appropriate answer to the social needs and misery of his time. "Organizing, studying, publishing" were the three central tasks that he wrote in the Caritas Association's record book:

• For Werthmann, “organizing” meant, instead of individual actions, the bundling of strengths and the creation of aid networks with the resulting synergy effects.
• For the founder, “studying” meant that Caritas (lat., Charity) “is not just an exercise in a warm heart”, but “a science, an art”, which means that it requires professional competence and professional rationality.
• Werthmann linked “publishing” with the goal of creating “general Caritas awareness”.

Werthmann published publications, he was responsible for the magazine Caritas with its first edition in 1895 until his death in 1921. He was a member of the KDSt.V. Arminia Freiburg im Breisgau in CV and since 1898 in the Association of Scientific Catholic Student Associations Unitas . Werthmann was an advocate of German colonialism , which he represented in several speeches for the purpose of the Heidenmission, and he was also a member of the Association for Germanism Abroad . In 1914 the management of the Raphaelsverein was transferred to Werthmann, as a result of which its main office was relocated from Limburg to Freiburg and remained there until it was relocated to Hamburg in 1921.

The DCV headquarters in Freiburg has had Werhmann's name since 1924. In September 2007 the Werderring in Freiburg was renamed Werthmannstrasse. Previously there was a Werthmannplatz , which was renamed “Platz der Universität”. In the Cologne district of Lindenthal , Werthmann's work was also honored by naming a street. On October 9, 2008, a special stamp worth 55 cents was issued to commemorate his 150th birthday .

Fonts

• The seriousness and magnitude of the current world hour , Caritas Buchhandlung Freiburg 1914
• Fifty years of the Raphaelsverein for the protection of Catholic German emigrants and the impending flood of emigrants in the new Germany. Caritas-Verlag Freiburg i.Br. 1919.

literature

• Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 1: Social politicians in the German Empire 1871 to 1918. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-038-6 , p. 171 ( online , PDF; 2.2 MB).
• Wilhelm Liese : Lorenz Werthmann and the German Caritas Association . Freiburg i.Br .: Caritas Verlag 1929
• Karl Borgmann: Lorenz Werthmann: speeches and writings , Freiburg i. E.g. Lambertus Verlag 1958
• Hans-Josef Wollasch: Lorenz Werthmann. In: Jürgen Aretz / Rudolf Morsey / Anton Rauscher (ed.): Contemporary history in life pictures. Volume 4, Mainz 1980, pp. 79-91.
• Hans Josef Wollasch: Werthmann, Lorenz, founder of the German Caritas Association (DCV) . In: Hugo Maier (Ed.), Who is who of social work . Freiburg i.Br. 1998, pp. 622-624
• Manfred Hermanns : Worldwide service to people on the move. Advice and welfare for emigrants from the Raphaels factory 1871–2011 . Friedberg 2011.
• Konrad Hilpert :  Werthmann, Lorenz. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 13, Bautz, Herzberg 1998, ISBN 3-88309-072-7 , Sp. 890-895.

Web links

Commons : Lorenz Werthmann  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Lorenz Werthmann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Portrait of Lorenz Werthmann
• Lorenz Werthmann Prize

Individual evidence

1. ↑ cf. Board of the Caritas Association for Catholic Germany: "Caritas", magazine for the works of charity in Catholic Germany, published by the Board of the Caritas Association for Catholic Germany, 16th and 17th year from October 1910 to September 1912 , Freiburg i. Breisgau, 1911, book title page
2. ↑ Heiko Wegmann: Dr. Lorenz Werthmann and its colonial downsides. In: freiburg-postkolonial.de. October 2008, accessed December 31, 2017 . 
3. ↑ Our story. In: raphaelswerk.de. Accessed December 31, 2017 . 
4. ↑ Konrad Adenauer and Volker Gröbe: Streets and squares in Lindenthal , JP Bachem, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-7616-1018-1 , p. 163f.