Conrad Gröber
Encyclopedia
Conrad Gröber was a Catholic priest and archbishop
of the Archdiocese of Freiburg
.
in Donaueschingen
, then the Heinrich Suso
-Gymnasium in Konstanz
, and was an alumnus of the reopened Konradihaus (St. Conrad's Archdiocesan House of Studies). Already as a gymnasium student he had decided on a ministerial career. At the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg im Breisgau he studied philosophy and theology starting in the winter semester of 1891-1892. In 1893 he became a student at the Pontifical Gregorian University
in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1897, and completed his time in Rome in 1898 with a doctorate in theology. After a short time of activity as a vicar
in Ettenheim
he was a curate
for two years at the St. Stephanskirche in Karlsruhe
, where he became familiar with the specific problems of a city pastorate. Gröber was a member of the Wildenstein German Catholic Student Fraternity of Freiburg im Breisgau, a member association of the Cartellverband der katholischen deutschen Studentenverbindungen
.
, later a priest murdered by the Nazis, and Martin Heidegger
, whom he actually started on the path of philosophy, and toward whom he had a lifelong but tense relationship. In 1905 he assumed the pastorate of Holy Trinity Church in Konstanz, and in 1922 he became rector of the Münster, the former cathedral church in Konstanz.
During the Konstanz years, Gröber was particularly active in publicity and scholarship. Under his direction the Holy Trinity Church and later the Konstanz Münster
were thoroughly restored. He was not only involved in the work of church-linked organizations, but was active as a member of the Centre Party
and as a representative in the Konstanz city council. Through his manifold initiatives, through the 800th anniversary observance he conceived of the canonization of bishop St. Konrad of Konstanz, celebrated in 1923, and through his collaboration at the diocesan synod of 1921 he became known throughout the region.
His ecclesiastical career took a step forward in 1923 when he was named a monsignor
(a Chaplain to His Holiness); in 1925 he gained election to the cathedral chapter of Freiburg. In the diocesan curia he was assigned responsibility for liturgy
and church music, in which capacity he introduced a new and warmly received diocesan hymnbook in 1929.
In this time, Gröber also became active as a preacher in the new medium of radio. At the Freiburg Katholikentag
(Catholic assembly) of 1929, he met Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII), on whose behalf he was decisively involved in the negotiations toward a concordat
with the Reich.
repeatedly encouraged such hopes. Thus Gröber wrote in an exhortation dated November 8, 1933 on the subject of the vote and plebiscite regarding Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations
, that it was a duty to the fatherland to show unanimity with one's fellow countrymen. Among the populace, his policy of cooperation gained Gröber the nickname of Conrad the Brown.
Thus during the course of the subordination of provincial governments to the Nazi central government, he directed a congratulatory telegram to the National Socialist politician appointed as proconsul in Baden
, Robert Heinrich Wagner
, containing the following message: "At the mighty task which lies before you, I place myself as the chief shepherd of Catholics in Baden unreservedly at your side." At the diocesan synod in Freiburg from April 25-28, 1933, he advised the diocesan clergy: "no provocation and no useless martyrdom."
In the negotiations to conclude a concordat
with the Reich, even the German Bishops' Conference was kept at arm's length until shortly before the accord, but Gröber provided preparatory information for the negotiations through his friend, Centre Party president Msgr. Ludwig Kaas
; he also eagerly promoted the process and thereby isolated himself from his fellow bishops.
On June 3, 1933 a joint pastoral letter appeared from the German Bishops' Conference, the drafting of which the bishops had entrusted to Gröber. It contained a statement that if the State would only respect certain rights and requirements of the Church, the Church would gratefully and happily support the new situation.
In August 1933 the Archdiocese of Freiburg published in its official newspaper, which was under Gröber's responsibility, a directive of the Baden Ministry for Culture and Education about offering the Hitler salute
in religious instruction, and thereby officially sanctioned this behavior, which led to considerable outrage among the faithful of the diocese.
On October 10, 1933 at a large Catholic event in Karlsruhe Gröber expressly thanked the "men of the government" for their appearance: "I will not betray any secret if I explain that in the course of the last few months the contacts of the Church government in Freiburg with the government in Karlsruhe have proceeded in the most friendly way. I also believe that I will not be betraying a secret, either to you or to the German people, if I say that I place myself unreservedly behind the new government and the new Reich."
The Baden Interior Minister Pflaumer honored the cooperation promised by Gröber and sent the following directive to police headquarters on November 13, 1933: "Forceful measures against Catholic clergymen outside the framework of the general laws are not permitted in the future," which indirectly allows the inference that the Nazi state basically did not consider itself bound by laws.
At the end of the year 1933 Gröber complained in a letter to the Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli about priests critical of the regime, who had been taken into "protective custody" (Schutzhaft), that it had not always been possible to obtain from the clergy the intelligent reserve and opportune reflection that, under a full evaluation of the fundamental situation, protect individual clergymen from inconveniences.
Also in this time came his decision, together with a few men of the cathedral, to become a "supporting member" of the SS
. After the war Gröber explained this by saying that at the time the SS in Freiburg was considered the most decent organization of the Party.
In 1941 Gröber, whilst supporting attempts to help persecuted Jews, wrote in a pastoral letter that the sad state of the Jews resulted from the curse that they had brought upon themselves when they murdered Christ. Anton Rauscher has said that Catholic theology of the era reflected “a view of the Jews which provoked anti-Semitism on the one hand, while on the other undermining the ability to oppose it.”
On Good Friday of 1941 he gave a sermon whose vocabulary came very close to the anti-Semitic
vocabulary of the Nazi rulers:
en pastoral letter of February 10, 1933 Gröber exhorted the faithful of the diocese, each according to his abilities, to take care that lying and slander, demagogy and hate, acts of violence and murder not further besmirch the name of Germany.
Like the Catholic Church in general, Gröber was targeted for attacks by the authorities. Besides the ban on other parties and the dissolution of many Catholic non-church associations, the authorities resorted to personal insults. In 1936 Julius Streicher
went on a speaking campaign in Baden in which he attacked the Church and personally attacked Gröber over an alleged love relationship with a Jewish woman, and filed a morals complaint against him. The resulting rumors were also fostered by a Catholic priest, the Nazi party member Dr. Heinrich Mohr, who had hopes of gaining a bishop's seat after Gröber's removal.
From 1935 on, Gröber fought against the Nazi regime, notably only within the framework provided by law and in particular the concordat.
After the beginning of the organized killing of the mentally ill, termed euthanasia
, he protested in a letter to the Baden Interior Minister Pflaumer, and was the first of the German bishops to do so in writing, according to Schwalbach.
His courageous New Year's Eve sermons in the Freiburg Münster and his Lenten pastoral letters became especially effective with the public. In them he particularly lashed the Nazi regime's enmity toward the Church and, according to Schwalbach, assailed euthanasia, which he described as murder, in the New Year's Eve sermon of 1941. He also held a protective arm over the resistance fighter Gertrud Luckner
, assigned by Caritas
to support the so-called "Jewish Christians".
For the Nazi authorities he was the "most evil rabblerouser against the Third Reich". The Baden Culture Minister Dr. Paul Schmitthenner
described him in a file notation of August 8, 1940 as the greatest enemy of the NSDAP and the National Socialist State. Only his office as Archbishop had kept him, wrote Schmitthenner, from already sitting in jail for high treason.
who was driven out of his diocese of Rottenburg as early as 1938.
Gröber wrote a still controversial letter to the president of the Volksgerichtshof (People's Court) Roland Freisler
, who had sentenced to death Max Josef Metzger
, a priest of his diocese:
While part of the literature considers this letter as a last-ditch approach used as a tactical measure, in order to obtain the conversion of the death sentence into a prison term, another part of the literature considers it a cowardly distancing from a man sentenced to death on invalid grounds. Yet source criticism
is necessary here: other documents from those days show that Gröber in fact did take steps to gain a mitigation of the penalty. Thus it is clear Gröber believed that only by recognizing the grounds for the judgment could he have even a minimal chance of success vis-à-vis Freisler.
On November 12, Gröber informed his diocesan clergy of the sentence against Metzger, with, among others, the following words:
Immediately after the war's end Gröber enjoyed great respect because of his courageous speeches against the regime, and was made an honored citizen of Meßkirch and Freiburg. Consulted as an advisor and mediator, he took a position against the re-establishment of the Centre Party, but instead supported the collection of all the Christian forces in the later CDU
.
Yet the bitter confrontations from the Nazi era remained: Gröber tried to silence an event for the so-called "concentration camp priests", initiated by Pastor Wilhelm Köhler and Richard Schneider
, who was the first diocesan clergyman taken to the Dachau concentration camp in 1940, although 5 of the 16 clergymen from Gröber's diocese imprisoned in the camp were murdered.
The "concentration camp priests", like the priests of the Münster diocese who were honored in a solemn way in a pontifical service by the bishop of Münster, wanted to commemorate their dead confreres and impress upon the public consciousness that the latter must not be allowed to have died in vain. The priests expressed the reproaches made against them in a resolution: "We are saddened when even now we have to hear from the clergy that we had only our own foolishness to blame, that we were victims of the Gestapo
. We find it hard to avoid the impression that a priest was better liked by the church administration, the less he came into contact with the Secret State Police
."
Archbishop
An archbishop is a bishop of higher rank, but not of higher sacramental order above that of the three orders of deacon, priest , and bishop...
of the Archdiocese of Freiburg
Archdiocese of Freiburg
The Archdiocese of Freiburg im Breisgau is a Roman Catholic diocese in Baden-Württemberg comprising the former states of Baden and Hohenzollern...
.
Youth and education
Gröber first attended the gymnasiumGymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
in Donaueschingen
Donaueschingen
Donaueschingen is a German town in the Black Forest in the southwest of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg in the Schwarzwald-Baar Kreis. It stands near the confluence of the two sources of the river Danube ....
, then the Heinrich Suso
Henry Suso
Henry Suso was a German mystic, born at Überlingen on Lake Constance on March 21, c. 1300; he died at Ulm, January 25, 1366; declared Blessed in 1831 by Gregory XVI, who assigned his feast in the Dominican Order to March 2...
-Gymnasium in Konstanz
Konstanz
Konstanz is a university city with approximately 80,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the south-west corner of Germany, bordering Switzerland. The city houses the University of Konstanz.-Location:...
, and was an alumnus of the reopened Konradihaus (St. Conrad's Archdiocesan House of Studies). Already as a gymnasium student he had decided on a ministerial career. At the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg im Breisgau he studied philosophy and theology starting in the winter semester of 1891-1892. In 1893 he became a student at the Pontifical Gregorian University
Pontifical Gregorian University
The Pontifical Gregorian University is a pontifical university located in Rome, Italy.Heir of the Roman College founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola over 460 years ago, the Gregorian University was the first university founded by the Jesuits...
in Rome. He was ordained a priest in 1897, and completed his time in Rome in 1898 with a doctorate in theology. After a short time of activity as a vicar
Vicar
In the broadest sense, a vicar is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior . In this sense, the title is comparable to lieutenant...
in Ettenheim
Ettenheim
Ettenheim is a town in the Ortenaukreis, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.In the Middle Ages, Ettenheim belonged to the Archbishop of Strasbourg. It gained its Charter in 1302.In 1973 it was incorporated into the Ortenaukreis.-Districts:...
he was a curate
Curate
A curate is a person who is invested with the care or cure of souls of a parish. In this sense "curate" correctly means a parish priest but in English-speaking countries a curate is an assistant to the parish priest...
for two years at the St. Stephanskirche in Karlsruhe
Karlsruhe
The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...
, where he became familiar with the specific problems of a city pastorate. Gröber was a member of the Wildenstein German Catholic Student Fraternity of Freiburg im Breisgau, a member association of the Cartellverband der katholischen deutschen Studentenverbindungen
Cartellverband der katholischen deutschen Studentenverbindungen
The Cartellverband der katholischen deutschen Studentenverbindungen or Cartellverband is a German umbrella organization of Catholic male student fraternities .-Foundation:...
.
Teacher and pastor in Konstanz
In 1901 he became rector of the Konradihaus in Konstanz. There he met the students Max Josef MetzgerMax Josef Metzger
Max Josef Metzger was born in Schopfheim in Baden, Germany.Metzger became a Roman Catholic priest and worked as a military chaplain for the forces of Imperial Germany during World War I. During that war he began to see peace work as an urgent task...
, later a priest murdered by the Nazis, and Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
, whom he actually started on the path of philosophy, and toward whom he had a lifelong but tense relationship. In 1905 he assumed the pastorate of Holy Trinity Church in Konstanz, and in 1922 he became rector of the Münster, the former cathedral church in Konstanz.
During the Konstanz years, Gröber was particularly active in publicity and scholarship. Under his direction the Holy Trinity Church and later the Konstanz Münster
Cathedral of Konstanz
The Constance Minster or Cathedral is a historical building in Konstanz, southern Germany, the proto-cathedral of the former diocese of Konstanz .-History:...
were thoroughly restored. He was not only involved in the work of church-linked organizations, but was active as a member of the Centre Party
Centre Party (Germany)
The German Centre Party was a Catholic political party in Germany during the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic. Formed in 1870, it battled the Kulturkampf which the Prussian government launched to reduce the power of the Catholic Church...
and as a representative in the Konstanz city council. Through his manifold initiatives, through the 800th anniversary observance he conceived of the canonization of bishop St. Konrad of Konstanz, celebrated in 1923, and through his collaboration at the diocesan synod of 1921 he became known throughout the region.
His ecclesiastical career took a step forward in 1923 when he was named a monsignor
Monsignor
Monsignor, pl. monsignori, is the form of address for those members of the clergy of the Catholic Church holding certain ecclesiastical honorific titles. Monsignor is the apocopic form of the Italian monsignore, from the French mon seigneur, meaning "my lord"...
(a Chaplain to His Holiness); in 1925 he gained election to the cathedral chapter of Freiburg. In the diocesan curia he was assigned responsibility for liturgy
Liturgy
Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...
and church music, in which capacity he introduced a new and warmly received diocesan hymnbook in 1929.
In this time, Gröber also became active as a preacher in the new medium of radio. At the Freiburg Katholikentag
Katholikentag
Katholikentag is a festival-like gathering in German-speaking countries organized by the Roman Catholic laity. Katholikentag festivals occur approximately every 2–4 years in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.-History:...
(Catholic assembly) of 1929, he met Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII), on whose behalf he was decisively involved in the negotiations toward a concordat
Reichskonkordat
The Reichskonkordat is a treaty that was agreed between the Holy See and Nazi government, that guarantees the rights of the Catholic Church in Germany. It was signed on July 20, 1933 by Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen on behalf of Pope Pius XI and President...
with the Reich.
Archbishop of Freiburg
In 1931 Gröber became bishop of Meissen, but was hardly able to work there at all, because as early as 1932 he became Archbishop of Freiburg.Accommodation toward the Nazi regime
Gröber remains controversial to this day because of his stances during the Nazi era. In particular, in the first two years after the National Socialists' seizure of power, he hoped that the Church would be able to come to terms with them, and that it would be better to dialogue with them than to support resistance. For tactical reasons, HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
repeatedly encouraged such hopes. Thus Gröber wrote in an exhortation dated November 8, 1933 on the subject of the vote and plebiscite regarding Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
, that it was a duty to the fatherland to show unanimity with one's fellow countrymen. Among the populace, his policy of cooperation gained Gröber the nickname of Conrad the Brown.
Thus during the course of the subordination of provincial governments to the Nazi central government, he directed a congratulatory telegram to the National Socialist politician appointed as proconsul in Baden
Baden
Baden is a historical state on the east bank of the Rhine in the southwest of Germany, now the western part of the Baden-Württemberg of Germany....
, Robert Heinrich Wagner
Robert Heinrich Wagner
Robert Heinrich Wagner was Gauleiter of Baden and Head of the Civil Government of Alsace during the German occupation of France in World War II....
, containing the following message: "At the mighty task which lies before you, I place myself as the chief shepherd of Catholics in Baden unreservedly at your side." At the diocesan synod in Freiburg from April 25-28, 1933, he advised the diocesan clergy: "no provocation and no useless martyrdom."
In the negotiations to conclude a concordat
Reichskonkordat
The Reichskonkordat is a treaty that was agreed between the Holy See and Nazi government, that guarantees the rights of the Catholic Church in Germany. It was signed on July 20, 1933 by Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli and Vice Chancellor Franz von Papen on behalf of Pope Pius XI and President...
with the Reich, even the German Bishops' Conference was kept at arm's length until shortly before the accord, but Gröber provided preparatory information for the negotiations through his friend, Centre Party president Msgr. Ludwig Kaas
Ludwig Kaas
Ludwig Kaas was a German Roman Catholic priest and politician during the Weimar Republic.-Early career:Born in Trier, Kaas was ordained a priest in 1906 and studied history and Canon law in Trier and Rome. 1906 he completed a doctorate in theology and in 1909 he obtained a second doctorate in...
; he also eagerly promoted the process and thereby isolated himself from his fellow bishops.
On June 3, 1933 a joint pastoral letter appeared from the German Bishops' Conference, the drafting of which the bishops had entrusted to Gröber. It contained a statement that if the State would only respect certain rights and requirements of the Church, the Church would gratefully and happily support the new situation.
In August 1933 the Archdiocese of Freiburg published in its official newspaper, which was under Gröber's responsibility, a directive of the Baden Ministry for Culture and Education about offering the Hitler salute
Hitler salute
The Nazi salute, or Hitler salute , was a gesture of greeting in Nazi Germany usually accompanied by saying, Heil Hitler! ["Hail Hitler!"], Heil, mein Führer ["Hail, my leader!"], or Sieg Heil! ["Hail victory!"]...
in religious instruction, and thereby officially sanctioned this behavior, which led to considerable outrage among the faithful of the diocese.
On October 10, 1933 at a large Catholic event in Karlsruhe Gröber expressly thanked the "men of the government" for their appearance: "I will not betray any secret if I explain that in the course of the last few months the contacts of the Church government in Freiburg with the government in Karlsruhe have proceeded in the most friendly way. I also believe that I will not be betraying a secret, either to you or to the German people, if I say that I place myself unreservedly behind the new government and the new Reich."
The Baden Interior Minister Pflaumer honored the cooperation promised by Gröber and sent the following directive to police headquarters on November 13, 1933: "Forceful measures against Catholic clergymen outside the framework of the general laws are not permitted in the future," which indirectly allows the inference that the Nazi state basically did not consider itself bound by laws.
At the end of the year 1933 Gröber complained in a letter to the Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli about priests critical of the regime, who had been taken into "protective custody" (Schutzhaft), that it had not always been possible to obtain from the clergy the intelligent reserve and opportune reflection that, under a full evaluation of the fundamental situation, protect individual clergymen from inconveniences.
Also in this time came his decision, together with a few men of the cathedral, to become a "supporting member" of the SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
. After the war Gröber explained this by saying that at the time the SS in Freiburg was considered the most decent organization of the Party.
In 1941 Gröber, whilst supporting attempts to help persecuted Jews, wrote in a pastoral letter that the sad state of the Jews resulted from the curse that they had brought upon themselves when they murdered Christ. Anton Rauscher has said that Catholic theology of the era reflected “a view of the Jews which provoked anti-Semitism on the one hand, while on the other undermining the ability to oppose it.”
On Good Friday of 1941 he gave a sermon whose vocabulary came very close to the anti-Semitic
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
vocabulary of the Nazi rulers:
- "As a driving force behind the Jewish legal power stood the aggressive toadyism and malevolent perfidy of the Pharisees. They unmasked themselves more than ever as Christ's arch-enemies, deadly enemies.... Their eyes were blindfolded by their prejudice and blinded by their Jewish lust for worldly dominion." As for the "people" or, in his words, the "wavering crowd of Jews", the archbishop said, "The Pharisees' secret service had awakened the animal in it through lies and slander, and it was eager for grisly excitement and blood."
- About Judas: "This unspeakable wretch... sits sycophantically at the Lord's Supper... at which Satan went into him... and placed him at the lead of the present-day servants of Judas.... In true Jewish fashion, he bargained with the high priests.... He [Christ] is betrayed with the sign of love bubbling over, with a smacking kiss from dirty Judas lips."
- Finally at the scene of the Ecce Homo: "All the sympathy of the Jews is hidden under barbaric rawness. The beast has smelled human blood and wants to slake its wild-burning thirst with it.... At the same time the insane but truthful self-curse of the Jews screams: His blood come upon us and our children! The curse has been frightfully fulfilled. Unto this present day..."
Criticism of the regime
In spite of this, even in the early time of the Third Reich critical statements by Gröber can be found. In contrast to the majority of the German bishops, he supported a public protest of the Catholic Church against the call on April 1, 1933 to boycott Jewish businesses ("with consideration for innocent persons and converts"). In his LentLent
In the Christian tradition, Lent is the period of the liturgical year from Ash Wednesday to Easter. The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer – through prayer, repentance, almsgiving and self-denial – for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and...
en pastoral letter of February 10, 1933 Gröber exhorted the faithful of the diocese, each according to his abilities, to take care that lying and slander, demagogy and hate, acts of violence and murder not further besmirch the name of Germany.
Like the Catholic Church in general, Gröber was targeted for attacks by the authorities. Besides the ban on other parties and the dissolution of many Catholic non-church associations, the authorities resorted to personal insults. In 1936 Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher
Julius Streicher was a prominent Nazi prior to World War II. He was the founder and publisher of Der Stürmer newspaper, which became a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine...
went on a speaking campaign in Baden in which he attacked the Church and personally attacked Gröber over an alleged love relationship with a Jewish woman, and filed a morals complaint against him. The resulting rumors were also fostered by a Catholic priest, the Nazi party member Dr. Heinrich Mohr, who had hopes of gaining a bishop's seat after Gröber's removal.
From 1935 on, Gröber fought against the Nazi regime, notably only within the framework provided by law and in particular the concordat.
After the beginning of the organized killing of the mentally ill, termed euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
, he protested in a letter to the Baden Interior Minister Pflaumer, and was the first of the German bishops to do so in writing, according to Schwalbach.
His courageous New Year's Eve sermons in the Freiburg Münster and his Lenten pastoral letters became especially effective with the public. In them he particularly lashed the Nazi regime's enmity toward the Church and, according to Schwalbach, assailed euthanasia, which he described as murder, in the New Year's Eve sermon of 1941. He also held a protective arm over the resistance fighter Gertrud Luckner
Gertrud Luckner
Gertrud Luckner was a christian resister against the Nazism and a righteous among the Nations.-Early life and Education:...
, assigned by Caritas
Caritas (charity)
Caritas Internationalis is a confederate of 164 Roman Catholic relief, development and social service organisations operating in over 200 countries and territories worldwide....
to support the so-called "Jewish Christians".
For the Nazi authorities he was the "most evil rabblerouser against the Third Reich". The Baden Culture Minister Dr. Paul Schmitthenner
Paul Schmitthenner
Paul Schmitthenner was a German architect and city planner from Lauterbourg, Alsace-Lorraine, one of Adolf Hitler's architects. He graduated from the University of Stuttgart and later became a Professor there, where he formed together with Paul Bonatz the architectural style of the Stuttgart School...
described him in a file notation of August 8, 1940 as the greatest enemy of the NSDAP and the National Socialist State. Only his office as Archbishop had kept him, wrote Schmitthenner, from already sitting in jail for high treason.
Response to persecution of priests
On the other hand, he is still reproached to this day on the ground that he had not sufficiently supported the suffragan bishop Johannes Baptista SprollJohannes Baptista Sproll
Johannes Baptista Sproll was a German Bishop and prominent opponent of the Nazi regime.Sproll was born in Schweinhausen, near Biberach, the son of a street mender, Josef Sproll, and his wife, Anna Maria née Freuer. He attended the Latin school in Biberach and the Gymnasium Ehingen...
who was driven out of his diocese of Rottenburg as early as 1938.
Gröber wrote a still controversial letter to the president of the Volksgerichtshof (People's Court) Roland Freisler
Roland Freisler
Roland Freisler was a prominent and notorious Nazi lawyer and judge. He was State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice and President of the People's Court , which was set up outside constitutional authority...
, who had sentenced to death Max Josef Metzger
Max Josef Metzger
Max Josef Metzger was born in Schopfheim in Baden, Germany.Metzger became a Roman Catholic priest and worked as a military chaplain for the forces of Imperial Germany during World War I. During that war he began to see peace work as an urgent task...
, a priest of his diocese:
- Esteemed Mr. President of the People's Court!
- At this moment I am receiving the news of the proceeding that led to the death sentence of my diocesan priest Dr. Max Metzger. I lament most deeply the offense of which he has made himself guilty. If I depicted him as an idealist in my message addressed to Attorney Dr. Dix, this happened without any knowledge on my part of his criminal undertaking. I consider it important to share this with you, because it is utterly foreign to me to include his actions in the realm of idealism, as I depicted him.
While part of the literature considers this letter as a last-ditch approach used as a tactical measure, in order to obtain the conversion of the death sentence into a prison term, another part of the literature considers it a cowardly distancing from a man sentenced to death on invalid grounds. Yet source criticism
Source criticism
A source criticism is a published source evaluation . An information source may be a document, a person, a speech, a fingerprint, a photo, an observation or anything used in order to obtain knowledge. In relation to a given purpose, a given information source may be more or less valid, reliable or...
is necessary here: other documents from those days show that Gröber in fact did take steps to gain a mitigation of the penalty. Thus it is clear Gröber believed that only by recognizing the grounds for the judgment could he have even a minimal chance of success vis-à-vis Freisler.
On November 12, Gröber informed his diocesan clergy of the sentence against Metzger, with, among others, the following words:
- This thoroughly sad case should teach us insistently that we refrain painstakingly from everything and anything that could hurt our Fatherland in any way in its difficult hour, and could hurt ourselves as well; that we honor, gratefully and prayerfully, the enormous sacrifices and successes of our soldiers in the field; strengthen the courage of our faithful in the homeland [...], consider the frightful disaster of a lost war with Bolshevistic consequences, and daily ask God... to protect our homeland and bless it with an honorable internal and external peace.
In the aftermath of the war
In a pastoral letter of May 8, 1945 he declared that no one should succumb to any extreme anti-Semitism. In his eyes the Holocaust was wrong because it forced the Jews into a defensive position from which they could cause the State greater harm than many a powerful enemy army.Immediately after the war's end Gröber enjoyed great respect because of his courageous speeches against the regime, and was made an honored citizen of Meßkirch and Freiburg. Consulted as an advisor and mediator, he took a position against the re-establishment of the Centre Party, but instead supported the collection of all the Christian forces in the later CDU
Christian Democratic Union (Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is regarded as on the centre-right of the German political spectrum...
.
Yet the bitter confrontations from the Nazi era remained: Gröber tried to silence an event for the so-called "concentration camp priests", initiated by Pastor Wilhelm Köhler and Richard Schneider
Richard Schneider
Richard Schneider was a German football manager. He is most notable for being in charge of 1. FC Kaiserslautern during the 1950s, winning two German football championships with the club, and appearing in two further finals as runners-up. He left the club in 1961 and became the manager at Preußen...
, who was the first diocesan clergyman taken to the Dachau concentration camp in 1940, although 5 of the 16 clergymen from Gröber's diocese imprisoned in the camp were murdered.
The "concentration camp priests", like the priests of the Münster diocese who were honored in a solemn way in a pontifical service by the bishop of Münster, wanted to commemorate their dead confreres and impress upon the public consciousness that the latter must not be allowed to have died in vain. The priests expressed the reproaches made against them in a resolution: "We are saddened when even now we have to hear from the clergy that we had only our own foolishness to blame, that we were victims of the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
. We find it hard to avoid the impression that a priest was better liked by the church administration, the less he came into contact with the Secret State Police
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
."
Works
- Geschichte des Jesuitenkollegs und -Gymnasiums in Konstanz, 1904
- Das Konstanzer Münster. Seine Geschichte und Beschreibung, 1914
- Die Mutter. Wege, Kraftquelle und Ziele christlicher Mutterschaft, 1922
- Reichenauer Kunst, 1924
- Heinrich Ignaz Freiherr von Wessenberg, In: Freiburger Diözesan Archiv 55, 1927; 56, 1928
- Christus Pastor. Bildnisse des guten Hirten, 1931
- Kirche und Künstler, 1932
- Handbuch der religiösen Gegenwartsfragen, 1937
- Die Reichenau, 1938
- Der Mystiker Heinrich Seuse. Die Geschichte seines Lebens. Die Entstehung und Echtheit seiner Werke, 1941
- Das Leiden unseres Herrn Jesus Christus im Lichte der vier heiligen Evangelien und der neuesten Zeitgeschichte, 1946
- Aus meinem römischen Tagebuch, 1947