Petrus Legge

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Petrus Legge, Bishop of Meissen

Petrus Theodorus Antonius Legge (born October 16, 1882 in Brakel , Höxter district in Westphalia , † March 9, 1951 in Bautzen ) was a Roman Catholic clergyman and from October 28, 1932 to March 9, 1951, Bishop of Meissen . From November 1935 to March 1937, the National Socialist regime enforced his absence from his diocese in connection with criminal proceedings against him for foreign exchange offenses . Petrus Legge died in 1951 as a result of a traffic accident.

Life

Origin and family

Peter was the oldest of ten children of the brewer Stephan Legge and his wife Therese, née Nolte. He grew up with his three brothers and six sisters in Brakel, Westphalia. The family lived in Ostheimer Strasse 8 , where his parents had been running an inn since 1871. His brother Theodor Legge also became a Catholic priest. Both brothers later worked closely together several times in their different church functions.

School and study

Legge attended elementary school in his hometown, and later the rectorate school , until he passed the final exams at the Marianum grammar school in Warburg in 1903 . Legge then studied Catholic theology at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg and at the Archbishop's Theological Convict Collegium Leoninum in Paderborn . In Würzburg he became a member of the Catholic student association KDStV Markomannia Würzburg in the CV .

Priest, pastor and organizer

After completing his studies, Petrus Legge prepared for the priesthood at the Paderborn Collegium Leoninum. On 22 March 1907 he received in the Cathedral of Paderborn by Bishop William Schneider , the ordination . His first position was as vicar in the diaspora community of Gerbstedt in the Mansfelder Land , which belonged to the parish of Eisleben . In addition to pastoral care for the small number of local Catholics, he was responsible for looking after the predominantly Catholic migrant workers from Poland , who work there during the harvest and mostly had to live under unfavorable conditions. After four years in Gerbstedt Legge was on April 18, 1911. Kaplan to the provost parish of St. Francis and St. Elizabeth in Halle (Saale) appointed. In the city of Halle, too, the Catholics were only a minority and the community only had extremely limited economic and human resources. Here Kaplan Legge devoted himself to caring for the poor and again taking care of the Polish migrant workers employed there, in addition to the parish pastoral care. He also took care of those released from prison and was the contact person for the Catholic Girls Welfare Association in Halle. In addition, he was involved in student pastoral care and also took care of the social care of Catholic students at the University of Halle .

Since Petrus Legge distinguished himself through special pastoral care, a level-headed manner and great negotiating skills - also with government agencies - and was respected as a conversation partner by both Catholics and non-Catholics, Bishop Caspar Klein appointed him provost of the Saint Sebastian Church in 1924 Magdeburg and thus to the Episcopal Commissioner for the eastern part of the Diocese of Paderborn ; he was also given the office of dean of the Magdeburg dean's office. During his time in Magdeburg, Petrus Legge was responsible for administrative tasks in addition to pastoral care because of the offices he was entrusted with. This included the establishment of a large number of charitable institutions and the responsible participation in various associations and committees.

His work as the local leader of the preparation and organization of the 67th German Catholic Day in Magdeburg with around 40,000 believers in September 1928, at which the Apostolic Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, was also the representative of the Holy See in Germany, was of supraregional importance . participated. In June 1932, Provost Petrus Legge was appointed Dome of Honor in Paderborn.

Transfer of responsibility for the diaspora diocese of Meissen

Pope Pius XI appointed Petrus Legge Bishop of Meissen in September 1932. The episcopal ordination took place on October 28, 1932 by the Paderborn Archbishop Caspar Klein in the St. Sebastian Church in Magdeburg. His motto was Contra spem in spem credere . On November 8, 1932, Petrus Legge was solemnly introduced as the 44th Bishop of Meissen in the Cathedral of St. Petri in Bautzen - the then bishopric. He was thus responsible for pastoral and administrative responsibility for one of the poorest German dioceses, which at that time included around 200,000 Catholics - most of whom lived in the diaspora - and which consisted of 90 parishes with 169 priests.

Disabilities during the Nazi era

For obvious political reasons, Bishop Legge was accused by the National Socialists of the unauthorized transfer of a large amount of Reichsmark to the Netherlands as a prohibited "foreign currency shift abroad". It was about the repayment of a loan taken there before his time to finance the diocese. He was arrested on October 9, 1935, spent several weeks in custody and on November 23, 1935, the criminal chamber at the Berlin Regional Court sentenced him to a fine of 100,000 Reichsmarks for "negligent currency shifting". After this conviction, Bishop Legge was banned from staying in the Diocese of Meißen in “exile” in the Diocese of Paderborn from December 1935 to March 1937, preventing him from exercising his office as Bishop of Meißen. He was in his hometown of Brakel. On the part of the NSDAP in Saxony , he was defamed as a " pest of the people " and tried to prevent his return to his diocese as a bishop. The then nuncio in Germany also expressed concerns about Legge's return to the diocese of Meißen. Heinrich Wienken , who was favored by the Nazi regime, was appointed by the Vatican as coadjutor with the right of succession to represent the absent diocesan bishop. After negotiations between the church and the Nazi government, Bishop Legge was able to return to his diocese at the end of March 1937. He then appointed his representative Wienken as vicar general .

After his return, Petrus Legge tried to avoid open confrontations with the Nazi regime. However, he came under criticism of the NSDAP because of pastoral warnings to the congregations in his episcopal letter pastoral in a serious time of September 15, 1939. In this pastoral word he had made his rejection of war clear. As a "traitor to the people" he was exposed to spying, interrogation and threats by the Gestapo . In the following years he tried with great personal commitment through pastoral words and religious instructions in the various parishes of his diocese with reference to the Bible the contrast between the "Kingdom of God" promised by Jesus Christ to his disciples and the "Kingdom of Satan" - In terms of contemporary history, the Nazi “ Third Reich ” in particular was meant here - to make the Catholics of his diocese obvious.

Towards the end of the war, he instructed his pastors to stay with their parishes. After Bautzen had been evacuated on May 4, 1945, initially remained in exile in Schirgiswalde and only came to the Bautzen Cathedral for the festivities on Corpus Christi and the day of the diocese patron Benno. It was not until June 26 that Legge finally returned to Bautzen and, according to his own statements, "well recovered".

After the war, Bishop Legge et al. a. in his pastoral letter of September 1, 1945, publicly and unencrypted, his assessments of the war triggered by Hitler's Germany and its consequences as well as the suppression function of the Gestapo over the past few years. He supported the referendum in 1946 on expropriation in Saxony.

Death and burial

On December 28, 1950, on the way back from the funeral of the Berlin Archbishop Konrad Cardinal Graf von Preysing , Bishop Legge, his companion Domkapitular Hötzel and the driver of their car on a slippery road in Lübben in the Spreewald suffered an accident in which the driver was immediately killed . At first, Bishop Legge appeared to be only slightly injured. However, as a result of the accident in March 1951, he suffered two consecutive strokes , to which he ultimately succumbed. Bishop Legge was buried in the Nikolaifriedhof in Bautzen with great sympathy . The solemn requiem was held by Paderborn Archbishop Lorenz Jaeger , who paid tribute to the deceased in his mourning address as a "great prayer and bearer of the cross". Among the mourners were the Saxon Prime Minister, Max Seydewitz , and the head of the main department for connection to the churches in the government chancellery of the GDR, Kurt Grünbaum , as well as the executive chairman of the Saxony State Association of the CDU , Magnus Dedek , as well as other representatives of the public from town and country.

Awards and recognitions

  • 1932 honorary citizen of the city of Brakel
  • 1962 Street name "Petrus-Legge-Weg" in the district of Heinefeld
  • 1962 Name giver for the municipal "Petrus-Legge-Gymnasium", which from 2020 was integrated into the new Brakel comprehensive school

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Residence ban
  2. ^ Report of the church newspaper
  3. ↑ Approval of the referendum
  4. ^ Neue Zeit , March 16, 1951, p. 2
personal data
SURNAME Legge, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Legge, Petrus Theodorus Antonius (full name); Legge, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German clergyman, Catholic bishop of Meissen
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Brakel , Höxter district
DATE OF DEATH March 9, 1951
Place of death Bautzen