Wilhelm Berning

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Wilhelm Berning at the beginning of his episcopate

Hermann Wilhelm Berning (born March 26, 1877 in Lingen (Ems) ; † November 23, 1955 in Osnabrück ) was Bishop of Osnabrück from 1914 to 1955 and Apostolic Vicar for the Apostolic Vicariate of the North (until 1929). Politically, he is rated as Borussian-German national; his attitude to the Nazi regime is controversial among historians.

Life

Wilhelm Berning grew up in Lingen as the son of the master carpenter Johann Bernhard Berning (1842–1881) and his wife Carolina Elisabeth b. Rosemeyer (1845-1926). Wilhelm Berning passed the final examination at the Georgianum in Lingen in 1895 . He then studied philosophy , Catholic theology and history in Münster and Breslau . As a student he was an active member of the Catholic student associations Germania Münster and Unitas Breslau in the KV . The ordination received Berning on March 10 in 1900 in St. Peter's cathedral in Osnabrück. 1901 doctorate he became Dr. theol. in Münster and finally became a senior teacher at the high school in Meppen . Berning has been an active member of the center since his time in Meppen .

Episcopate

Bishop's coat of arms from Wilhelm Berning
Berning (front left) at the episcopal ordination of Galens in Münster in 1933

The cathedral chapter elected him Bishop of Osnabrück on May 26, 1914. He was ordained bishop on September 29, 1914 by Bishop Adolf Bertram von Hildesheim in the High Cathedral in Osnabrück; Co- consecrators were the Münster bishop Johannes Poggenburg and the Münster auxiliary bishop Theodor Kappenberg . His motto Caritas Christi urget (“The love of Christ urges”) comes from the second letter to the Corinthians ( 2 Cor 5:14  EU ). In 1916, Berning founded the Caritas Association for the Diocese of Osnabrück . With the Prussian Concordat of 1929, the Diocese of Osnabrück was expanded to include the remaining areas of the Apostolic Vicariate of the North , which had previously been subject to the Bishop of Osnabrück in personal union. Berning worked hard to expand pastoral care in these spacious diaspora areas.

After the end of the First World War he founded the religious order of the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Name of Mary as a congregation under episcopal law . The community was set up as a reception institute for German postulants and novices of the Marist Missionary Sisters in Lyon, who could not stay in France because of the war. Founded for use in the diaspora and missions, the order's activities expanded to include Sweden while Berning was still alive. Later branches were established in Brazil (from 1956) and Paraguay (from 1998).

Berning's attitude towards the Jews is the subject of the research debate. The theologian Hubert Wolf points out that Berning was a member of the Amici Israel , a Jewish-friendly association in the Catholic church hierarchy, but at the same time Berning's attitude was consistently determined by a traditional, unbroken strong anti-Judaism , which he later in sermons with the racial ideological hostility to Jews the National Socialists combined.

In the years 1930 to early 1933, according to his biographer Klemens-August Recker, Berning strengthened the rejection of the NSDAP and National Socialism within the West German bishops' college . In 1932, as the Bishop of Osnabrück, he publicly spoke out in favor of Paul von Hindenburg's election as Reich President. According to Recker, he was suspicious of Franz von Papen's cabinet . In 1931 he was appointed papal assistant to the throne .

Third Reich

In April 1933 he and other German bishops welcomed the new National Socialist state and urged all believers to respect and obey the new system. According to his biographer Klemens-August Recker, Berning was faced with the dilemma of having to decide between the Christian's duty of obedience to the state authorities on the one hand and the fight against the anti-Christian worldview of the NSDAP. After a meeting with Adolf Hitler on April 26, 1933, he expressed the hope that “ morality would be improved and the fight against Bolshevism and godlessness ” would be waged. In July 1933 Hermann Göring appointed him to the Prussian State Council . Berning then announced in a press release: “The German bishops have long since affirmed the new state…. In this sense I will leave no stone unturned not to give proof of my loyalty to the new state with words alone "and added:" We serve the state with ardent love and with all our might. "According to Recker, Berning connected this with this office The aim is to secure the freedom of the church in relation to the state. In September 1933 he said at the Katholikentag in Bremen : “In our holy Catholic Church we have already received the leader principle from the founder of our church Jesus Christ .” The historian Rudolf von Thadden describes Berning's attitude in the initial phase of Nazi rule as “for 'national renewal' open-minded ”.

At the beginning of 1934, Berning changed his view of the Nazi regime and expressed himself increasingly critical in sermons in Osnabrück Cathedral (see also Friedrich Murawski ). Holger Wilken sees this development as typical for church officials in Germany; it coincides with the general findings of the church historian Klaus Scholder about 1934 as the "year of disillusionment".

Berning caused a stir in 1936 with a visit to the Emsland camp Aschendorfermoor . In a speech that was quoted again and again later, the bishop is said to have said: “The Emsland lay in deep sleep for a long time until the prince came and woke it up; this prince is our leader Adolf Hitler. ”In his biography of Berning, the historian Klemens-August Recker uses circumstantial evidence to propose the thesis that this quote was only put in Berning's mouth, like the whole visit by the propaganda machine for the upcoming Olympic Games was instrumentalized in Berlin , a reading that the sociologist Bernhard Haupert considers to be “convincing”. The English church historian Owen Chadwick also considers Recker's criticism of the sources revealing: Berning's visit outside Germany was understood as recognition of the Nazi camp system and was exploited in this sense by the Nazi press. However, the historian Holger Wilken does not see a "coherent interpretation" in Recker's presentation.

Berning, for Wilken characterized by “extreme [n] nationalism”, wished “God's blessing” for “our war power” in September 1939 and still saw himself as a “bridge builder to the new state” (Wilken), but went to the Persecution and incarceration of Catholic priests began in 1940s at greater distances. In a sermon on June 8, 1941 in Rulle , Berning publicly protested against the fact that “the protection of human life” is no longer being observed in Germany. Thus, as the historian Winfried Suss judges, he was one of the few church officials who publicly opposed the regime's “racial hygiene” euthanasia program , ahead of the Münster bishop Clemens August von Galen ; however, Berning thus achieved no public effect in the eyes of Suss. The New Year's Eve sermon on December 31, 1941 brought Berning into conflict with Göring. As a Prussian State Councilor until 1943, Berning negotiated often, but mostly without result, with the Reich government in order to help individuals under pressure, including Julius Leber , the former SPD member of the Reichstag (see also Lübecker Märtyrer , Brasil-Aktion , Kurt Mathias von Leers , Bernhard Schwentner ).

post war period

Berning (4th from left) at the 76th German Catholic Day in Fulda in 1954

After the Second World War, Berning did not comment on his role in the Third Reich. 1949 Berning was from Pope Pius XII. honored with the personal title Archbishop . In the post-war period, Berning campaigned for the integration of the displaced . He became an honorary citizen of Meppen in 1950 and Osnabrück in 1952 and found his final resting place in the Marienkapelle (bishop's burial place) in the ambulatory of Osnabrück Cathedral.

Afterlife

Berning's position on the Nazi regime is the subject of posthumous political and historiographical debates. As Klemens-August Recker writes, Berning's behavior was not controversial until the 1970s; It was only with an exhibition for Osnabrück's 1200th anniversary in 1980 that his role was increasingly critically questioned. In 1994 the Greens in the Osnabrück city council campaigned for a street named after Berning to be renamed, because he had "cooperated with the Nazis, there can be no question of internal resistance from him." The city council then obtained a resolution to revoke Berning's position on the Nazi regime. To let the regime work up historically what happened by the Osnabrück theologian and senior teacher Klemens-August Recker. In 1998 he presented a monograph on Berning, which for the first time evaluated his sermons recorded in shorthand and painted a clearly positive picture. In 2010, Recker described the criticism of Berning and his posthumous reputation as a “peculiar hostility towards science” and saw Berning's critics as having a “dichotomous idea of ​​the exclusive perpetrator”, while Recker's approach and interpretation were viewed critically by other scientists; So the sociologist Bernhard Hauptert called his work "little text-critical", Recker campaigns for understanding for Berning and remains in "uncritical description" instead of analysis. On the 100th anniversary of Berning's bishopric election in 2014, Recker presented a “brief and deliberately generally understandable biography”.

Fonts

  • The institution of the Holy Eucharist in its original form according to the reports of the New Testament. A contribution to gospel research. Aschendorff, Münster 1901.
  • Eucharistic Congress in Sydney. In: Lingener Volksbote No. 164 of November 13, 1928.
  • Catholic Church and German Volkstum. In: Deutsche Akademie (Ed.): The New Reich. Callwey, Munich 1934.
  • Catholic doctrine. Osnabrück 1941.
  • The pastoral letter of the Osnabrück bishop of September 20, 1945. In: Yearbook of the Emsländischen Heimatbundes. Vol. 22, 1976, pp. 25-26.
  • Memories from my life. In: Church messenger . Weekly newspaper for the Diocese of Osnabrück. Born 1977, issues 14 to 21.

literature

  • Henning Harpel: The Emsland Camps of the Third Reich. Forms and problems of active historical memory in the northern Emsland 1955–1993. In: Study Society for Emsland Regional History (Ed.): Emsland History. Vol. 12, Haselünne 2005, pp. 134–239 (also on the visit to the Emsland camp Aschendorfermoor and the aftermath).
  • Ulrich von Hehl : Bishop Berning and the Diocese of Osnabrück in the “Third Reich”. In: Osnabrücker Mitteilungen. Vol. 86, 1980, pp. 83-104.
  • Ulrich von Hehl: Art. Berning, Wilhelm. In: Görres-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Staatslexikon. 7th edition. Vol. 1, Freiburg 1985, Col. 654-656.
  • Klemens-August Recker: The relationship of the Bishops Berning and von Galen to National Socialism against the background of ecclesiastical traditions of the 19th century. In: Joachim Kuropka (Ed.): Clemens August Graf von Galen. New research on the life and work of the Bishop of Münster. Münster 1993, pp. 327-370.
  • Klemens-August Recker: Bishop Berning of Osnabrück at the end of the Weimar Republic. In: Study Society for Emsland Regional History (Ed.): Emsland History. Vol. 5, Bremen 1996, pp. 19-43.
  • Klemens-August Recker: Article Berning, Wilhelm. In: Study Society for Emsland Regional History (Ed.): Emsland History. Volume 6. Dohren 1997, pp. 135-141.
  • Klemens-August Recker: “Who do you want to believe?” Bishop Berning in the Third Reich. 2nd Edition. Schöningh, Paderborn 1998, ISBN 3-506-77055-1 .
    • Reviews: Holger Wilken in: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History . Vol. 84, 1998, p. 241 f. (freely visible); Bernd Nellessen: "Who do you want to believe?" About the book "Bishop Berning in the Third Reich". In: Association for Catholic Church History in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein: Contributions and communications. Vol. 6, 1999, pp. 307-309; Thomas Breuer in: Historical magazine . Vol. 268, 1999, p. 812 f. ; Owen Chadwick in: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History . Vol. 51, 2000, No. 1, p. 197 f.
    • Episcopal General Vicariate, Pastoral Office: Greetings and lectures on the occasion of the presentation of the book by Dr. Klemens-August-Recker on Bishop Wilhelm Berning on February 18, 1998 in Osnabrück (= Church in conversation. Vol. 24). Osnabrück 1998.
  • Klemens-August Recker: Berning dispute. Bishop in the German Empire, Democracy and Nazi dictatorship 1914–1955. Aschendorff, Münster 2014, ISBN 978-3-402-13082-7 .
  • Wolfgang Seegrün : Wilhelm Berning (1877–1955). A picture of life. In: Osnabrücker Mitteilungen. Vol. 79, 1972, pp. 79-92.
  • Wolfgang Seegrün: Art. Wilhelm Berning. In: Erwin Gatz (Ed.): The bishops of the German-speaking countries 1785/1803 to 1945. A biographical lexicon. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-428-05447-4 , Sp. 40-43.
  • Wolfgang Seegrün: Art. Berning, Wilhelm. In: Lexicon for Theology and Church . Vol. 2. Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Rome / Vienna 1994, col. 283–284.

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Berning  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wilhelm Prof. Dr. Berning. In: Ortsfamilienbuch Lingen , Online-OFB.de , last updated on May 6, 2014.
  2. ^ History of our religious order. In: Homepage. Missionary Sisters of the Holy Name Mariens-Kloster Nette, accessed on April 28, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Hubert Wolf: Pope and the devil. The Archives of the Vatican and the Third Reich. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-63090-3 , p. 103, online .
  4. ^ A b c Bernhard Haupert, Franz Josef Schäfer: Sieg Heil. Bishop Berning and National Socialism. In: Imprimatur (online journal). No. 1, 1999, HTML .
  5. ↑ the person's GND - standard data .
  6. ↑ a b c d Klemens-August Recker: Berning, Hermann Wilhelm, Dr. theol. ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) In: Studiengesellschaft-Emsland-Bentheim.de
  7. ↑ a b c Quote from Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. 2nd, updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 43.
  8. ^ Peter Niebaum: Hans Calmeyer. A “different German” in the 20th century. Frank and Timme, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86596-376-5 , p. 98 .
  9. ↑ Rudolf von Thadden: The history of the churches and denominations. In: Wolfgang Neugebauer (Ed.): Handbook of Prussian History. Vol. 3: From the Empire to the 20th Century and Major Topics in the History of Prussia. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2000, ISBN 3-11-014092-6 , pp. 547-712, here p. 690 .
  10. ↑ a b c d e f g Holger Wilken: Review of: Klemens-August Recker: Bishop Berning in the Third Reich. 1998. In: Journal of the Association for Hamburg History . Vol. 84, 1998, p. 241 f .
  11. ↑ Klaus Scholder: The churches and the Third Reich. Vol. 2: The year of disillusionment 1934. Berlin 1985.
  12. ↑ On this visit and a press report that Berning was on the side of the regime, Hans Canjé : The "cultural work" of the Moorsoldaten. New memorial opened in the former Esterwegen concentration camp. In: Neues Deutschland , November 1, 2011.
  13. ↑ On the person.
  14. ^ Owen Chadwick: Review of Recker 1998, in: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History. Vol. 51, 2000, No. 1, p. 197 f.
  15. ↑ For him see this short biography (PDF, p. 518)
  16. ↑ Winfried Süß: "Then none of us will be sure of his life any more". Bishop von Galen, the Catholic protest against "euthanasia" and the stop of "Aktion T4". In: Martin Sabrow (ed.): Scandal and dictatorship. Forms of public outrage in the Nazi state and in the GDR. Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89244-791-8 , pp. 102–129, here p. 105 .
  17. ^ Michael Hirschfeld : Catholic milieu and expellees. A case study using the example of the Oldenburger Land 1945–1965 (= research and sources on the church and cultural history of East Germany. Vol. 33). Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-412-15401-6 , also dissertation, University of Vechta, 2001, p. 85 .
  18. ↑ a b Klemens August Recker: Osnabrück in the "Hexenwahn". History reception, cultural politics and city marketing using the example of Axel Gundrum's pictures “Hexenwahn” and “Mockery”. In: Joachim Kuropka (Ed.): Regionale Geschichtskultur. Phenomena - projects - problems. Lit, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-10790-9 , pp. 35-52, here p. 46 f .
  19. ↑ Information from the publisher's report. In: German National Library (website); Christof Haverkamp: Deeply hurt by Hitler's lies: How Bishop Berning changed his attitude towards the Nazi state. In: Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung , September 13, 2014.
  20. ↑ Two obituaries on the person .
  21. ↑ On the person .
  22. ↑ On the person.
predecessor Office successor
Hubertus Voss Bishop of Osnabrück
1914–1955 		Francis Demann
personal data
SURNAME Berning, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berning, Hermann Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Catholic clergyman, Bishop of Osnabrück
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Lingen
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1955
Place of death Osnabrück