Clemens Augustinus Emmanuel Joseph Pius Anthonius Hubertus Marie Graf von Galen (16 March 1878 – 22 March 1946), better known as Clemens August Graf von Galen, was a German count, Bishop of Münster, and cardinal of the Catholic Church. During World War II, Galen led Catholic protests against Nazi euthanasia and denounced Gestapo lawlessness and the persecution of the Church in Nazi Germany. He was appointed a cardinal by Pope Pius XII in 1946, shortly before his death, and was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.
Born into the German aristocracy, Galen received part of his education in Austria-Hungary from the Jesuits at Stella Matutina in the town of Feldkirch. After his ordination, he worked in Berlin at St. Matthias. He intensely disliked the secular liberal values of the Weimar Republic. A monarchist, he considered the Treaty of Versailles unjust and viewed Bolshevism as a threat to Germany and the Church. He espoused the stab-in-the-back theory: that the German military was defeated in 1918 only because it had been undermined by defeatist elements on the home front. Despite his later opposition to Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church, he participated in a 1923 meeting of Catholic German aristocrats which affirmed the "inner truth" of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the inability of Jews to assimilate to German culture. He expressed his opposition to secularism in his 1932 book Die Pest des Laizismus und ihre Erscheinungsformen (The Plague of Laicism and its Forms of Expression). After serving in Berlin parishes from 1906 to 1929, he became the pastor of Münster's St. Lamberti Church, where he was noted for his political conservatism before being appointed Bishop of Münster in 1933.
Galen began to criticize Hitler's movement in 1934. He condemned the Nazi "worship of race" in a pastoral letter on 29 January 1934, and assumed responsibility for the publication of a collection of essays which fiercely criticized Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and defended the teachings of the Catholic Church. He was an outspoken critic of the euthanasia policies and anti-Catholicism of the Nazis and helped draft Pope Pius XI's 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. Nevertheless, he did not publicly condemn the Nazi persecution of Jews. In 1941, von Galen delivered three sermons in which he denounced the arrest of Jesuits, the confiscation of church property, Nazi attacks on the Church, and in the third, fiercely condemned the state-approved mass killing in the involuntary euthanasia programme of persons with mental or physical disabilities (Aktion T4)."The Murder of Unproductive Persons" Clemens von Galen The sermons were illegally circulated in print, inspiring some German Resistance groups, including the White Rose.
Following this, in September 1943, another condemnation was read at the order of von Galen and other bishops from all Catholic pulpits in the diocese of Münster and across Nazi Germany, denouncing the killing of "the innocent and defenceless mentally handicapped and mentally ill, the incurably infirm and fatally wounded, innocent hostages and disarmed prisoners of war and criminal offenders, people of a foreign race or descent".Evans, Richard J. (2009). The Third Reich at War. New York City: Penguin. , pp. 529–530.
Early years
Clemens August Graf von Galen was born in Dinklage, on 16 March 1878, the eleventh of thirteen childrenClemens Heitmann: Clemens August Kardinal von Galen und seine geistlichen Verwandten. Dinklage 1983, S. 64. Geschwister: 1. Elisabeth (1862–1870), 2. Anna (1863–1930), 3. Friedrich (1865–1918), 4. Augustinus (1866–1912), 5. Franziska (1867–1938), 6. Maria (1869–1876), 7. Wilhelm (1870–1949), 8. Agnes (1872–1943), 9. Joseph (1873–1876), 10. Paula (1876–1923), 12. Franz (1879–1961) und 13. Monika (1886–1896). of Reichstag minister Ferdinand Heribert Graf von Galen of the Catholic Centre Party and his wife Elisabeth Gräfin von Spee. He was born into the Westphalian noble family von Galen. Christoph Bernhard von Galen (* 1606, † 1678), Prince-bishop of Münster, was his great-great-great-great-granduncle,Clemens Heitmann: Clemens August Kardinal von Galen und seine geistlichen Verwandten. Friesoythe 1983, S. 103, 128. and the social activist bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler (* 1811, † 1877) was his great-uncle.Clemens Heitmann: Clemens August Kardinal von Galen und seine geistlichen Verwandten. Friesoythe 1983, S. 72, 142. His upbringing at home is described by historians as strict, focused on faith, order, punctuality, and diligence.Günter Beaugrand: Kardinal von Galen – Weder Lob noch Tadel. Ardey, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-87023-312-5, S. 16–17.Irmgard Klocke: Kardinal von Galen. Der Löwe von Münster. Zum 100. Geburtstag. Pattloch, Aschaffenburg 1978, ISBN 3-557-91154-3, S. 7–8. His mother was noted for her ascetic attitude, writing to her son on his name day in 1891: "Life is so short, and we are to purchase such a glorious eternity with it; not a day can be lost in securing this goal and doing something for God, no matter what position it may be."Maria Anna Zumholz: Die Tradition meines Hauses. Zur Prägung Clemens August Graf von Galens in Elternhaus, Schule und Universität. In Joachim Kuropka (Hrsg.): Neue Forschungen zum Leben und Wirken des Bischofs von Münster. Regensberg, Münster 1992, ISBN 3-7923-0636-0, S. 15. |quote=Das Leben ist so kurz, und eine so herrliche Ewigkeit sollen wir uns damit erkaufen; da darf kein Tag verloren werden, um uns dieses Zieles zu versichern und für Gott etwas zu leisten, sei es in welcher Stellung es sei.
Until 1890, Clemens August and his brother Franz were tutored at home. At a time when the Jesuits were still not permitted in Münster, he received his main schooling at a Jesuit School, Stella Matutina in the Vorarlberg, Austria, where only Latin was spoken. He was not an easy student to teach, and his Jesuit superior wrote to his parents: "Infallibility is the main problem with Clemens, who under no circumstance will admit that he may be wrong. It is always his teachers and educators who are wrong.Maria Anna Zumholz, Die Tradition meines Hauses. Zur Prägung Clemens August Graf von Galens in Elternhaus, Schule und Universität, in: Joachim Kuropka (Hrsg.): Neue Forschungen zum Leben und Wirken des Bischofs von Münster, Regensberg, Münster 1992, S. 18.
Because Prussia did not recognize the Stella Matutina academy, Clemens returned home in 1894 to attend a public school in Vechta and by 1896 both Clemens and Franz had passed the examinations that qualified them to attend a university. Upon graduation, his fellow students wrote in his yearbook: "Clemens doesn't make love or go drinking, he does not like worldly deceit." In 1896 he went to study at the Catholic University of Freiburg, which had been established in 1886 by the Dominicans, where he encountered the writings of Thomas Aquinas. In 1897 he began to study a variety of topics, including literature, history, and philosophy. One of his teachers was history professor and noted biblical archaeologist Johann Peter Kirsch. Following their first winter semester at Freiburg, Clemens and Franz visited Rome for three months. At the end of the visit he told Franz that he had decided to become a priest though he was unsure whether to become a contemplative Benedictine or a Jesuit.Griech-Polelle, p. 14. In 1899 he met Pope Leo XIII in a private audience. He studied at the Theological Faculty and Convent in Innsbruck, founded in 1669 by the Jesuits, where scholastic philosophy was emphasized, and new concepts and ideas avoided. Galen left Innsbruck in 1903 to enter the seminary in Münster and was ordained a priest on 28 May 1904 by Bishop Hermann Dingelstadt. At first he worked for a family member, the Auxiliary Bishop of Münster, as Chaplain.Gottfried Hasenkamp: Der Kardinal – Taten und Tage des Bischofs von Münster Clemens August Graf von Galen. Aschendorff, Münster, 2. Aufl. 1985, , S. 9 f. Soon he moved to Berlin, where he worked as parish priest at St. Matthias.In Joachim Kuropka (Hrsg.): Neue Forschungen zum Leben und Wirken des Bischofs von Münster. Regensberg, Münster 1992, S. 32 f.
Berlin (1906–1929) Galen arrived to see Berlin on a quick visit on 23 April 1906 and stayed until 16 April 1929. Germany's capital contained districts of Protestant elites, a Catholic community composed of primarily working-class people and a Jewish community of both middle-class and poorer immigrants. It was a booming commercial and cultural metropolis at the time he arrived — its population increased from 900,000 in 1871 to slightly less than 4 million by 1920. Religion did not bring the community together — "religion and fears of a loss of religious belief came to be a major source of internal division."Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, cited by Griech-Polelle, p. 16. Smith argues that anti-Semitism coexisted with confessional antagonisms between Catholics and Protestants. For the working class, Catholicism and Social Democracy competed for allegiance. In this atmosphere, Galen sought to be an energetic and idealistic leader of his parish. He made visits to the sick and poor, became president of the Catholic Young Men's Association, gave religious instruction in the schools, and for his efforts he was named Papa Galen by the parishioners he served. A commanding presence ( tall) — his rooms were furnished simply, he wore unpretentious clothing, and he spoke plainly — he did not like the theatre, secular music (except for military marches), or literature. His only reported vice, which he refused to give up, was smoking his pipes.Griech-Polelle, p. 17
During the First World War, Galen volunteered for military service in order to demonstrate his loyalty to the Kaiser. As parish priest, he encouraged his parishioners to serve their country willingly. In August 1917 he visited the front lines in France and found the optimistic morale of the troops uplifting. "Feelings of German nationalism, apparently, could triumph over concern for the violations of the sanctity of human life in war."Griech-Polelle, p. 18. In 1916 and 1917 he welcomed reports that the German military had a plan to colonize Eastern Europe, stating that German Catholics should be moved into the area, especially Lithuania, with the goal not of expelling the Lithuanians, but educating them to think and feel as Germans.
Following the German surrender in November 1918, Galen, still in Berlin, worked to create soup kitchens, aid societies, and clothing drives to deal with immediate problems of hunger and poverty. He feared the lower classes would embrace radicalism and anarchy. Galen deplored the fall of the monarchy and was suspicious of the new Weimar democracy, believing that "the revolutionary ideas of 1918 had caused considerable damage to Catholic Christianity."Heinrich Portmann, Kardinal von Galen Aschendorff, Münster, Westfalen, 1948, p. 66. He believed the stab-in-the-back myth, which held that the German Army had not been defeated in battle but by being undermined by defeatist elements on the home front and, as did most Germans, considered the Treaty of Versailles unjust.
Throughout the Weimar years he remained on the right of German politics. He often criticized the Centre Party for being too left-wing.Griech-Polelle, p. 20. Galen openly supported the Protestant Paul von Hindenburg against the Centre Party's candidate, Wilhelm Marx, in the presidential elections of 1925. Galen was known as a fierce anti-Communist (he later supported the battle by the Axis powers on the Eastern Front against Joseph Stalin's regime in the Soviet UnionHeinrich August Winkler: Der lange Weg nach Westen II. Deutsche Geschichte 1933–1990. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Bonn 2004, pp 82–83.).