Neither Woe, Grandeur, Nor
Lust, Nor Fear...
The Lion of Münster
Laß höchster Gott /
Laß
Dein ewig-heller Glantz sey vor und neben mir /
Laß / wenn der müde Leib entschläfft / die Seele wachen
Und wenn der letzte Tag wird mit mir Abend machen
So reiß mich aus dem Thal der Finsternüß zu dir.
Aus: Abend
Let Highest God / me but not stumble on my pathway /
Let neither woe, grandeur / nor lust nor fear mislead me!
Your everlasting shine may guide and be beside me /
Let / once the tired corpse will sleep / the spirit stay awake
And when the final day will make its night for me
Then tear me from the vale of darkness home to you.
From: Night
Andreas Gryphius (1616-1664)
Count Clemens August Galen was
Bishop of Münster, the political and ecclesiastical capital of the strongly
Catholic region of
His immense prestige at home and abroad and the staunch backing by the people
of Münster and the region was what ultimately saved him from the extermination
that other bishops and many of his own priests suffered. At
the end of the day, not even the Nazis dared to touch the tall and powerful
scion of one of the oldest noble families of the deeply Catholic Münsterland,
and the "simple pastor", who had been by far not the first choice of
the Holy See as Bishop of Münster, had won not just the respect and approval,
but the boundless reverence of his flock (an uncommon occurrence among the --to
put it unkindly-- somewhat dour Westphalians at any rate) and, finally, the
world.
Burg Dinklage, Galen's birthplace, on the right the entrance with the Galen crest of arms
Clemens von Galen (he
only took August as a second name when he became bishop) was born in 1878 at
Burg Dinklage, the seat of the family for centuries, in the Northern,
A Long Tradition of Loyalty and Service
The Galen family lloked
back at a long tradition of deep loyalty and of service to the Catholic Church
and the family had put forth many priests and bishops before.
Christoph Bernhard von Galen (1606 -1678), Prince Bishop of Münster
An important part of the
spiritual and political family heritage was a lively rememberance of the
Prussian Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church in the 19th century, in
which a relative, the Arch-Bishop of
Count Clemens' great-uncle was Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, Bishop of Mainz, the most eminent Bishop of the 19th century, who had been known as the "workers' bishop" for his indefatigable efforts for the oppressed and exploited unskilled German workers in their struggle to form trade unions to be able to fairly bargain for better wages and decent working conditions.
Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, Bishop of Mainz
Following studies at the
seminaries of
He first served as
chaplain to his uncle, suffragan bishop Maximilian Gereon Graf Galen at
Münster, then for 23 years as a big-city-pastor in the "diaspora" in
The Prussian province of Westphalia within the German Empire
In January 1933 Hitler became chancellor of
On March 23, 1933 Hitler made a statement in which he promised to work
for peaceful relations between Church and State. Five days
later, the German bishops, in a joint statement, said that though they
maintained a negative attitude to Nazism in the past, in view of the public
guarantee of Hitler to respect Catholic doctrine and the rights of the Church,
they now believed that the previous general warnings and bans were no longer
necessary, which paved the way for the signing of concordat between Nazi
Germany and the Vatican, with the expectation of improved conditions for the
Church. It was ratified on 10 September 1933.
Newly ordained priest Count Clemens within the circle of his family
On September 2 of this fateful year, Clemens Galen was appointed bishop of Münster. Nec Laudibus, Nec Timore, unconcerned about praise, undaunted by fear, became his eccesiastical motto, which already pointed towards the manner in which he would exercise his ministry in the midst of the 20th century's most cruel dictatorship.
Too Overbearing An Attitude for A Simple Pastor
It is worth noting that
Pastor Count Clemens hadn't been the Holy See's first
choice for Bishop of Münster. When the election of Pastor Count Galen became known in September 1933, it triggered a number of
startled reactions. "The Holy Spirit will have to help a
lot" was the majority's reaction of those who had known the minister of
St. Lambert as a passionate and well-liked pastor, but, apart from his noble
birth and towering figure of almost 6'8", he had never appeared to be
particularly notable, either as an independent theological thinker or a brilliant
preacher, or as a religious writer. His only published work was a small
book through which he had expressed, in 1932, his disgust at the secularisation
of public life by the progress of Liberal and Socialist ideas. Even the title
of this literary attack "Die '
In fact, Nuntius Cesare Orsenigo had written to then Cardinal State Secretary Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, about "overbearing attitude, stubbornness and too schoolmasterly a manner for a simple pastor." But, and this is not without irony, in the Germany of 1933, Galen's conservative leanings seemed to be in line with the new powers, a grossly misleading notion, but, at that time, it may have backed him in the election.
Bishop Galen's travels to administer the sacrament of confirmation to the youth of his diocese were a purpose- and powerful statement of Catholic self-assertion post 1933.
One of the first things the finally elected bishop did was, to spiritually strengthen his people, immediately establishing Perpetual Adoration of the Eucharist in a central church in his diocese and then enbarked on a campaign of ceaseless public challenges to the neo-pagan ideology of National Socialism, so that his people would not be swept away by the, no doubt, seductive appeal of nationalistic sentiment.
The bishop paid close attention to the literature of National Socialism, and in his first Lenten Pastoral already, in January 1934, he opposed the fundamental doctrine of the new politics, namely the veneration of the "race".
Hell Itself Is Let loose with Its Deceit
A few weeks later he wrote his Easter Pastoral. By now, he was much more certain of where National Socialism was leading -- to the systematic destruction of the Faith. Thus, he saw that it was absolutely necessary to be very outspoken and to use all the authority and resources of the episcopal office to open people's minds to what was happening. The pastoral was read in a solemn manner, and was listened to by a crowded congregation in expectant silence. It didn't leave any doubt in its lucidity: "Hell itself is let loose with its deceit", the bishop warned, "which may even mislead good men". Specifically notable is the sentence: "With holy joy we will, should God permit them, like the martyrs endure abuse and persecution."
At the end of May 1935,
Galen wrote to the Oberpräsident (governor) of
The next day, Catholic Münster retorted with a huge procession.
Galen spoke to the crowd and remained adamant, and said so, that he would never yield to the enemies of Christianity and the persecutors of the Church.
One year later, when the day for the big Easter procession of 1936 arrived, the police, well aware of the huge crowd the bishop had drawn the previous year, roped off the cathedral square to prevent large numbers of people from assembling. The bishop went to the pulpit of the cathedral and thundered his protest: "Can the shepherd be severed from his flock? Can the police divide Catholics from their own bishop by ropes and chains?" (there were loud shouts of 'no!' from the crowd) "They can't be divided... Sorrowful times, my dear people of Münster are at hand but I know that steadfastness will prevail".
The campaign of vilification of the clergy was intensified in the Nazi press. Readers were fed sensationalist charges of sexual immorality among priests and members of religious orders. "Immorality trials" were staged in courts and, by devious manipulation, were made to appear as an unbroken series of clerical offences.
"So it's not opportune to hurl
ourselves now into
a struggle with the Churches.
The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death,"
Adolf Hitler, 14 October 1941.
Priests were pilloried as idlers and criminals and the
bishop of Münster particularly targeted. Organised groups of thugs threw stones
at the windows of his residence at night, singing obscene songs made up to
ridicule Galen, accompanied by the noise of breaking glass. The degree of
observation imposed on Catholic bishops, both over their private lives and
their high office, was unprecedented, even by Nazi standards, and got even
worse during the war years.
The Nazis gradually and effectively destroyed the independence of the Catholic
press by a series of draconian laws. From April 1935, articles with a religious
content had been forbidden, in 1936 the publication of
pastoral letters was altogether banned.
His Was A Simple Piety
What were the sources of the bishop's courage and vision during these difficult years? We get some idea of this aspect of von Galen's life by a consideration of his personal piety. He had a deeply supernatural view of life, an attitude im-pressed on his mind from early childhood. The great truths of God's intervention in human history were constantly before his mind, reinforced by daily reading of the Scriptures. On the other hand, his was a simple piety which expressed itself in love for the Blessed Eucharist, in devotion to the Rosary, to relics and pilgrim-ages. He was very conscious of the effects of original sin, and consequently he not only went to confession frequently as an antidote, but lived in a deep spirit of self-denial with regard to food and creature comforts. He did the Stations of the Cross every Friday afternoon. He renewed the consecration of his diocese to the Sacred Heart, a devotion which grew and matured deeply in his soul, especially during the thorny war years.
Bishop Count Galen in an undated photograph
He Called Them Thieves and Robbers to Their Faces
Time
and again the
bishop argued with the authorities in
Bishop Galen protested at every crime committed against his priests and publicly exposed the crimes of the Gestapo with considerable risk to his own life. During the war years he maintained a copious correspondence with his priests at the front, who wrote to him about their experiences, the joys of their priestly work, or the burden of the Cross in their lives. They wrote to him as they would to a father, and he replied to every one of those letters personally. On the occasion of big feasts of the Church, he used to send them a circular letter to tell them about the joys and sorrows of their home diocese.
On Saturday 12 July the Gestapo confiscated two Jesuit houses in Münster. As soon as the bishop heard about it, he went at once to the premises and caught the Gestapo in the act of driving the priests from their homes. He called them thieves and robbers to their faces. That night he wrote the sermon, which drew the Bishop of Münster to the attention of the world.
In this sermon he attacked the Nazis cadidly, without any thought of his own security. No German citizen, he said, had any defence against their power; they had replaced the courts and were above the law. He continued: "Not one of us is certain, though he be the most loyal, the most conscientious citizen, though he knows himself innocent, I say that not one of us is certain that he will not any day be dragged from his house and carried off to the cells of some concentration camp. I know full well that this may happen to me, perhaps now or on some future day. And it is because I shall then no longer be able to speak out publicly that I do so today. I openly warn them not to pursue these actions which I am firmly convinced will call down God's punishment and bring our people to misery and ruin".
"Christianity is an invention of sick brains."
Adolf Hitler, 13 December 1941.
He made it clear that because he was bound by his oath as bishop to uphold the moral order, he had to speak out publicly against the acts of the Gestapo and finished off with an uncompromising warning: "We demand Justice! If this plea is unheard and unheeded, if the rule of true justice is not brought back, our German nation will, notwithstanding the bravery of our soldiers and their splendid victories, collapse from internal corruption and uncleanness".
Bishop Galen was well aware that in saying what he said, he was not just going to be pilloried in the press, he knew he was playing with his life, but he was fully prepared to be martyred. Before delivering his famous sermons, he instructed his household to take a change of clothing to prison should he be arrested. Several times he was ready to speak up publicly for the Jews as well, but in the end he didn't because representatives of the Jewish community of Münster begged him not to because this might turn out as (according to their own, fatal, judgement) even more harmful to them.
Galen, together with the Bishop of Berlin Konrad Graf Preysing, his cousin, and the Archbishop of Freiburg, Conrad Gröber, a "hardliner" within the German episcopacy, had carefully contemplated the consequences of such a spectacular "resort to publicity", as he himself called his protests in a letter to his neighbour, Bishop Berning of Osnabrück, a correspondence that was discovered not earlier than 1976. There he called it his conscientious duty to speak up publicly for freedom of the church and human dignity and "if necessary, sacrifice the own freedom and life". And, as he couldn't convince the other bishops to go the way with him, he went alone.
On August 3, 1941, Galen thundered from the pulpit of his see,
Galen's secretary, who
was present at
At the end of July 1941, the chaplain at the mental asylum in Marienthal in the diocese of Münster, called on the bishop to inform him about another sinister experience. A number of the mentally ill patients had been removed to be killed because they were 'unproductive'. This was what triggered off Galen's historic sermon, in which he attacked the Nazi practice of euthanasia and condemned the "mercy killings" taking place in his own diocese.
A curse on men if we break the holy commandment 'Thou shalt not kill'
Now, again at
The impact of his sermon reached far beyond the crowded congregation that flocked to hear him. Thousands of copies were made and distributed throughout the country; they were smuggled to soldiers at the front where his references to the threat of death hanging over invalids and seriously wounded soldiers spread with lighting speed.
Galen's words had an unexpected, amazing and powerful effect. By the end of August, the programme for euthanasia had been suspended, although not before about 100,000 people had been killed.
Copies of these 1941
sermons spread all over
Galen's see, St Lambert's Church, Lambertikirche zu Münster, the place of his his fateful sermons.
Hitler had any reason to
fear him far beyond his regional importance as a bishop, because
it was Galen who provided the Allies with powerful anti-Nazi propagan-da.
One of the directors of propaganda in the British War Office, Brigadier R. L.
Sedgwick, a convert to Catholicism, recalls that during the war the BBC sent
out transmissions specifically targeting the forty million German and Austrian
Catholics. Day after day, the broadcasts from
It was a great
consolation for the bishop to know that by his words
he had given courage and heart to those of his countrymen who repudiated
everything Nazism stood for. Towards the end of August, he received a letter
from the bishop of
Münster Cathedral, der Dom zu Münster, in today's restored state.
He Wept in Silence
On October 10, 1943
Münster cathedral was bombed to rubble by the British. It was a Sunday. In the
early afternoon, under a clear autumn sky, when the Catholic congregation of Münster
had gathered in front the doorway of the ancient cathedral as it was the
feastday of the motherhood of Mary. The high altar blazed with candles. It was
2.55 PM when the sirens howled:. The first high
explosive bomb fell with extreme precision on the vault of the west quadrant.
From above, the west entrance of the cathedral, crowned by imposing Roman-esque
towers, was a target difficult to miss. The survivors fled, seeking shelter
under the walls of the tower. Seemingly as solid as the sky, those towers had
watched over the city of
Canon Alois Schröer reported: "When the sirens sounded the alarm the bishop was putting on his vestments to go into the cathedral. He had no time to get to the air-raid shelter. High explosive bombs hit and destroyed his residence. He stood clutching the only wall left standing". When his secretary Heinrich Portmann found him while the planes were still flying over the city "I saw the Most Reverend Monsignor up above, under the open sky among the smoking ruins... miraculously he was unharmed. With difficulty I helped him down.... Later, in the shelter of the Ludgerianum College, I told him of the faithful who had died... of Vicar Emmerich and of the fifty nine nuns of the Charity of Saint Clement, who had all flown to heaven together from their convent, which had been hit squarely by an incendiary bomb. That night he asked me to accompany him to the cathedral. He stood there, motionless, in front of that rubble devoured by the flames. He wept in silence".
The destroyed city of Münster
Because of the damage to the city, the bishop and the diocesan administration had to move out to Sendenhorst, a small town about 20 km South East of Münster. As the weeks wore on and the Allies advanced, the bombardment of the towns became more and more intense. Bishop Galen was saddened by the constant flow of bad news, of destruction and death.
On Easter Sunday, March
31, 1945, American tanks finally rolled into Senden-horst. Bishop Galen
personally drove out to meet the troops and welcomed them, whereupon he entered
into regular contact with the provisional military government for the
assistance of his people, giving encouragement and hope to both sides. On 12
April, the Bishop went to Münster for the first time since it
had been occupied by the Americans. His purpose was to make a public
protest against the excesses of the freed Russian and Polish slave labourers
who had been released by the Allies after the retreat
of the Germans. They had been abominably treated and now, unrestricted by the
military, were taking their revenge on their former tormenters without much
interference of the occupying powers. He preached and protested as ardently
against any injustices then as he had done so before, and on July,
24 1945 he had to account for his actions at a tribunal of the military
government in Warendorf. He explained frankly that he would follow, as always,
his pastoral duties and not abide to any directives
and that they could do what they like with him, even put him into prison.
Thomas Mann, far away
Politically, the bishop was, not too surprisingly, a deeply conservative man. A befitting memorial for the man Galen was set up by the British Foreign Office by describing him as "the most outstanding personality among the clergy in the British zone.... Statuesque in appearance and un-compromising in discussion, this oak-bottomed old aristocrat ... is a German nationalist through and through."
He had a mountain of
correspondence to deal with from all parts of
In a letter dated 25 September 1945 Pope Pius XII he talked about the "the terrible conditions in the occupied territories" and begged him to intervene with "direct help through remonstrations to the victorious powers". On 6 January 1946 he had gone to celebrate the Epiphany in the ruins of the sanctuary of Telgte. He closed his sermon with the words: "Under Nazism I publicly declared, and I also wrote it directly to Hitler in 1939, when no power was then intervening to block his expansionist aims: 'Justice is the basis of the State; if justice is not re-established, then our people will die from inner putrefaction'. Today I must declare: if the law is not respected among peoples, then peace and concord among peoples will never come."
The First Bishop of Münster Ever To Wear The Purple
Earlier, the Sunday
before Christmas, it had been announced on the wireless that Pope Pius XII was
going to create thirty new cardinals, among them Bishop Count Galen, the Bishop
of Berlin Konrad Graf Preysing, Galen's cousin and the Archbishop of Cologne,
Joseph Frings. Galen would be the first bishop of Münster ever to wear the
Purple. The announcement was greeted with enthusiasm
all over
Cardinal Count Galen on
board of the US Airforce
plane that took him (different from the erroneous German caption) home from --not
to-- Rome
That he had earned it was the unanimous verdict of the Catholic world. After his famous 1941 sermons, letters arrived by the hundred at the episcopal palace to thank the Bishop of Münster for his courageous stand. Now five years later, letters of congratulation poured in by the thousands, cheering the honour be-stowed on him. They were from people from every walk of life - academics, professional people, soldiers, non-Catholics, non-believers, government representatives, the list was endless.
"God bless you, God bless your country"
The travel to
After visiting a number
of German POW camps in
Cardinal Count Galen's reception in front of destroyed Münster cathedral on his return from Rome
He responded to all the addresses of welcome and congratulation with the simple dignity by which he was always known. Neither he nor the huge crowd who listened with pride and joy to his words realized that this was to be their great bishop's farewell. His fight, so he told them, had been made possible by the unshakeable faith of the people of Münster; it was the staunch spirit of this un-conquerable diocese, which was the cause of his being alive that day. When he returned to his rooms after the fireworks display, he did not feel well.
The Only Man Who Had Stood Up for Their Rights Was Dead
The following day, Sunday 17th, he said a pontifical High Mass. His last words to the faithful of Münster were an exhortation to papal loyalty, especially to the reigning pope, Pius XII. The choir sang the Te Deum in celebration. Unfortunately, he wouldn't allow a doctor to be called until Tuesday morning. The diagnosis was serious and the operation revealed a perforation of the appendix. It was too late for the doctors to do anything about it. He died on Friday, March 22.
He lay in state for four days in the
On March 28 the burial took place.
The same crowd that just a week before had shouted in joy and celebration at
the return of their cardinal's triumphant return from Rome, now stood silent
and stunned in the rubble of the streets of Münster, as the huge coffin, drawn
by four horses, passed.
The cardinal's last resting place was the Galen Chapel amid the ruins of his cathe-dral, where the remains of a former Galen, Prince Bishop Christoph Bernhard, had been laid to rest in 1678. As the cardinal's coffin was lowered into the ground, a mighty sound rose up from the congregation, as they sang the magnificent Easter hymn "Wahrer Gott wir glauben Dir", "True God We Believe in You" (incidentally the work of another son of Münster, Christoph Bernhard Verspoell, dated 1810). It resounded through the ruins of the cathedral and the vestiges of the streets and lanes as an account of the unconquerable hope and faith of the Catholics of Münster.
Postscriptum
On November 16, 2004, in the presence of Pope John Paul II, the Congregation for Causes of Saints promulgated a decree linking a miracle to Cardinal Clemens August Count Galen and on October 9, 2005 Galen was beatified, not entirely unexpectedly to the chagrin of the "progressive" fellowship in- and outside the Catholic Church.
Pope John Paul II and Bishop Reinhard Lettmann 1987 at Cardinal Galen's grave
The Catholic Church, so
far, has been remarkably hesitant in beatifying its own leading members of the
German resistance. As of now, only one, a layman, the
Catholic labour leader and editor Nikolaus Gross (1898-1945), who was was
beheaded in Plötzensee prison in
Galen's rise to a position preceding sainthood is important for a number of reasons, of which the most poignant one is the fact, that, at a time, when euthanasia seems to have, again, become an acceptable practise in many Western countries, when the abortion of fetuses with Down's Syndrome, or just diagnosed with Down's Syndrome, has become a routine day-to-day operation and when children, having undergone a "late term termination of pregnacy", survive their own abortion, Cardinal Galen's maxim is as important now as it was more than 60 years ago.
"There is no such
thing as life unworthy of living."
Clemens August Graf Galen
Sources and further reading:
Information including the full text of his famous sermons and the Gestapo correspondence regarding Bishop Galen
Blessed anti-Nazi Cardinal by Uwe Siemon-Netto.
A bishop under the moral bombs: The Lion of Münster, «the most relentless opponent of Nazism», as the New York Times described him in 1942, condemned the terrible Allied bombing that razed German cities to the ground. These pages contain the letters that the bishop wrote to Pius XII during the war years by Stefania Falasca
Biographical information and pictures from the archives of the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe
Burgwald Dinklage with information on the Galen family history and the House Burg Dinklage.
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