Sylvester Birngruber

Sylvester Birngruber , born Karl Birngruber (born August 27, 1914 in Bad Leonfelden , † March 4, 2006 in Linz ) was an Austrian Roman Catholic clergyman, Cistercian , religious educator , author and persecuted by National Socialism .

Life

Karl Birngruber graduated from the Wilhering Abbey High School in 1934 and joined Wilhering Abbey in the same year . He took the religious name Sylvester . After being ordained a priest in 1939, he was a chaplain in Alkoven (Upper Austria) . In 1940 he received his doctorate from the University of Vienna with the dissertation The paternity dispute between Wilhering and Hohenfurth 1613-1753 (Neudruck, Wilhering, 1992).

As a member of the Greater Austrian Freedom Movement , he was arrested by the National Socialists on July 28, 1940 and spent five years in prisons, including from spring 1941 together with Abbot Bernhard Burgstaller and other confreres, as well as Roman Karl Scholz , in Anrath near Krefeld (today: Willich prison I ). (His fellow brother Konrad Just had been languishing in the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps since July 1938. ) In autumn 1944 he was relocated to Straubing . In April 1945 he managed to escape on one of the so-called death marches (here from Straubing to Dachau).

From autumn 1945 he studied again at the University of Vienna, acquired the qualification to teach German and Latin and from 1949 taught Latin, German and religion at the Stiftsgymnasium. From 1953 to 1965 he was pastor of Wilhering and Prior in the monastery, from 1965 to 2000 spiritual and house chaplain of the Sisters of Mary of the Carmel in Linz (where he lived until his death). From 1968 until his retirement in 1979 he was Professor of Religious Education at the Federal Education Academy (today: Upper Austria University of Education ).

Works

• The divine in man. A lay dogmatics , Graz / Vienna / Cologne, Styria, 1948, 1955 (525 pages).
  • (Spanish) Teología dogmática para seglares. Dios en el hombre , Barcelona, ​​Edititorial Litúrgica Española, 1960, 1970.
• Lay morality. Ascent to the Divine , Graz / Vienna / Cologne, Styria, 1953 (450 pages).
  • (Dutch) Christelijke moraal voor leken. Voor Nederland en Vlaanderen , Utrecht, Fontein, 1954.
  • (Spanish) La moral del seglar , Madrid, Rialp, 1957, 1960, 1963.
• Light from Patmos. An interpretation of the apocalypse of St. Johannes for the Christian of our time , Vienna, Dom-Verlag, 1964 (249 pages).
  • (Spanish) El Apocalipsis de San Juan , Madrid, Rialp, 1966.
• Wilhering Abbey , Wilhering, self-published by the Abbey, 1965 (22 pages).
• Life in christ. Textbook and workbook for Catholic religious instruction in the 6th grade of the general secondary schools in Austria , Vienna, Tyrolia / Herder, 1967 (200 pages).

literature

• Reinhold J. Dessl: Resistance of Wilheringer Cistercians against National Socialism. In: Annual report Stiftsgymnasium Wilhering , year 98, 2007/2008, pp. 7–19 ( PDF; 266 KB ).
• Alkuin Volker Schachenmayr (Ed.): The Anschluss in 1938 and the Consequences for Churches and Monasteries in Austria. Be and Be, Heiligenkreuz 2009.

Web links

• Birngruber, New Years Eve. In: Biographia Cisterciensis (Cistercian Biography) , version of August 26, 2014.