Wilhelm Johannes Boehler

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Wilhelm Johannes Böhler (born November 18, 1891 in Wichterich ; † July 25, 1958 in Cologne ) was a German Roman Catholic priest, member of the Cologne Cathedral Chapter , Cathedral Chapter and first head of the Catholic Office in Bonn .

Life

After graduating from high school in 1911, Wilhelm Böhler studied theology at the University of Bonn in Düsseldorf. Due to the circumstances of the First World War, he was ordained priest in June 1915 by the Archbishop of Cologne, Felix Cardinal von Hartmann . He was initially a chaplain at the headquarters of the “People's Association for Catholic Germany” in Mönchengladbach. In 1918 he became director of Caritas in Mönchengladbach, and in 1920 he was also general secretary of the "Catholic School Organization of Germany". Under pressure from the National Socialists, he had to stop his involvement in Catholic school work and in 1935 became a pastor in Essen. In 1938 he was taken into "protective custody" for two months.

After the end of the war, he was appointed cathedral capital in Cologne in 1945. Böhler was also given responsibility for the school department in the Cologne Vicariate General. In 1948 he was appointed papal house prelate.

In 1948/1949, Böhler represented the church's concerns in the drafting of the Basic Law as the representative of the German bishops at the Parliamentary Council . In contrast to some bishops who rejected the draft of the Basic Law, including Bishop Michael Keller von Münster, Prelate Böhler, supported by Cardinal Joseph Frings , campaigned among the Catholic members of the Parliamentary Council for their approval. Since 1949 he was the representative of the chairman of the Fulda Bishops' Conference at the federal government. In 1951 he became head of the Catholic Office. He succeeded in "stabilizing the important contacts in institutionalized forms". In addition, the Ecclesiastical Political Committee (KPG) became an important switching point and liaison point to the Roman Catholic representatives of the governments, the ministerial bureaucracy and the parliament.

Böhler was a member of the Papal Order of Knights of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and prior of the Rhenish-Westphalian province.

honors and awards

  • Papal House Prelate (1948)
  • Apostolic Protonotary (1952)
  • Honorary title "Excellence" (1956)
  • Dome of Honor of the Cathedral in Le Mans
  • Officer of the French Legion of Honor
  • Commander of the Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem

Fonts

  • Catholic Church and State in Germany. Memories, statements, fundamentals . In: Political Education. Series of publications by the University of Political Sciences Munich , Vol. 44 (1953), pp. 123–146.

literature

  • In Memoriam Wilhelm Böhler. Memories and encounters . In connection with the Central Committee of German Catholics, edited by Bernhard Bergmann and Josef Steinberg . Bachem, Cologne 1965.
  • Burckhard van Schewick: Wilhelm Böhler (1891-1958). In: Jürgen Aretz , Rudolf Morsey , Anton Rauscher (Eds.): Contemporary history in life pictures. From the German Catholicism of the 19th and 20th centuries. Volume 4. Matthias Grünewald Verlag, Mainz 1980, ISBN 3-7867-0833-9 , pp. 197-207.
  • Burckhard van Schewick: The Catholic Church and the emergence of the constitutions in West Germany 1945–1950 (= publications of the Commission for Contemporary History, Series B: Research, Vol. 30). Matthias Grünewald Verlag, Mainz 1980, ISBN 3-7867-0815-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm Böhler on the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung homepage, accessed on June 1, 2017.
  2. ↑ Thomas Großbölting : The lost sky. Faith in Germany since 1945 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-525-30040-4 , p. 46 and p. 62.
personal data
SURNAME Böhler, Wilhelm Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Böhler, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Roman Catholic priest, member of the Cologne Cathedral Chapter and first head of the Catholic Office in Bonn
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Important
DATE OF DEATH July 25, 1958
Place of death Cologne