Munich - It was a scientific sensation when it became known in 2013 that the legendary Munich Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber (1869-1952) was a diligent diary writer.
The diaries, found in the estate of a deceased pastor, cover the years 1911 to 1950 - and they are an almost inexhaustible source, as they show Faulhaber very privately in all his entanglements, errors and considerations.
Now historians who have been publishing the diaries online for eight years in a mammoth scientific project, page after page, day after day, are drawing a mid-term review: “The image of the cleric is becoming more and more differentiated,” says Peer Volkmann, one of the historians.
It will take until the end of 2025 to edit the entire Faulhaber. But one thing is certain: the cardinal was a church prince who was socialized and firmly rooted in the empire. He hated the revolution of 1918 - far more than the National Socialists, with whom he had shown "an almost endless willingness to negotiate" since 1933, as Editions employee Philipp Gahn says. And between all of this, historians repeatedly find interesting individual insights - for example on Faulhaber's relationship with women.
Before reading, there was learning a script: the almost 30,000 diary pages are written in Gabelsberg shorthand, which is difficult to read.
In the beginning, says the historian Franziska Nicolay, one of the editors, it took four hours to read a diary page.
That actually means: twelve hours, because the six-eyes principle applies to the project.
Each page of the diary is read by three people so that any final errors can be eliminated during deciphering.
0.4% of the text passages are illegible
At first, the researchers thought they would be good if they couldn't read four to five percent of the text.
But they are even better than expected: Only 0.4 percent of the text passages are so far illegible.
The edition of the Munich Institute for Contemporary History, the Archdiocese and the Münster Chair for Church History began in 2015 with the publication of the volumes on the 1918 Revolution that Faulhaber experienced in Munich. “The most terrible night of my life,” he wrote in his diary on November 7, 1918, when the revolution broke out on the streets of Munich. Two days later he was shaken by a fit of tears - the red flag was now waving on a tower of the Frauenkirche. “The fundamental value that is important to him is order,” says co-editor Moritz Fischer. This is one of the great lines of interpretation that runs through the entire work. Modern mass democracy equates Faulhaber with chaos.
This also explains why Faulhaber's takeover of power in 1933 was less emotional than the 1918 revolution: The National Socialists did not take power, there were no street riots - that was obviously important to Faulhaber.
The dismaying extent to which Faulhaber got involved with the National Socialists is perhaps the greatest scientific finding of the project. So far, only the volumes 1933 to 1939 can be viewed - but what is revealed here is harrowing enough. Faulhaber had obviously succumbed to the Hitler myth. “You can talk to Hitler, that was his opinion,” says the historian Peer Volkmann. "I personally value him very highly, as a real statesman, I do not want the church to be destroyed," it says in the diary in February 1937. And that is not the only place where Faulhaber paid homage to Hitler. It is true that he kept his distance at times, for example in the Advent and New Year's Eve sermons in 1933. Ultimately, however, he wanted to protect his church from attacks through negotiation - as is well known, this only succeeded in details.
Faulhaber was not a resistance fighter
Quitting the church office was out of the question for him in view of the nationalization of monasteries or the persecution of Catholic clergy.
“He was not a resister because he wasn't interested in overthrowing the regime.” The term, says researcher Fischer, “would be completely out of place with Faulhaber”.
One can be curious about the outstanding wartime diaries, as Faulhaber saw the growing resistance against Hitler, such as the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944. Through the correspondence between the couple Helmuth James and Freya Moltke, it is already known that Faulhaber had contacts with the “Kreisauer Circle “used.
But how deep that went will probably only be shown by the edition.
The diary volume for the year 1949, which leads into the post-war period and gives access to the late Faulhaber, has been newly published since last week and also illustrates the plight in post-war Bavaria. A certain acquaintance with the cover name “Malmolitor” appears in the volume: he had a love affair with the 27-year-old teacher Franziska Bösmiller, whom Faulhaber disguised in his diary with the literal Latin translation of her name. From the late 1930s onwards, researchers began to have “close, intimate contacts” - “that was more than just a platonic friendship,” says Franziska Nicolay. Only from 1950 did the relationship cool down. "Malmolitor" often appears in the edited diary volumes from 1945 onwards,Faulhaber remains silent about the love affair here too - Bösmiller was more open-hearted in her estate.
In general: Faulhaber and women: The crowd that Faulhaber received for decades was “predominantly female”.
Faulhaber was a heartthrob.
Look at that.
The edition:
www.faulhaber-edition.de
