Louise Beck

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the actress with a similar name, see Luise Beck .

Louise Beck with her family (seated right)

Louise Beck (born April 19, 1822 in Altötting ; † August 9, 1879 in Gars am Inn ) was a Bavarian ecstatic and visionary who, with her instructions from the afterlife, exercised considerable influence on religious superiors and high dignitaries of the Catholic Church in Bavaria.

Life

Louise Beck was the fifth and youngest child of Altötting forensic doctor and pharmacist Benno Beck. The neurotic woman believed she was gifted with vision and claimed to have visions of guardian angels, poor souls and saints. After completing an apprenticeship with the Sisters of Mercy in Burghausen , she returned to Altötting at the age of 19. Since 1843 she had a close relationship with the young Protestant Count Clemens von Schaffgotsch , who made her pregnant in 1847. The pregnancy ended in stillbirth. During this time she suffered from somnambulistic symptoms and a severe nervous fever . There was a wound on her left breast. At the same time she stated that she was tormented by demons . She revealed to the Superiors of the Altöttinger Redemptorists - monastery P. Franz von Bruchmann , who then repeatedly with two other priests an exorcism undertook her. Then the demons are said to have disappeared.

Instead, a figure of light appeared to the visionary allegedly since 1848, who announced herself as the deceased wife of Father Bruchmann and gave instructions for this and other superiors of the Redemptorists, which Louise wrote down or orally in an ecstatic state. The beyond guidance was called the Higher Leadership by the initiates . They called the woman Bruchmann, who led from the other side, the mother . Louise Beck was the name of the child , the followers of the secret cult called themselves children of the mother .

A circle of followers soon formed: superiors of the Redemptorist Order and a few lay people, including Louise Beck's relatives, Bertha von Pranckh , sister of the Bavarian Minister of War Siegmund von Pranckh, and Princess Leopoldine von und zu Löwenstein , an aunt of the Catholic leader Karl Heinrich zu Löwenstein . Both women were Louise's constant companions and donors. From the beginning of 1848 the Archbishop of Munich and later Cardinal Curia Karl August von Reisach and his Vicar General Friedrich Windischmann were under the leadership of the seer, also in questions of church politics. In 1872 the Regensburg bishop Ignatius von Senestrey submitted to the guidance of his mother's conscience, who ordered him to obtain the condemnation of the writings of his predecessor Johann Michael Sailer in Rome , a project that failed. Since 1858 Louise Beck was under the guidance of Father Carl Ehrhard Schmoeger , who became known through his publications about Anna Katharina Emmerick . She herself had close contact with the ecstatic Maria von Mörl since 1858 . In 1862 she and her two companions moved into a wing of the Gars am Inn monastery , which the Redemptorists had acquired a few years earlier and where their soul guide Schmöger had been transferred. When she died on August 9, 1879, Senestrey said he no longer knew how to run the diocese.

literature

• Otto Weiß : The Redemptorists in Bavaria (1790–1909). A contribution to the history of ultramontanism (Munich Theological Studies, I. Hist. Abt., Vol. 22). Eos Verlag, St. Ottilien 1983, ISBN 3-88096-122-0 .
• Otto Weiß: Instructions from the beyond? The influence of mystical phenomena on the leadership of orders and churches in the 19th century. Pustet, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7917-2389-1 .
• Otto Weiß: The power of the Seer from Altötting. Belief in ghosts in 19th century Catholicism . Verlagsgemeinschaft topos plus, Kevelaer 2015, ISBN 978-3-8367-1054-1 ; E-Book (PDF), ISBN 978-3-8367-5051-6 ; E-Pub, ISBN 978-3-8367-6051-5 .
• Article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on December 9, 2011: I see your soul. The story of Louise Beck .

Web links

• Louise Beck and Ignatius von Senestréy ( Memento of February 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive )