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The soldier monks of Schäftlarn Monastery: "Please pray for us!"

2020-09-04T11:06:22.977Z


The Second World War did not stop at the Benedictine Abbey of Schäftlarn. On the contrary: between 1939 and 1944 many of the brothers served in the war. Some of them never came back, others only after years of imprisonment.


The Second World War did not stop at the Benedictine Abbey of Schäftlarn.

On the contrary: between 1939 and 1944 many of the brothers served in the war.

Some of them never came back, others only after years of imprisonment.

Schäftlarn - "Oh God, I recommend myself and our house to your hands", wrote Sigisbert Mitterer, abbot of the Schäftlarn monastery, on September 1, 1939 at the beginning of the war in his diary, in which the prior and archivist of the monastery, Father Norbert Piller, granted a look.

"Days of suffering will follow, for many there will be days of bitter death."

Eight monks died

A Reich Concordat concluded between Adolf Hitler and the Vatican on July 22, 1933 made it possible for the monks to be called up - albeit not in the field of weapons, but, for example, as paramedics in the hospital.

The first delivery notes reached the monastery as early as 1939, and the muster station was in the former agricultural school in Wolfratshausen.

17 members of the convention were committed over the next few years.

Eight of them never came back from the war.

Abbot Sigisbert followed the course of the front and the army reports as best he could since the fighting broke out.

And he tried to keep in touch with his “soldier monks”.

Like a father who writes to his sons, he wrote a total of well over 100 so-called "home letters" in which he informed about the fate of the confreres and reported on the events in the Isar valley - such as the night of bombing in June 1944.

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Home letters: Sigisbert Mitterer, second abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of Schäftlarn, regularly wrote letters to his soldier monks at the front.

© Sabine Hermsdorf-Hiss

Through visits to his home country and messages from the soldier monks, Sigisbert also learned about the horror that his confreres were exposed to.

Brother Hermann Einsiedler wrote home from the north-eastern Russian front that his captain was killed in heavy fighting.

"I'm still alive.

Please pray for me! ”Novice Johannes Baptist Schranner, who had accompanied a hospital train in south-east Poland, reported that the partisans had attacked heavily.

“Thirteen wagons were blown up and pushed into one another to form a horrific heap of rubble,” he said of his experience in March 1944. “About 100 of the seriously injured and wounded were dead, many were wounded again, including a large number so severely that they were still in died the night. "

His brother Gerhard Fanger was also a train conductor in Russia.

Since the situation at the front became more and more acute, the teams of the economic troops were also deployed.

"I'm now with the alarm company," wrote Fanger back home.

Shortly afterwards, his death was announced.

"With him, the family is already losing their third son," said Abbot Sigisbert, showing his sympathy and compassion for the relatives.

Fanger died in Vitebsk at the age of 33.

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The war and its destructive traces: a bomb left this crater on Schäftlarn Abbey.

© Monastery archive

In 1944, Brother Gregor Laurentius Wolfram was seriously injured near Minsk.

“A grenade died in front of me.

I was hit, I couldn't see anything anymore, I thought I was dead. ”In the hospital they tried to save Frater Gregor's eyes.

“In vain for the right one,” he writes, “it was removed on March 3rd.

The left one is still good and the fragments of the brain are already out ... ”The then 31-year-old spends his vacation in Schäftlarn.

"His hair has turned gray," notes Sigisbert in his diary.

“It looks pointed and has aged a lot.” A year later, on March 10, 1945, Gregor Laurentius Wolfram was killed near Posen.

The whereabouts of the monastery soldiers could not always be determined.

Four brothers were still missing until 1956.

"We don't know if they are captured or already dead."

Some were lucky too, like Brother Otmar Kranz, who was injured in the Sachsenschneckeritz hospital in 1944.

"For me it is a great comfort to know that one of our most endangered brothers is out of danger for some time," said Abbot Sigisbert, relieved.

But a year later Otmar Kranz was present at the fight at Rettingen, southwest of Bitburg.

"After the Americans broke through the main German line of struggle, there was no trace of Brother Otmar." It later emerged that he had become an American prisoner of war.

Otmar Kranz returned, was ordained a priest in 1948 and elected fourth abbot of Schäftlarn Abbey in 1974.

He died of a heart attack on November 3, 1976.

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Reminder: Part of the plaque.

© Sabine Hermsdorf-Hiss

Brother Robert Fischer was held by the Americans in Böhl-Iggelheim, one of the Rhine meadow camps near the French border.

"Around 35,000 people are crammed together here," he estimates in a letter to Abbot Sigisbert.

“About 60 percent are outdoors.

Then there is the difficulty of catering.

Sometimes we went black from hunger.

In the meantime, however, the situation has improved. "

Memorial plaque keeps memories alive

In the Schäftlarn monastery, a memorial stone in the cloister to the Christ the King's Chapel still commemorates the brothers who died in the war or who have been missing since then.

Their names: Felix Mayer (Monthuchon / Normandie 1944), Joseph Riedlberger (Zubki / Russia 1941), Angelus Hammerl (Russia 1943), Honorat Schöberl (Briansk, Russia 1944), Gottfried Arnold (Bosvic, Russia 1944), Gerhard Fanger (Vitebsk , Russia 1944), Ludwig Lechner (Berlin 1943), Gregor Laurentius Wolfram (Posen 1945).

From the community:

The photographer Jana Erb from Schäftlarn captures the beauty of nature in her pictures. She wants to raise awareness of the vulnerability of nature - and the mission of a generation.

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2020-09-04

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