The courage to say No: Jesuit father Eberhard von Gemmingen speaks in the contribution of the Catholic Church about the lübeck martyrs, and the great danger of permanently adapted in the choir of the majority to sing along.
10. November 1943 were the four lübeck martyrs, of which this telegram of osnabrück, Bishop Wilhelm Berning.
“One must tell the truth,” said chaplain Johannes Prassek, one of the four lübeck martyrs, who were beheaded because of their criticism of the Hitler regime in 1943. Prassek replied with these words on my end of accusations of Catholic friends, he should not open his mouth yet so far. Prassek was of the same opinion as the two other priests Hermann Lange, and Eduard Müller. The Fourth in their round of the Lutheran Pastor Karl Friedrich stellbrink. The Hanseatic city is honoring them as their “lübeck martyrs”. Mind you, we speak of the “Lübecker Marzipan”. We speak of four spiritual, the let kill Hitler, because you are openly criticizing his Regime.
Thousands have been bitten on the tongue
Thousands of Catholic and Protestant clergy have rejected the Hitler Regime. Thousands have not bitten on the tongue, to speak openly against the Nazi system. You said: “Thus, the Church System is not beaten completely by the Nazis, must we be silent, not to provoke. If we continue to make pastoral care, preaching, Sick visits, accompaniment for the Dying, the Grieving want comfort, then we are not allowed to challenge the rulers.“ Rather, the Remaining rescue, as well as this risk. Many may have not out of fear but out of rational Consideration to the Nazi system silent.
But in the majority of Protestant Lübeck managed to get these four to the “honor of the altars”. Correct: The three Catholic priests, were spoken in the year 2011 as witnesses of the faith, blessed. Your Protestant ethos comrade is conducted in the Evangelical name of the calendar and as a faith witness to be honored. You have chosen to tell of your Faith in Christ, according to the ‘ no ‘ to the Nazi system. They protested especially against the godlessness of the state.
Today we are happy about your courage, proud of you. We would reject it vigorously, to call such persons of the resistance of fundamentalists or fanatics. But today, we are not sometimes in danger, today, no tellers a hallmark of the fanatic or fundamentalist? We are prickly today, sometimes to or willing to compromise? Each of us must ask. It is hard to step out of line, you fall on, laughed at, ridiculed.
They dance from the series
The great opinion researcher Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann has written a book with the title “The spiral of silence”1. In her it represents the Thesis: When the General Public speaks on a subject only a little, and then, it stops a few Speak more and more. Topics that are on everyone’s lips, are not of interest, will be neglected. No one wants to be a lone voice. You better sing “in the choir of the majority”. And this is already the case in democracies. How much more in dictatorships, where it is dangerous to dance with his opinion of the series. Then you are not only a dissenter, but endangers himself. The four spiritual dance from the series, have not made, probably only in the case of Regime-supporters of unpopular, but probably also in other spiritual.
The four clergymen had themselves and their Anti-Nazi attitude to know and appreciate, had exchanged information which they had collected from foreign channels. The charge of the court: treasonable support of the Enemy and decomposition of the defence force. The immediate occasion for the arrest of a comment of Pastor Stellbrink after the bomb attack on Lübeck in 1942, was. In the sermon he had said: “God has spoken with a powerful language – the Bay of lübeck will again learn to pray”. All four were taken to court. The court’s decision was: you have to die under the guillotine.
Adaptation is one of the greatest dangers for the people. Silence can be a blessing but also a curse. A Martyr had said: “One must tell the truth.” 12. August you read from me again.
1 Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, The Spiral Of Silence, Munich, 1980.
Father Eberhard von Gemmingen SJ is 1936 in Bad Rappenau born. After he joined in 1957 in the Jesuit order, he studied in 1959, philosophy in Pullach near Munich, and theology in Innsbruck and Tübingen. In 1968 consecration of his priests. Father Eberhard von Gemmingen SJ was a member of the Ecumenical lay movement, action 365, the Bishop’s representative at the ZDF and head of the German editors of Radio Vatican. Since 2010, he is the Fundraiser of the German Jesuits.