Maximilian Kaller

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Maximilian Kaller (10 October 1880 - 7 July 1947) was Bishop of Warmia (German: Ermland) in East Prussia from 1930 - 1945.

Kaller was born in 1880 in Beuthen, Upper Silesia, Germany. He was a priest in Breslau and in Berlin, and later the Administrator of Schneidemühl. In 1930 Kaller was appointed head of the Bishopric of Warmia, taking office in his diocese at Frauenburg. Kaller applied to administer services at Theresienstadt, but his wish was not granted.

Kaller and other members of the German Catholic Church formulated their opposition to the policy of Nazi mysticism early on. German clergy who opposed Hitler or supported refugees were strongly persecuted under the Nazi dictatorship. In 1945 during World War II, the Nazi Schutzstaffel forced Kaller out of his Warmian office while the Soviet Red Army was overrunning the country.

Kaller and many civilians managed to return to the Diocese of Warmia. However the bishop was forced out of office by Cardinal August Hlond, while Poles and Russians expelled the German population. Kaller found asylum in what would become West Germany and in 1946 received 'Special Authority over the Heimatvertriebene ("homeland-expelled") from Pope Pius XII. In 1947 Kaller died suddenly of a heart attack at Königstein im Taunus near Frankfurt am Main.

In 1997 Archbishop Edmund Michał Piszcz of Warmia and the community in western Germany commemorated Kaller and placed busts of him in Germany and Poland.