Alfred Delp

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Alfred Delp

Fr. Alfred Delp, S.J. (born 15 September 1907 in Mannheim; died 2 February 1945 in Berlin) was a German priest who took part in the resistance to the Nazi régime in Germany.

1 Life
2 Literature
3 Quotes
4 See also
5 External links
6 Sources

[edit] Life

Alfred Delp was born to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father who were married shortly after his birth. He was raised as a Protestant throughout his childhood, even being confirmed in the Lutheran church in 1921, but then he had a bitter argument with his pastor.

Thereafter, Delp's youth was moulded mainly by the Bund Neudeutschland Catholic youth movement. Right after passing his Abitur at the Goetheschule in Dieburg – in which he came out on top of his class – he joined the Society of Jesus in 1926. He worked as an educator and a teacher at the St. Blasien College in the Black Forest. In 1937, he was ordained a Catholic priest in Munich. From 1939 on, he worked as a Seelsorger (~pastor or minister) in St. Georg parish in the Munich neighbourhood Bogenhausen, where he also secretly helped Jews who were escaping to Switzerland through the underground. Delp had wanted to study for a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Munich, but wound up in this suburb after the Nazis refused to admit him to the university. During this time, he was also on the editorial staff of the Jesuit publication Stimme der Zeit ("Voice of the Times"), until the Nazis suppressed it in April 1941.

The Jesuits were very open in their opposition to totalitarianism, which did not endear them to the Nazis. This also meant that Father Delp was a member of a target group of Hitler's wrath. Indeed, a Jesuit official named Augustin Rösch, a former superior of Delp's in Munich, was the object of Nazi persecution after he exhorted fellow Jesuits to resist Nazi persecution of Jesuit schools.

It was Augustin Rösch who introduced Delp to the Kreisau Circle. As of 1942, Delp officially worked together with the clandestine group around Helmuth James Graf von Moltke to develop a model for a new social order after the Third Reich came to an end. In this, he envisaged a particular rôle for Catholic social teaching.

After the July 20 plot failed, Delp was arrested in Munich on 28 July 1944 (eight days after Claus von Stauffenberg's attempt on Hitler's life), although he was not involved in the actual preparations for the plot. At his trial at the Volksgerichtshof, over which Roland Freisler presided, Alfred Delp was sentenced to death by hanging for high treason and treason. The court had actually dropped the charge against Delp of cognizance of the Kreisau Circle, but his dedication to the Kreisau Circle, his work as a Jesuit priest, and his Christian-social worldview were enough to seal his fate as a victim of Nazi justice.

While he was in prison, the Gestapo offered Delp a bargain to release him in return for his leaving the Jesuits, but he rejected it. The sentence was carried out on 2 February 1945 at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. (The very next day, Roland Freisler was killed in an air-raid). Whether Father Delp had been informed of von Stauffenberg's plans to kill Hitler is to this day an unanswered question.

Many schools in Germany are named after Alfred Delp, among them one in Bremerhaven. In Mannheim, a Catholic student residence is named for him. The guesthouse on the campus of the Canisius College in Berlin also bears his name. In Dieburg, the uppermost level at the Gymnasium, the Alfred Delp School, the Catholic community centre, the Father Delp House, and a street are named after him. The Bundeswehr named its barracks in Donauwörth the Alfred-Delp-Kaserne.

[edit] Literature

Alfred Delp, Advent of the Heart: Seasonal Sermons and Prison Writings 1941-1944. Ignatius Press, 2006. ISBN 1-58617-081-3.
Rita Haub/ Heinrich Schreiber, "Alfred Delp - Held gegen Hitler" ("Alfred Delp – Hero Against Hitler"), Echter Verlag Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-429-02665-2
Christian Feldmann, "Alfred Delp.Leben gegen den Strom" ("Alfred Delp: Life Against the Current"), Herder Freiburg 2005, ISBN 3-451-28569-X
Roman Bleistein, "Alfred Delp - Geschichte eines Zeugen" ("Alfred Delp – A Witness's Story"), Alber Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1989, ISBN 3-7820-0598-8
"Glaube als Widerstandskraft. Edith Stein - Alfred Delp - Dietrich Bonhoeffer" ("Belief as Resistance Force: Edith Stein - Alfred Delp - Dietrich Bonhoeffer"), 1987, ISBN 3-7820-0523-6

[edit] Quotes

"If there was a little more light and truth in the world through one human being, his life has had meaning."

"My offence is that I believed in Germany and her eventual emergence from this dark hour of error and distress."

"In half an hour, I'll know more than you do." – to the Chaplain at Plötzensee Prison (presumably the Catholic chaplain Peter Buchholz) just before he was hanged.