Thomas Michels

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Thomas Michels , OSB (real name Peter Franz Michels , born October 28, 1892 in Krefeld , † January 13, 1979 in Salzburg ) was a German-Austrian Benedictine , patristic and liturgical scholar .

Life

After attending the humanistic grammar school in his hometown, Michels entered the Maria Laach monastery in the Eifel in 1910 . After studying philosophy and theology in Maria Laach, Rome and Beuron , he was ordained a priest on September 9, 1917. This was followed by further studies of history, classical philology and Christian archeology in Breslau , Münster and Bonn . Doctorate to Dr. phil. in Bonn in 1925 with a thesis with Professor Wilhelm Levison (by order of the National Socialist rulers, this doctorate was revoked by the University of Bonn in 1938 and was not awarded again until 1967).

At the request of his abbot Ildefons Herwegen , Michels came to Salzburg in 1929 as a lecturer in the history of liturgy and religion. Here he founded the Salzburg University Weeks in 1931 with two confreres as a preliminary stage to the planned Catholic university, since the former university was secularized after the wars of liberation and closed by the Bavarian occupying forces in 1810. The planned Catholic university, in which research and teaching were to be separated from one another according to the American model, never came about.

Edmundsburg research center on the Mönchsberg in Salzburg
Inscription on the Great Festival Hall by Thomas Michels
Thomas Michels' grave with the cross by Toni Schneider-Manzell

After he had accepted Austrian citizenship in 1935, he qualified as a professor for liturgical science and patristics at the theological faculty in Salzburg and was tit. ao university professor. Austria was annexed to the German Reich on March 12, 1938 : On the morning of that day, Michels fled on foot over the Brenner Pass to Gries near Bozen, then he was briefly accepted by the Benedictines of Engelberg in Switzerland and ultimately lived on 1938 to 1947 in the USA . He was one of the first the Gestapo was looking for in Salzburg, since he had denounced the "accidental killing" of his friend, the music critic Willi Schmidt, on July 30, 1934, as a murder committed by the National Socialists in an Austrian magazine. In Keyport ( New Jersey ) he served as a Prior OSB Priory, made wide-ranging pastoral care and worked as a professor of history at Saint Michael's College in Vermont . He was also Professor of Ancient Christianity at Manhattanville College in New York .

After his return to Salzburg in 1947, he worked as a professor at the local theological faculty of the University of Salzburg until his retirement . The faculty only awarded him the title of “full university professor” in 1962, when he was already 70 years old. He was also president of the Catholic University Association. From 1950 to 1971 he was President of the Salzburg University Weeks. In 1961 he founded the "International Research Center for Basic Science (IFZ)" (today the International Research Center for Social and Ethical Questions ) on the Mönchsberg in Salzburg, of which he was president until 1977. He remained director of the "Institute for Religious Studies and Theology" until his death. Despite all his merits, he was not the founding rector, but someone else when the state university in Salzburg was re-established in 1964. The Austrian Institute for Human Rights (ÖIM) emerged from the IFZ in 1987 as the first human rights institute in the German-speaking area.

effect

As President of the IFZ he founded, he promoted young scientists. The inscription on the Great Salzburg Festival Hall also comes from him . The distich reads: "Sacra camenae domus / concitis carmine patet / quo nos attonitos / numen ad auras ferat".

Thomas Michels designed the iconographic program for a gate of Salzburg Cathedral , which was implemented by Schneider-Manzell.

Thomas Michels is buried in the cemetery of the Nonnberg monastery. The grave cross was designed by his friend Toni Schneider-Manzell .

Recognitions

  • Thomas Michels student residence in Salzburg
  • Thomas Michels guest house in Salzburg
  • By Toni Schneider-Manzell a bronze medal with the portrait of Thomas Michels and the legend was Father. Thomas. Michels. OSB and a portrait bust, placed in the THomas Michels dormitory in Salzburg.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ IFZ
  2. ↑ Christoph Mayrhofer (2017). Medal portraits of two Benedictines. Salzburg Museum, volume 30, April 2017, sheet 348.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Michels, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Michels, Peter Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Austrian Benedictine
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Krefeld
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 1979
Place of death Salzburg