Maximilian Kolbe

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Maximilian Kolbe, 1939

Maximilian Maria Kolbe OFMConv ( Polish Maksymilian , born Rajmund Kolbe ; born January 7 or 8, 1894 in Zduńska Wola , Generalgouvernement Warsaw , Russian Empire ; † August 14, 1941 in the main camp of Auschwitz ) was a Polish Franciscan minorite , publisher and Publicist. He is venerated as a saint and martyr by the Catholic Church . Also the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and theAnglican Church , he is considered a memorable witness of faith. His feast day in the liturgy is August 14th.

In the interwar period , Kolbe did a lot of missionary work as a priest , which was stopped under the German occupation . In 1941 he was arrested and deported to Auschwitz , where he went to the hunger bunker for a fellow inmate and was murdered there. Pope John Paul II canonized him on October 10, 1982 .

Life

Origin and youth

Rajmund Kolbe grew up in a working-class family, he was the son of the German-born weaver Julius Kolbe and his wife Maria, née Dąbrowska. He had four siblings, two of whom died of tuberculosis . The father first worked as a factory worker in Łódź and from 1897 in Pabianice . He then ran a bookstore with religious literature. In 1914 Julius Kolbe joined the Polish Piłsudskis Legion , fought with the support of the Central Powers against the Russian occupiers in the former Congress Poland and was executed for it. Rajmund's brothers Joseph and Franz were also active members of a secret Polish organization aimed at liberating Poland from tsarist Russian rule . In the meantime, Kolbe toyed with the idea of ​​becoming a soldier as well. The mother ran a small shop and worked as a midwife at the same time. After the death of her husband, she became a Benedictine .

Rajmund Kolbe, who was found to have a talent for natural sciences at an early age , was very interested in physics in his youth ; after an apparition of Mary on September 4, 1910, he entered the order of the Friars Minor , where he took the name Maximilian Maria. His brother Franz also entered the novitiate there, but left it again some time later. In 1918 Maximilian Kolbe was ordained a priest in Rome .

Work and action

Candle on Maximilian Kolbe's death row, a gift from Pope John Paul II (2004)

Together with other Franciscans, Father Kolbe founded the Catholic organization Militia Immaculatae ("Knighthood of the Immaculate"), which built its own mission center after the end of the First World War : Niepokalanów near Warsaw . The Militia Immaculatae was primarily devoted to youth and press work and was characterized by a strong devotion to Mary . A Catholic press house was built in Niepokalanów, and it still exists today. In 1930 Maximilian Kolbe went on a missionary trip to Japan , where he founded other publishing houses, mission stations and several monastic communities. For his missionary work he also used the radio; from Niepokalanów radio activity took place under the amateur radio call sign SP3RN . After his return from Japan in 1936, Kolbe expanded Niepokalanów. After the German invasion of Poland , the city was occupied.

Positions

Kolbe was not only a staunch Catholic and was active in the resistance against National Socialism , but also an avowed anti-communist and opponent of Zionism and the Freemasons , whom he considered to be “an organized clique of fanatical Jews who want to destroy the Church”. He described Freemasonry as a “criminal mafia ” and international Zionism as “the hand that directs all of this to a clear goal”, which is why critics accuse him of hostility towards Jews up to the present day . As head of the press house, he was also responsible for anti-Semitic articles in the daily Mały Dziennik and in the monthly Rycerz Niepokalanej, which he founded in 1922 .

martyrdom

In December 1939, Father Kolbe and forty friars were arrested by the Gestapo , but were soon released again. He was arrested again on February 14, 1941; one of the main reasons was that in Niepokalanów he gave shelter to 2,300 Jews and other Polish and Ukrainian Greek-Catholic refugees.

He was taken to the Pawiak Central Prison in Warsaw and transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp in May of the same year , where he continued to work as a priest and pastor. On July 29, 1941, men were sorted out for murder in retaliation for the suspected escape of another inmate whose body was later found. When one of the men, Franciszek Gajowniczek , who had a wife and two sons, broke out into loud wailing for himself and his family, Father Kolbe asked the leader of the prisoner camp, Karl Fritzsch , to be allowed to take Gajowniczek's place. July 1941 locked in the notorious "hunger bunker" of Block 11 . There he prayed with his fellow sufferers and comforted them. On August 14th, Father Kolbe and three other convicts who had not yet starved to death were injected with phenol , injected by prison officer Hans Bock , killed and burned in the crematorium . Gajowniczek survived the concentration camp and died in 1995.

Significance and continued effect

Statue of Maximilian Kolbes (left) on the great west portal of Westminster Abbey
Special stamp of Poland on the occasion of Maximilian Kolbe's canonization in 1982

In 1971, Father Kolbe was appointed by Pope Paul VI. Beatified and canonized as a martyr by Pope John Paul II in 1982 . Franciszek Gajowniczek was present at both celebrations. The liturgical day of remembrance for Maximilian Kolbes in the Catholic and Anglican Churches as well as in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is August 14th.

A special honor for Kolbe is his acceptance as a martyr of the 20th century at the west portal of Westminster Abbey in London. The statues were inaugurated by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998 . The main entrance is on the west side. The portal is framed by depictions of the four Christian virtues Truth, Justice, Mercy, Peace and ten martyrs of the 20th century.

On May 28, 2006 Pope Benedict XVI visited , on July 29, 2016 Pope Francis put Father Kolbe's death row in Auschwitz. Maximilian Kolbe is the patron saint of journalists and radio amateurs (he himself was a radio amateur with the amateur radio call sign SP3RN) as well as the patron saint of the International Catholic Esperanto Association and the patron saint of the Commandery Father Maximilian Kolbe Frankfurt of the Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Numerous churches and schools are subordinate to his patronage . The Maximilian Kolbe House in Gdansk , a German-Polish youth meeting place, is also named after him.

Rolf Hochhuth dedicated his drama The Deputy to Maximilian Kolbe, the Auschwitz inmate No. 16670. The figure Riccardo Fontana, based on Maximilian Kolbe and the Berlin provost Bernhard Lichtenberg , has the same inmate number in the play. In the third act of the fifth act, Jacobson reports on Kolbe's death in the bunker.

In 2018 , a life-size, emphatically realistic statue of Kolbe was installed in a side altar of the Basilica of San Francesco in Ravenna , Italy , showing him in the robe of a Franciscan priest.

Film adaptations

Maximilian Kolbe factory

The Maximilian-Kolbe-Werk is a registered association that emerged from the encounter between a group of Christians from the German section of Pax Christi and former prisoners in Auschwitz in 1964. Official gestures of reparation, partial compensation or other benefits on the part of the federal government were not in sight at the time. The main idea of ​​this group was to express sympathy and solidarity with the victims of the German concentration camps. Despite the poor political relations between West Germany and the People's Republic of Poland , especially on the issues of displacement , displaced persons and communism , the Maximilian Kolbe Work was created in 1973 through a joint resolution of the Central Committee of German Catholics and 13 other Catholic associations.

Even then, Father Maximilian Kolbe was well known and admired in Poland. Alfons Erb , then Vice President of Pax Christi, was particularly active on the German side . The communication with and support of former concentration camp and ghetto prisoners from the then People's Republic of Poland and other countries takes place regardless of their religion, denomination or political worldview . The work also wanted to contribute to the reconciliation of the peoples. The work, largely supported by private donations, was able to use over 70 million euros in various areas since its foundation until 2013.

Maximilian Kolbe Foundation

The Maximilian Kolbe Foundation was established in 2007 by the general assembly of the Maximilian Kolbe factory with the consent of the German and Polish Bishops' Conferences. The international foundation has set itself the goal of making concrete contributions to the further development and promotion of reconciliation work in Europe. The German Bishops' Conference made available the unused funds from the compensation of forced laborers in church institutions during the Second World War . The Polish Bishops' Conference, underlining the common challenge, also made a substantial financial contribution to the establishment of the foundation.

Publishing house Hl. Father Maximilian Kolbe

The Catholic Scouts of Europe ran a publishing house in Langen in the 1990s , which was dedicated to the patronage of St. Maximilian was subordinated. SJM-Verlag , which has been based in Neusäß since 2004, took its place in the 2000s . It is run by the religious community of the servants of Jesus and Mary .

literature

  • Kinga Strzelecka: Maksymilian M. Kolbe. Live and die for others . With a foreword by Bishop Georg Moser. Freiburg – Basel – Vienna 1981.
  • Maria Winowska: St. Father Maximilian Kolbe - Knight of the Immaculate 1894–1941 . Lins, Feldkirch (reprint of the 1952 edition).
  • Jan Dobraczyński: Maximilian Kolbe . With a speech by Julius Cardinal Döpfner. Freiburg – Basel – Vienna 1979.
  • Franz Xaver Lesch, Meinrad Sehi: Father Maximilian Kolbe - life, work, beatification and canonization . Würzburg 1982, ISBN 3-429-00792-5 .
  • Walter Nigg: Maximilian Kolbe - The Martyr of Auschwitz . Herder, Freiburg 1982, ISBN 3-451-18966-6 .
  • Gianfranco Grieco: Maximilian Kolbe - His life . Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-429-02472-2 .
  • P. Karl Stehlin: The Immaculata - our ideal. The spirit of the Militia Immaculatae according to P. Maximilian Kolbe . Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-932691-45-8 .
  • Walter Heinrich: The hour of the pelican. The life story of Maximilian Kolbe. Novel . Diogenes, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-257-06714-9 .
  • Andreas Murk; Konrad Schlattmann: Maximilian Kolbe. Martyrs of Charity . Echter, Würzburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-429-03421-4 .
  • Christof Dahm:  Kolbe, Maximilian Maria (religious name), Rajmund (baptismal name). In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 4, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-038-7 , Sp. 327-331.  ( Article / beginning of article in the Internet archive )
  • Kinga Strzelecka: Maksymilian M. Kolbe. Live and die for others . With a foreword by Gerhart Streicher. St. Benno-Verlag GmbH, Leipzig 1982.

Web links

Commons : Maximilian Kolbe  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

supporting documents

  1. ↑ G. Fussenegger: Kolbe, Maximilian . In: Josef Höfer , Karl Rahner (Hrsg.): Lexicon for theology and church . 2nd Edition. tape 6 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1961, Sp. 370 .
  2. ↑ Christof Dahm:  Kolbe, Maximilian Maria (religious name), Rajmund (baptismal name). In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 4, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-038-7 , Sp. 327-331.  ( Article / beginning of article in the Internet archive )
  3. ^ Strzelecka: Maksymilian M. Kolbe. Live and Die for Others , p. 6.
  4. ^ Strzelecka: Maksymilian M. Kolbe. Live and Die for Others , p. 7.
  5. ↑ Strzelecka: Maksymilian M. Kolbe. Live and Die for Others , p. 7f.
  6. ^ Saint Maximilian Kolbe Radio Net. Retrieved October 30, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Reference date: August 14, 1941 - Maximilian Kolbe dies in the Auschwitz concentration camp. WDR 2 August 14, 2016, 9:40 a.m.
  8. ↑ Götz Aly : Europe against the Jews 1880-1945 . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2017, p. 261 f.
  9. ^ Visit of Pope Francis in Auschwitz on the Tagesschau website
  10. ^ Strzelecka: Maksymilian M. Kolbe. Live and die for others.
  11. ↑ Imprint of the SJM publishing house
personal data
SURNAME Kolbe, Maximilian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kolbe, Maximilian Maria (full name); Kolbe, Raimund (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish Franciscan minorite, martyr, saint
BIRTH DATE January 7, 1894 or January 8, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Zduńska Wola , Poland
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1941
PLACE OF DEATH Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp