Friedrich Muckermann

Friedrich Johannes Muckermann SJ (17 August 1883 – 2 April 1946) was a German Roman Catholic priest and political journalist. He was among the staunchest oponents of National Socialism and was a prominent literary critic and orator of Catholic Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.

Biography

Early life and education

Friedrich Johannes was born in Bückeburg, the fourth of 12 children of Hermann Johann Muckermann, a shoemaker and his wife Anna. His oldest brother was the priest and biologist Hermann Muckermann, his second youngest brother the politician Richard Muckermann and his youngest brother the diplomat Ludwig Muckermann.

Friedrich Muckermann attended the Gymnasium Adolfinum in his hometown and the Seminarium Liborianum, the Archbishop's seminary, in Paderborn. At the age of 16, the highly gifted student already received the maturity note as confirmation of his successful completion of school. He caught up on the formal Abitur as a student "as it were during a detour" at the Adolfinum in Bückeburg.

In the same year he entered the Jesuit Order. Muckermann completed his novitiate from September 1899 in Bleijenbeck (also written "Bleyenbeck") in the Netherlands. After the first vows the juniorate in Exaten near Leudal followed as education in the humanistic subjects. In 1903, he began his philosophy studies at Ignatius College in Valkenburg. After graduation he taught in the interstitium at the Jesuit College Stella Matutina in Feldkirch. He then studied German and pedagogy at the University of Copenhagen and taught in Ordrupshoj near Copenhagen. The exams in Copenhagen were followed by the study of theology at Ignatius College in 1912. In August 1914 he was ordained priest.

Jesuit and political journalist

At the beginning of World War I, Muckermann was initially deployed as a medic on the Western Front, and from the end of 1914 as a military chaplain on the Eastern Front. After the end of the war, he was entrusted with establishing a branch of his order in Vilnius. After the Red Army invaded Poland at the end of 1918, Muckermann was arrested in February 1919. He spent his imprisonment first in Minsk, and from May 1919 in Smolensk. In prison, Muckermann, who was gifted in languages, learned Russian excellently. He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was not carried out. Instead, he was released in December 1919 in a prisoner exchange (for Karl Radek). His imprisonment was his first formative experience of a totalitarian regime.

After returning home from Russia, Muckermann was able to complete his theological studies, which had been interrupted by war service and imprisonment. In September 1920, at the age of 37, he passed his final theological examination in Valkenburg. In the same year he was appointed to the editorial board of the journal Der Gral, where he worked together with Albert Maring, among others. Muckermann broadened the spectrum of authors and topics of Der Gral, gained numerous new subscribers, and made it a journal that "should reflect the Catholic world literature and at the same time take a stand on burning socio-political questions." From 1921 to 1923, he lived in Bonn, then moved the editorial office of Der Gral to Münster. From 1925, Muckermann was the sole editor of Der Gral. He also set up a correspondence office for the Catholic press in Münster, which supplied a large part of the approximately 400 Catholic daily newspapers in Germany with articles for their "overcoat".

Muckermann was well-known and much in demand as a speaker. Universities and academies, scientific associations, adult education centers and parishes invited him to speak on large and small occasions about literature, cultural and social developments or religious topics. Muckermann traveled up and down the country. In addition, there were speeches on the radio and series of sermons. His listeners still remembered his rousing speech and charismatic charisma years later.

Adversary of National Socialism

Muckermann warned incessantly against totalitarian ideologies, be it Stalinist communism or National Socialism. In a attack on Hitler's work My Struggle in the pages of his journal Der Gral, he called Hitler, who posed as a servant of the people's will, a "demagogue who dominates the people because he whips them." Again and again he asserted in writings and lectures that racism and anti-Semitism were anti-Christian heresies. In 1931, he called National Socialism the "heresy of the 20th century."

After the National Socialists "seizure of power" in 1933, he was considered an enemy of the state. The Gestapo in Essen recommended that he be banned from speaking. His books were burned and segregated. After the arrests in the course of the "Röhm Affair," Muckermann also had to reckon with being arrested; his brother Hermann warned him against it.

Friedrich Muckermann escaped across the border to Oldenzaal in the Netherlands on July 14, 1934. There, despite open Gestapo surveillance, the print shop owner and publisher of the Twentsche Courant, Bernard Bruggeman (1896–1978), helped him. He printed the exile journal Der Deutsche Weg, founded by Muckermann. Others helped smuggle Der Deutsche Weg and other Muckermann publications into Germany.

The Superior General of the Jesuits, Wlodimir Ledóchowski, called Muckermann to Rome at the beginning of 1935 and in July 1935 gave him a professorship of Russian literature at the Pontifical Oriental Institute, in order to take him "out of the line of fire". In addition to this teaching obligation, Muckermann continued his work at Deutscher Weg, which appeared in Oldenzaal until June 5, 1940. Five days later, the Wehrmacht occupied Oldenzaal.

Muckermann resumed his lecture tours in several European countries. In the fall of 1937, he moved to Vienna with the approval of Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg. Schuschnigg had been his student at the Gymnasium Stella Matutina in Feldkirch. The German ambassador, Franz von Papen, protested to Schuschnigg against Muckermann's "political activity" in Vienna, saying that Muckermann was "the most dangerous opponent of Germany." Schuschnigg, however, encouraged Muckermann to continue his activity, "which was infinitely valuable to us because he was a master at pointing out the wounds of the day without touching directly on political issues or calling a spade a spade." When Schuschnigg spoke to Hitler at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden in February 1938, the latter again demanded, again in vain, that the Austrian government put a stop to Muckermann.

At the Anschluss on March 12, 1938, Muckermann was in Basel for a lecture, which probably saved his life. He continued his journalistic campaign against the Third Reich from Paris. Via the Paris radio station, he spoke to the French and to his compatriots on Sundays from November 1939. After the Fall of France, he escaped to the initially unoccupied part of the country. There, disguised as a Dutch priest, he cared for a remote parish, Saint-Pardoux-Lavaud. After the Wehrmacht occupied this area as well in November 1942, he went into hiding. In March 1943, he managed to escape into Switzerland. Because of his status as an internee, his opportunities to engage in daily journalism were restricted by the Swiss authorities. So he wrote three books instead.

Friedrich Muckermann died in Montreux on April 2, 1946.

Since Muckermann's descriptions of everyday Soviet life, his references to Stalinist crimes, and his criticism of Bolshevism were not approved, his writings were banned in the Soviet occupation zone. The books Der Bolschewismus droht (1931), Das Los des Arbeiters in Sowjet-Rußland (1932) and Es spricht die spanische Seele (1937) were put on the list of literature to be banned. In the German Democratic Republic, this list was enlarged by Wollt ihr das auch? Wie ich den Bolschewismus in Rußland erlebte, Vom Rätsel der Zeit und Heiliger Frühling (1920).

Works

• Wollt ihr das auch? Wie ich den Bolschewismus in Russland erlebte (1920)
• Katholische Aktion (1929)
• Goethe (1931)
• Der Bolschewismus droht (1931)
• Der Mönch tritt über die Schwelle. Betrachtungen über die Zeit (1932)
• Das Los des Bauern in Sowjet-Rußland (1932)
• Das Los des Arbeiters in Sowjet-Rußland (1932)
• Vom Rätsel der Zeit (1933)
• Deutschland ... Wohin ...? Der Nationalsozialismus, eine religiöse Erscheinung (1934)
• Heiliger Frühling (1935)
• Es spricht die spanische Seele … Neue Dokumente (1937)
• Revolution der Herzen (1937)
• Der Mensch im Zeitalter der Technik (1943)
• Wladimir Solowiew. Zur Begegnung zwischen Rußland und dem Abendland (1945; 2 volumes)
• Der deutsche Weg. Aus der Widerstandsbewegung der deutschen Katholiken von 1930–1945 (1945)
• Im Kampf zwischen zwei Epochen. Lebenserinnerungen (1973; edited and introduced by Nikolaus Junk)

References

• Nanda Herbermann, Friedrich Muckermann. Ein Apostel unserer Zeit. Schöningh, Paderborn (1953).
• Franz Kroos, "Friedrich Muckermann (1833–1946)". In: Rudolf Morsey, ed., Zeitgeschichte in Lebensbildern. Aus dem deutschen Katholizismus des 20. Jahrhunderts. 2. Mainz (1975), pp. 48–63.
• "Muckermann, Friedrich". In: Werner Röder and Herbert A. Strauss, eds., Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933. 1. München: Saur (1980), p. 510.
• Hubert Gruber, Friedrich Muckermann S.J., 1883–1946. Ein katholischer Publizist in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Zeitgeist. Mainz: Matthias Grünewald (1993).
• Hubert Gruber, "Friedrich Muckermann SJ". In: Stimmen der Zeit 214 (1996), p. 266–76.
• Hubert Gruber, "Muckermann, Friedrich". In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). 18. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot (1997), pp. 258–60.
• Eva Rademacher, "Friedrich Muckermann. Ein Jesuitenpater im Kampf zwischen zwei Epochen". In: Sigmund Graf Adelmann, Gegen den Strom. Widerstand und Zivilcourage im Nationalsozialismus in Schaumburg. Gütersloh: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte (2005), pp. 77–88.
• Johannes Schwarte, "Friedrich Muckermann SJ (1883–1946)". In: Die Neue Ordnung 60 (2006), pp. 201–16.

External links

• Works by Friedrich Muckermann at German National Library