Michael Schulien

Michael Schulien SVD (born May 21, 1888 in Losheim am See ; † May 4, 1968 in Rome ) was a Catholic priest , Steyler missionary , ethnologist and apostolic visitor to Saarland from 1948 to 1956.

origin

Michael Schulien's father Jakob was a committed Catholic, came from Losheim am See in northern Saarland, but moved to Altenkessel near Saarbrücken to work as a miner . He made it possible for his son Michael to enter the mission house of the Steyler missionaries in St. Wendel .

Training with the Steyler Fathers

Michael Schulien joined the Steyler Mission's St. Wendel training center, which had opened two years earlier in 1901, at which students were prepared for the priesthood and which enabled a good education compared to regular schools. At a time when it was a colonial power, knowledge of language, geography and science were important for planned assignments abroad. After six years, Schulien moved to the St. Gabriel Mission House in Mödling near Vienna , where he studied philosophy and theology from September 14, 1908.

There he had first contact with Father Wilhelm Schmidt ( SVD ), a well-known lecturer in ethnology of his time. This had made in Mödling ensure that the study of missiology by the subjects linguistics and anthropology has been expanded. On September 29, 1912, Schulien was ordained a priest .

Missionary Service in Mozambique

The Society of the Divine Word (Societas Verbi Divini) , SVD, was active in the Zambezi Mission in the Portuguese colonial area of Mozambique after the Jesuits were expelled there. As was common with missionaries at the time, Shulien began this activity without much preparation. In autumn 1913 he was in Koalane , near Quelimane , to prepare to run a catechist school. During this time he got to know the people and the language of the Atchwabo . After Portugal entered the war against Germany in 1916, Schulien was interned and later brought to Portugal. After the end of the war, he tried to return to the Portuguese colony, but was refused.

In Germany

Schulien was transferred to the mother house in Steyl , where in 1922 he briefly took over the management of the family magazine of the community, the city ​​of God . In the same year he began in Leipzig at the local University of the Studies in Social Anthropology, religious studies and linguistics and a doctorate in 1924 on the initiation rites of Atchwabo girl.

In the Vatican

Pope Pius XI planned a major mission exhibition for the holy year 1925. For the ethnological part, a commission under Father Wilhelm Schmidt was commissioned, who called Michael Schulien to Rome to help. The world mission exhibition showed evidence of dying ancient cultures and also exhibits of Christian faith. After only two months, the Pope declared that he wanted to set up a "Missionary Ethnological Museum" for the permanent exhibition in the Lateran . Father Schulien took over the design as Schmidt's assistant. Under Schulien's direction, the museum published the journal Annali Lateranensi (from 1962 Annali del Pontificio Museo Missionario-Ethnologico ), on June 19, 1939 Michael Schulien was appointed scientific director of the museum. He also taught at the Lateran College from 1931 to 1943.

He then taught at the Pontifical University Urbaniana with lectures on comparative religion and African linguistics . This was followed in 1938 by the appointment to assess and advisor to the Papal Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith . After his return from Saarland, Pope Johannes XXIII called him . to the Preparatory Commission for Mission Issues of the Second Vatican Council . Under Pope Paul VI. he worked as a member of the secretariat for non-Christians.

Apostolic visitor to the Saar Protectorate

After the Second World War , the predominantly Catholic Saar protectorate was established. The declared aim of the French occupying power was to establish its own diocese from the territories that had previously belonged to Trier and Speyer . As early as 1923, a Saar bishopric was being discussed in the French National Assembly .

Two of Pius XI. Sent visitors from the interwar period, Gustavo Testa and Giovanni Panico , wanted to maintain the organizational connection between the Saar area and the German dioceses and to wait for the final clarification of international law after the Second World War . However, Paris demanded the appointment of a permanent representative of the bishops of Trier and Speyer in Saarbrücken . A first step was to be taken towards the separation of the Saarland from Germany.

The Archbishop of Trier, Franz Rudolf Bornewasser , spoke out against an annexation to France in a pastoral letter of Palm Sunday 1947. The ambassador of France then negotiated slowly with Giovanni Battista Montini (later Paul VI.) And Domenico Tardini about the establishment of an apostolic administration . At the beginning of 1948 the Vatican was ready to appoint Father Michael Schulien, a Saarland native, to this office.

On May 12, 1948 Schulien was by Pope Pius XII. but not appointed administrator but apostolic visitor . The church thereby emphasized the provisional status on the Saar. France saw this as a defeat. Montini , the Apostolic Nuncio (and later Pope John XXIII), who knew Schulien personally, were involved in the preceding negotiations on behalf of the Vatican State Secretariat, as well as Angelo Roncalli in Paris .

On July 2, 1948, Schulien started work and was received by Prime Minister Johannes Hoffmann . First he lived at his old training facility in the St. Wendel Mission House before he was given a house rented by the Saarland government at Am Staden 16 in Saarbrücken. He used a diplomatic car with a Vatican number. Since he could not exercise any administrative authority as a visitor, he could only advise, observe and report due to a lack of official authority. He mediated between the fronts on the Saar question, which also ran through families. As an ethnologist, however, he was also of the opinion that the Saarlanders were and should remain Germans.

The vote on October 23, 1955 on the second Saar Statute went in favor of the reintegration of the Protectorate into the Federal Republic. The Saarland became a federal state of Germany and remained ecclesiastically in the dioceses of Trier and Speyer. At the end of September 1956 Schulien therefore left the Saarland and returned to Rome to continue his work in the Curia and in the Mission Museum. He could no longer witness the reopening of the museum, which was closed in 1963, as a section of the Vatican Museums . Schulien died on May 4, 1968 and was buried in the Vatican on Campo Santo Teutonico .

literature

• Wolfgang Kiefer:  Schulien, Michael SVD. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 29, Bautz, Nordhausen 2008, ISBN 978-3-88309-452-6 , Sp. 1318-1324.

Web links

• Literature by and about Michael Schulien in the catalog of the German National Library
• Michael Schulien in the Saarland biographies