Paul Maria Baumgarten

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Cover of the memoir, 1927

Paul Maria Baumgarten (born July 25, 1860 in Elberfeld , † December 29, 1948 in Neuötting ) was a German Catholic priest , historian and diplomat .

Live and act

Baumgarten was the son of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother. Baptized as a Protestant under the name Moritz Julius Maximilian Paul Baumann, he converted to the Catholic Church as a pupil. In Montabaur he attended until 1880, the high school, then studied until 1884 law in Bonn , Marburg and Breslau and a doctorate in Göttingen for Doctor of Law . Since his studies he was a member of the Catholic student associations KDStV Bavaria Bonn , VKDSt Rhenania Marburg , KDStV Winfridia Breslau and KDStV Badenia Strasbourg .

On the advice of the priest historian Johannes Janssen , Paul Maria Baumgarten began to study history in Berlin in 1885. In 1887, the Roman Institute of the Görres Society , located at Campo Santo Teutonico , asked him to work on a historical project. There he made friends with Father Heinrich Denifle and helped him and the director of the Campo Santo Teutonico, Monsignor Anton de Waal , with their historical research.

In 1888 Pope Leo XIII ordered the German historian to the papal chamberlain . At that time, in the immediate vicinity of the Pope, the decision to become a clergyman matured in Baumgarten. In 1890 he joined Leo XIII at the special request. into the academy of noble clerics , as this was due to him as a chamberlain. He completed his studies at the Gregorian , on February 17, 1894 he was ordained priest in the Lateran Basilica . Sebastian Kneipp , who was visiting Rome with Baumgarten's brother Alfred, his closest medical assistant in Wörishofen , also took part in the ceremony and the first mass of the following day . The famous audience was held on February 21, in which Kneipp had to examine the Pope and which was re-enacted in the 1958 feature film Sebastian Kneipp - The Water Doctor. Paul Maria Baumgarten, as chamberlain, had to lead Pastor Kneipp to the Pope and acted as interpreter at the private audience. He later recorded the events in detail in his memoir "Roman and Other Memories" (pages 265-297).

From then on Paul Maria Baumgarten stayed in Rome as a scholar and historian. Here he researched in particular in the Vatican Secret Archives and in the Vatican Library . He wrote many treatises on church history. Together with the priest Joseph Schlecht (1857–1925), Baumgarten published between 1899 and 1902, on behalf of the Austrian Leo Society , the three-volume monumental work The Catholic Church of Our Time and its Servants in Word and Image . The three volumes contain a wealth of information as well as an enormous number of historical photos and are sought-after sources on church history today.

Above all, however, Baumgarten examined people and authorities of the Roman Curia. He also intended to write a study of the papal authorities and documents of the late Middle Ages and therefore collected notes over several decades in numerous archives about the external characteristics of around 10,000 documents of the Popes of Innocent III. until Pius IX. , especially about the office notes . When he finally left Rome , he handed the "note box" with his handwritten notes on 8643 loose pieces of paper over to the Vatican Archives . As Schedario Baumgarten , his collection of materials was published between 1965 and 1986 by the Roman paleographer Giulio Battelli (volumes 1 and 2) and the Vatican archivist Sergio Pagano (volumes 3 and 4) in the form of a four-volume facsimile edition and has been an important reference work for historians ever since and paleographers. The Austrian historian Heinrich Appelt , member of the Central Directorate of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica , praised in a review of the first volume of Schedario Baumgarten work Battellis (and Baumgarten) as a "Forschungsbehelf, it the only one of its kind."

Baumgarten had regular contact and scientific exchange with Paul Fridolin Kehr . This close relationship between a Roman monsignor and a Prussian professor was not judged positively everywhere.

“A correspondent famous for his shrewdness saw us together in Rome and combined that black alliance, which has even received attention in the German daily press and has found believers in certain circles. There are people in Berlin who really seem to believe that we conspired so that Monsignor Baumgarten would become Pope and I would become Emperor of America. "

- Paul Fridolin Kehr (1902)

In 1907 he gave the young artist Ottmar Begas the opportunity to paint Pope Pius X up close. The portrait is now in the Begas Haus Heinsberg , the museum for art and regional history in Heinsberg.

In 1924 Baumgarten returned to Germany and settled in Neuötting, where he died in 1948.

Fonts (selection)

  • Roman and other memories , Neue-Brücke-Verlag Düsseldorf 1927
  • Studies and documents about the Camera Collegii Cardinalium for the period from 1295 to 1437 , Giesecke & Devrient. Leipzig 1898
  • The Pope, the government and the administration of the Holy Church in Rome with a detailed biography of Pope Pius X. , Allg. Verl.-Ges. Munich 1904
  • Constitution and organization of the church , Kösel, Kempten - Munich 1906
  • From the Apostolic Chancellery. Studies on the papal tabellions and the Vice Chancellors of the Holy Roman Church in the XIII., XIV. And XV. Century Bachem, Cologne 1908 (Publications / Görres Society for the Care of Science in Catholic Germany, Section for Law and Social Science; 4)
  • The Vulgate Sistine of 1590 and its introductory bull. Documents and investigations Aschendorff, Münster i. W. 1911 (Old Testament treatises; 3.2)
  • New reports of old Bibles with numerous contributions to the cultural and literary history of Rome at the end of the sixteenth century , Rome 1922

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ NWPAR: Standesregster district Elberfeld, mayor Elberfeld, births of 1860, Serial No. 1,157th.
  2. ↑ Heinrich Appelt: Schedario Baumgarten. Descrizione diplomatica di bolle e brevi originali da Innocenzo III a Pio IX. Riproduzione di Giulio Battelli. Vol. I (1198 to 1254) . Review. In: Institute for Austrian Historical Research, communications; Innsbruck74 (Jan 1, 1966): 198.
  3. ↑ Paul Fridolin Kehr, older papal documents in the papal registers , in Nachrichten der Göttinger Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 1902, issue 4, p. 401 note 1 (reprinted papal documents in Italy III, 1977, p. 375.)
  4. ↑ Website on the creation of the Pope's portrait ( memento from February 6, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
personal data
SURNAME Baumgarten, Paul Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Catholic priest, historian and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 1948
Place of death Neuötting