Limburg Seminary

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Limburg Seminary
Seminary Limburg.jpg
address Weilburger Str. 16
65549 Limburg an der Lahn
state Hesse
country Germany
carrier Diocese of Limburg
Rain Dr. Christof May (since September 2018)
Website URL Diocese of Limburg: seminary
The Limburg Seminary (photo from the 1930s)

The Limburg seminary in Limburg an der Lahn is an institution of the Diocese of Limburg for the training of Catholic priests, deacons and pastoral and community officers.

history

After the founding of the Limburg diocese as the Nassau "regional bishopric " in 1827, the diocesan seminary was founded in 1829 in the former Franciscan monastery of Limburg (today the episcopal ordinariate ) for practical training in the year before the ordination according to the provisions of the papal bull Ad dominici gregis custodiam . The tradition before secularization was followed, when seminarians from the areas on the right bank of the Rhine studied under the Trier Vicar General Ludwig Joseph Beck, who resided in Koblenz, in the Franciscans' editing department there from 1797.

The name Seminarium Wilhelmianum referred to the sovereign, Duke Wilhelm I of Hesse-Nassau. Initially, the ducal government strove to establish a faculty for Catholic theology at the University of Marburg together with the Electorate of Hesse. Bishop Jakob Brand supported these plans because he wanted to enable the seminarians to attend a university. The framework conditions were laid down in the Frankfurt Treaty of December 30, 1830 between the two states. However, since the Electoral Hesse diocese of Fulda was not included in the plans and the state government wanted to oblige the professors to the anti-Roman Frankfurt church pragmatics and to prevent any official supervision of the faculty by the bishops, the establishment of this faculty failed. Instead, the temporary expansion of the seminary into an independent theological faculty began, which began teaching in 1831 with three young professors and 17 seminarians. Brand refused to be placed at the universities of the Upper Rhine ecclesiastical province because he feared that the polemics there against celibacy would have an adverse effect on the seminarians.

After the death of Bishop Brand, the faculty was given up again and the seminarians studied at the theological faculty of the University of Giessen from 1838 . Under Bishop Blum, the cooperation with the diocese of Mainz was further expanded. In 1876 the seminar was dissolved in the Kulturkampf . The Limburg seminarians now studied in Bavarian dioceses and were incardinated there, which led to a great shortage of priests in the diocese of Limburg. The seminary was reopened in 1887 and from then on the seminarians studied at the theological faculty in Fulda. Efforts to re-establish a theological faculty in Limburg were unsuccessful for financial reasons, although a seminar building fund was set up.

The plans were changed by the repeal of the Jesuit laws in 1917. This enabled the Jesuits to establish branches in Germany. Provincial Ludwig Kösters therefore looked around for an opportunity for such a seminar. This opportunity arose in the diocese of Limburg, where the diocese was entitled to set up a full seminar through a state church treaty. Initially, it was planned to set up this as a faculty at the newly founded University of Frankfurt am Main . However, since this was a donor university, the church would have had to bear the costs in full, which the diocese of Limburg was unable to do. After the war, contact was made with the Jesuit order and plans were made to set up a Jesuit faculty in Frankfurt. The plan to affiliate this faculty with the University of Frankfurt was dropped in the process. Teaching began in the winter semester of 1925/26. The number of seminarians grew rapidly: 84 in 1928, 123 in 1928 and 260 in 1934 in Frankfurt-Sankt Georgen.

At the same time a new seminar for the practical year was set up in Limburg. The building complex that still exists today outside the historic town center was built in 1929–31 according to plans by Dominikus Böhm and Hans and Christoph Rummel .

Training and organization

Since 1965 the permanent deacons and parish officers have also been trained in the Limburg seminary . Today it serves as a conference center. Part of the building houses the Limburg diocesan library . The priestly candidates of the Diocese of Limburg are currently studying in the supra-diocesan seminary of Sankt Georgen and at the Philosophical-Theological College there . Since 2002 the practical training of the priestly candidates has taken place in cooperation with other dioceses. The two-year pastoral course that follows the study of theology takes place in the seminary of the Archdiocese of Hamburg .

literature

  • A. Paulus: The general external development of the episcopal seminary in Limburg in Nassau times , Limburg 1964.

Web links

Commons : Limburg Seminary  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Klaus Schatz: History of the Diocese of Limburg , Mainz 1983, p. 56.
  2. ^ Klaus Schatz: History of the Diocese of Limburg , Mainz 1983, pp. 61–62.
  3. ^ Klaus Schatz: History of the Diocese of Limburg , Mainz 1983, pp. 91–94.
  4. ↑ Klaus Schatz: History of the Diocese of Limburg , Mainz 1983, p. 180.
  5. ^ Klaus Schatz: History of the Diocese of Limburg , Mainz 1983, pp. 202–203.
  6. ^ Klaus Schatz: History of the Diocese of Limburg , Mainz 1983, pp. 236–243.
  7. ↑ a b Diocesan Library
  8. ↑ a b Press report Introduction Strüder

Coordinates: 50 ° 23 '37.1 "  N , 8 ° 4' 6.3"  E