Odilo Braun

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Odilo Braun OP (born November 18, 1899 in Danzig as Leo Stanislaus Braun ; † August 9, 1981 in Braunschweig ) was a Dominican priest and from 1941 to 1945 was a leading member of the "Committee for Religious Affairs" of the German Bishops' Conference , one of the most important Catholic resistance groups against the National Socialist regime.

Life

Leo Braun came from a large family of craftsmen; his father later worked as a sexton in Danzig. From 1912 he attended the municipal grammar school in Gdansk, but had to leave it after four years in order to contribute to the family's livelihood. He worked at the Imperial Shipyard in Gdansk in the workshop office of the submarine company and also did his military service there from 1916 to 1918.

After the end of the First World War, he again attended high school from 1920 to 1923, but began a commercial apprenticeship in shipping and forwarding in 1923. He later became head of a branch in unemployment welfare at the Senate of the Free City of Gdansk. In 1924 Braun, previously a member of the Bund New Germany , joined the Normannsteiners , a progressive split from the Bund New Germany.

Odilo Braun joined the Dominican Order on October 22, 1926 and was given the religious name Odilo . After a novitiate in Venlo, he studied theology in Walberberg , Düsseldorf and Leuven (Belgium) from 1928 . On February 24, 1933 he was ordained a priest in Cologne Cathedral . He worked as a people's missionary and from 1936 took over the management of the Albertus Magnus publishing house in Vechta (Oldenburg) until it was closed by the Gestapo . He was also editor of the order's own mission magazines The Apostles and Marienpsalter . He was warned in 1937 for comments critical of the regime.

In 1938 he became a provincial counsel in Cologne. In 1940 he succeeded Ansgar Sinnigen as general secretary of the Association of Superiors (SV) in Berlin, an association of the higher superiors of missionary orders. In 1941 he enforced their self-dissolution in order to forestall a ban. In the underground, the “Committee for Religious Affairs” was newly constituted, to which Fathers Augustin Rösch  SJ, Lothar König  SJ, Laurentius Siemer  OP, the lawyer Georg Angermaier as representatives of the laypeople and some members of the Fulda Bishops' Conference such as Konrad Graf von Preysing and Johann Baptist Dietz belonged to. A pastoral letter , which addressed the human rights violations of the Nazi dictatorship in particular, was prevented by the veto of Cardinal Adolf Bertram ; only the “Decalogue Pastoral Letter” was read out in 1943.

Like the other committee members, Braun had contact with various resistance groups. Josef Wirmer and Alfred Delp SJ made his Berlin apartment available as a meeting point. Braun took part in a "memorandum" calling on the German generals to undertake a military coup and to eliminate Hitler. After the unsuccessful July assassination attempt on Hitler, he was arrested on October 27, 1944 and taken to the Gestapo prison on Lehrter Strasse in Berlin. Despite the torture, no confession could be obtained; he was released on February 12, 1945. He then accepted a position as a prison chaplain in Berlin, which he kept until 1958.

On the recommendation of Cardinal Preysing , he was appointed by the Allied Control Council from 1944 to 1948 as chairman of four denazification commissions .

From 1950 to 1953 he looked after refugees from the Soviet occupation zone as a pastor at the Katholisches Notwerk Berlin . From 1953 he looked after the refugee camp in Berlin and from 1960 to 1964 the refugee camp in Uelzen . In Holxen he founded the Catholic parish "Maria Rast". In 1976 he built a house in Braunschweig to rehabilitate young people.

Odilo Braun was a member of the board of trustees of the " Aid Agency July 20, 1944 " foundation . He was particularly committed to public memorial events and was the initiator of the annual church services in the former Plötzensee execution site .

Most of his estate is in the archive for Christian-Democratic Politics of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung Sankt Augustin.

Father Odilo Braun had been a member of the Catholic Academic Association KAV Suevia Berlin in the CV since 1953 .

On August 9, 1981, Father Odilo Braun died in Braunschweig. His grave is located near the priests' graves in the Catholic cemetery in Braunschweig.

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personal data
SURNAME Braun, Odilo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Braun, Odilo OP; Braun, Leo Stanislaus (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German religious and resistance fighters
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1981
Place of death Braunschweig