Werner Barkholt

Father Werner Barkholt SJ (born February 25, 1902 in Hagenau , Alsace ; † July 18, 1942 in Dachau concentration camp ) was a German Roman Catholic priest and Jesuit and a staunch opponent of National Socialism .

Life

Werner Barkholt was the son of a businessman. He attended high schools in Darmstadt and Montabaur .

On April 10, 1923 he entered the Jesuit novitiate in s'Heerenberg / Netherlands. He completed his studies in Bonn and Münster . In 1932 he was ordained a priest in Münster . In 1933 Werner Barkholt worked for a few months as a vicar in Frankfurt am Main and then moved to the Jesuit monastery "Ignatiushaus" in Essen , where he mainly devoted himself to pastoral care for young people. From 1936 he worked as a chaplain in the newly founded St. Ignatius parish there. From Essen he was invited to the surrounding towns of the Ruhr area as a preacher. On March 6, 1938, in a fasting sermon in the parish church of Sankt Urbanus zu Gelsenkirchen-Buer, he turned against the National Socialists, who had propagated the “de-Christianization of the German people”. Due to his statements in this sermon, which from the point of view of the Secret State Police as “disparaging remarks about the state and the movement” that “were capable of causing discord in the population and disturbing peace and order”, the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin on April 28, 1938, a ban on speaking for the whole Reich imposed. Since this sermon had not been written down verbatim, the Gestapo headquarters in Düsseldorf did not believe that the evidence was sufficient to file a criminal case against him with the judiciary and to obtain an arrest warrant .

Because of this ban on speaking, Father Barkholt felt compelled to give up his chaplaincy in Essen; he started studying in Bonn. Assuming that an amnesty issued by Adolf Hitler on September 9, 1939, the ban on speaking would have expired, he took up a position in April 1940 as chaplain responsible for pastoral care for children and young people in the parish of Sankt Gudula in Rhede belonging to the parish of Vardingholt.

Very soon he came into conflict with the local National Socialists in his new pastor. At the instigation of the local branch of the Nazi party in Rhede he was arrested on 3 September 1940 and in from 10 September 1940 detention brought. According to the Gestapo report, he was accused of having stated in a sermon on July 7, 1940 - contrary to the still existing ban on speaking - that children should attend Holy Mass in the morning even after a night air raid . The approval required for filing a lawsuit was initially not given by the responsible Reich Ministry of Justice because this charge was classified as not relevant to the criminal offense. On November 13, 1940, however, the ministry approved a second indictment. Now the chaplain was accused of having spoken out against the invasion of the German troops in Holland on the occasion of a pastoral care visit to a family in his parish in Vardingholt and of having doubted the short duration of the war and the National Socialist victory that the Nazis had promised. On December 7, 1940, Father Barkholt was sentenced to 10 months' imprisonment by the Dortmund special court, which met in the neighboring district town of Borken , for offenses against the treachery law , although the three-month pre-trial detention was set off against this .

Immediately after his release from prison, the Jesuit priest was again taken into protective custody by the Gestapo and finally sent to the Dachau concentration camp on August 8, 1941 . He received the prisoner number 26,890 and was housed in the local pastor's block . As his fellow inmate, Father Otto Pies, reported, Werner Barkholt had suffered severe heart damage while in prison, so that he arrived in Dachau very weak. The heart condition made him very nervous and anxious. Like most of the priests imprisoned here, he had to do field work in the plantation work detachment. As a result of inadequate nutrition, his health deteriorates considerably. When his fellow clergymen finally wanted to take him to the infirmary for care on July 16, 1942, SS-Oberscharführer Fronappel forcibly prevented this . He was only placed in the infirmary that evening. Father Barkholt died there two days later.

Commemoration

The parish of St. Martin in Krefeld honored him with a plaque in the tower chapel.

The Catholic Church accepted Father Werner Barkholt as a witness of faith in the German martyrology of the 20th century .

The city of Krefeld lists him at the main cemetery among the victims of the concentration camps List of Monuments in Krefeld # Memorial for the victims of the concentration camps

In the town of Rhede , the Pater-Barkholt-Weg was named after him

literature

• Christian Frieling priest from the diocese of Münster in the concentration camp. Verlag Aschendorf, Münster 1992, ISBN 3-402-05427-2 , pp. 80-82.
• Helmut Moll (publisher on behalf of the German Bishops' Conference), witnesses for Christ. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhundert , Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Volume II, pp. 947-950.
• Benedicta Maria Kempner: Priest before Hitler's tribunals , Rütten + Loening Verlag Munich 1966, pp. 21-23.
• Hans-Karl Seeger, Gabriele Latzel, Christa Bockholt (eds.), Otto Pies and Karl Leisner: Friendship in Hell of the Dachau Concentration Camp , Verlag Dr. Pies, Sprockhövel 2007, ISBN 978-3-928441-66-7

Web links

• Short biography and photo of Father Werner Barkholt