Otto Faller

Father Otto Faller SJ as Provincial (photo 1951)

Otto Faller (born February 18, 1889 in Saig ; † May 16, 1971 in St. Blasien ) was Provincial of the German Jesuits , rector and director of the colleges of Stella Matutina (Austria) and St. Blasien (Germany), patrologist at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and editor of the works of the Doctor of the Church Ambrose of Milan . Otto Faller worked on the preparation of the dogma of the bodily acceptance of Mary into heaven. In the late years of the war he led a new papal aid organization for the needy and refugees.

Life

The first years

Otto Faller was born on February 18, 1889 in Saig above Titisee in the Grand Duchy of Baden . Despite considerable opposition from his family and his disinheritance because of this step, he joined the Jesuit order at the age of 21, which had been banned in Germany since the Kulturkampf . He studied theology in Tisis and Valkenburg aan de Geul . After completing his philosophical and theological studies, he began studying classical languages ​​in Vienna and Münster . Otto Faller completed two doctorates , in theology and philosophy . In 1918 he was in Feldkirch for priests ordained. In 1924 he began teaching at the Stella Matutina in Feldkirch.

Feldkirch and St. Blasien

Stella Matutina

At the request of Jesuit General Wladimir Ledochowski , Otto Faller was to take over the management of the magazine Voices of the Time in Munich . However, he stayed in Feldkirch, from where he led the negotiations with the Berlin government about recognition of the Stella Matutina college as a German school abroad. In 1929 he became director of both grammar schools there. After the National Socialists seized power in Germany, the German Reich government tried to put Austria under pressure with the thousand-mark barrier . This meant that the transfer of pension funds from Germany was no longer guaranteed for the foreseeable future. The previous director of studies P. Otto Faller (1929–1934) managed the school move and became the school director in the new college in St. Blasien in the Black Forest. Confronted with the opposing educational ideals of National Socialism, the order had to close the school under Nazi pressure as early as 1939 .

Roman years

Otto Faller went to Rome , where Jesuit General Wladimir Ledóchowski entrusted him with a professorship for patrology at the Gregoriana, and made him superior of the Scriptorium, the residence of Jesuit scholars. Together with Monsignor Baldelli and Monsignor Egger he was from Pope Pius XII. instructed to set up a papal aid organization The Pontificia Commissione Di Assistenza worked closely with Madre Pascalina Lehnert , who directed a papal magazine and Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, later Paul VI. , together. Given the increasing refugee problem, especially in Italy, Faller headed the new papal refugee program with Baldelli and Egger until 1946. Despite considerable efforts, the Pope's wish to establish a papal fleet to bring refugees from Europe to America and food and consumer goods from America to Europe could not be met, as both sides did not want to guarantee the safety of neutral ships.

Jesuit Provincial

After the war, Faller returned to his destroyed homeland and opened against the original will of his superiors, but with the energetic support of Pope Pius XII. and Madre Pascalina the St. Blasien college for the second time , which he headed as rector and school director until 1951. As a long-time headmaster, he had experienced the state's sovereignty over private schools several times. In 1949 he founded an alliance of Catholic, Protestant and free religious private schools with the aim of preserving the freedom of education in the constitution and the school laws. For these successful efforts Otto Faller received the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class from the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany through his student Minister Heiner Geißler . The foundation of an old school student association, the Stellanervereinigung e. V. was suggested by him in 1949.

In 1950, the Jesuit General Jean-Baptiste Janssens appointed him Provincial of the Upper German Order Province, which at that time had about 450 members and co-administered Kerala , India and parts of Indonesia . As a provincial, he continued to advocate private school law. In 1954 he gave the order to start a social institute of the Jesuit order in order to better research and disseminate Catholic social teaching . The Heinrich-Pesch-Haus in Mannheim was opened by him on January 18, 1956. One of his concerns was the beatification of Father Rupert Mayer , for whose trial he sent the necessary documentation to Rome in 1951 and supported it there. After only five years, Pope Pius XII. appointed Father Mayer, who died in 1945, to be God's servant . After a heart attack, Otto Faller resigned from his office and from 1957 devoted himself to the text-critical edition of the church father, Ambrosius CSEL in Vienna. Otto Faller died in the St. Blasien college on May 16, 1971.

plant

In addition to his publication on the Assumption of Mary in Heaven, Ambrose of Milan was his main interest.

Assumption of the Virgin Mary

During Faller's time in Rome, the theological preparation of the dogma of the Assumption of Mary was made. Since the first centuries were silent on this, there was a need for explanation. Pius XII. asked the patrologist Faller to investigate this subject. In 1946 Otto Faller published his work De Priorum Saeculorum Silentio circa Assumptionem BMV (On the Silence of the Early Centuries for the Admission of the Blessed Virgin Mary), for which Pope Pius XII. and Montini awarded with handwriting and a papal gold medal. Faller's publication did not answer all of the open questions, however, and he himself did not take up this topic later.

Ambrose of Milan

Ambrose of Milan, mosaic in St. Ambrogio, Milan

Otto Faller began his research on Ambrosius as early as the 1920s. His early writings examine the authenticity of certain texts and parts of it, such as Ambrose's baptism. Pope Pius XI , a great Ambrose connoisseur and former director of the Ambrosiana, commissioned him to continue the Ambrosius edition at Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) and, if possible, to complete it. He has almost succeeded in doing this, with the exception of the very important prolegomina of his last volume, the letters from Ambrosius, the absence of which may lead to possible misinterpretations.

Publications

• S. Ambrosii, De virginibus (= Florilegium Patristicum tam veteris quam medii aevi auctores complectens , Vol. 31). Peter Hanstein Verlag, Bonn 1933.
• De Priorum Saeculorum Silentio circa Assumptionem B. Mariae Virginis . Universitas Gregoriana, Rome 1946.
• Ambrosius, Explanatio symboli, De sacramentis, De mysteriis, De paenitentia, De excessu fratris Satyri, De obitu Valentiniani, De obitu Theodosii (= CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 73), Vienna 1955.
• Ambrosius, De fide ad Gratianum Augustum (= CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 78). Vienna 1962.
• Otto Faller, Ambrosius, De spiritu sancto, De incarnationnis dominicae (= CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 79). Vienna 1964.
• Ambrosius, Epistulae et acta , Vol. 1: Epistularum libri I-VI (= CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vol. 82/1). Vienna 1968.
• Word index to the writings of St. Ambrose. Preparatory work for a Lexicon Ambrosianum: word index to the writings of St. Ambrosius . Adapted from the Otto Faller collection by Ludmilla Krestan. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1979, ISBN 3-7001-0307-7 .

Other smaller writings, especially from the years 1922 to 1939, can be found in various specialist journals and in the voices of the time .

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Faller in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography at LeoBW

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Biographical information in: Otto Faller: S. Ambosii: De virginibus . Bonnae Sumptibus Petri Hanstein, 1933.
2. ↑ Klaus Schatz SJ: "Voices of the Time" in the Church Conflict. An intra-Jesuit dispute 80 years ago Voices of the time . In: Voices of the Time , Vol. 224 (2006), Issue 3, pp. 147–161.
3. ↑ Otto Faller: The history of the college 1934–1959 . In: 25 Jahre Kolleg St. Blasien , pp. 20–25, here p. 21.
4. ↑ Kolleg St. Blasien (ed.): Kollegbrief 1939 , St. Blasien 1939.
5. ↑ Primo Mazzolari: La carita del Papa , Turin 1991.
6. ↑ Primo Mazzolari: La carita del Papa , Turin 1991, p. 107.
7. ↑ partially described in: Pierre Blet: Pius XII and the Second World War , p. 228.
8. ↑ Otto Faller: The history of the college 1934–1959 . In: 25 Jahre Kolleg St. Blasien , pp. 20–25, here p. 25.
9. ^ Stellaner news. Announcements for the members and friends of the Stellaner Associations , September 1967.
10. ↑ Jesuiten , Styria, 1953, No. 1, p. 10.
11. ^ 50 years of Heinrich Pesch Haus , Mannheim 2006.
12. ^ Anton Körbling, Rupert Mayer, Regensburg, p. 204.
13. ^ Badische Zeitung, May 17, 1971.
14. ↑ Kolleg St. Blasien (ed.): Kollegbrief 1950 , St. Blasien 1950, picture insert .