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HOME   -   PEOPLE IN HISTORY A-Z   -   CLEMENS AUGUST VON GALEN

 
   


 

 

Clemens August von Galen 1878-1946

 



Von Galen was a German graf, which means count. He was Roman Catholic and became bishop of Münster in 1933.

And here is Munster on a Google map. See the red marker.


MAP LOCATION OF MUNSTER, GERMANY
Google Map

 

Von Galen was one of the few individuals who had the guts to openly criticize the Nazi government. And he was one of the even fewer who lived to tell the tale.

 

In 1941, von Galen launched a series of sermons that grabbed the Nazis' attention — especially after the allies got a transcript of the sermons, worked their copy machines to death, and distributed them widely on enemy territory.


And here you can read the three speeches:


Speech One

July 13, 1941, at the St Lamberti Church in Muenster
English version:
We Demand Justice
Original German version:
Wir Fordern Gerechtigkeit

In this sermon, von Galen made noise against the arbitrary actions of the Gestapo, the Nazi police. And he wasn't shy either. An excerpt:

How many Germans are now languishing in police custody or in concentration camps, how many have been driven from home, who have never been sentenced by a regular court or how numerous are those who have been freed by the court or released after serving their sentence and have then been re-arrested and held in confinement by the Gestapo! [...]

Since none of us know of any means of achieving impartial control over the actions and persecutions of the Gestapo, the restrictions they impose on men's freedom, their banishment and arrest and their imprisonment of German men and women in concentration camps, there is by now among our people a widespread feeling of defenselessness, even of cowardly apprehension, which does grave harm to the national community.



 

Speech Two

July 20, 1941, at the Liebfrauen Church in Muenster
English version:
Become hard! Remain firm!
Original German version:
Hart werden! Fest bleiben!

In this sermon, von Galen encouraged fellow Germans to use their only weapon — endurance. He also kept his flock on their toes by mentioning a telegram he had sent to the Fuhrer's headquarters:

I ask the Führer and Reichskanzler, in the interest of justice and the solidarity of the home front, for the protection of the freedom and property of these honorable German men and women against the arbitrary actions of the Gestapo.



 

Speech Three

August 3, 1941, at the St Lamberti Church in Muenster
English version:
The murder of unproductive persons
Original German version:
Der Mord an unproduktiven Menschen

In this sermon, von Galen dragged the Nazi T4 Program into light, the program to eliminate "unworthy" Germans, also called Nazi euthanasia.

If the principle that men is entitled to kill his unproductive fellow-man is established and applied, then woe betide all of us when we become aged and infirm! [...]

If unproductive men and women can be disposed of by violent means, woe betide our brave soldiers who return home with major disabilities as cripples, as invalids! [...]

Then no man will be safe. Some committee or other will be able to put him on the list of "unproductive" persons, who in their judgment have become "unworthy to live".

 

 

Because of his courage, Von Galen was nicknamed The Lion of Münster, or Der Löwe von Münster if you speak German.

The Nazis didn't kill him right on the spot because that would have possibly outraged and weakened the support that Hitler received from Catholic citizens. Von Galen was earmarked for a post-war hanging, to be sure.

 

Go here for the entry of Hitler's Euthanasia program in the Timeline of World War II.

 

Von Galen was made cardinal shortly before his death in 1946.

In 2005, von Galen was beatified. Too little too late unless you're Catholic.

 

 

 

 

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