Adolf Bertram

infobox cardinalbiog
name = Adolf Bertram


See = Breslau
Title = Cardinal-Priest of S. Agnese fuori le mura
Archbishop of Breslau
Period = May 25, 1914 – July 6, 1945
cardinal = December 4, 1916 "In Pectore"
December 5, 1919
Predecessor = Cardinal Georg von Kopp
Successor = Cardinal Bolesław Kominek
post = Priest of Hildesheim
Bishop of Hildesheim
Bishop of Breslau
date of birth =March 14 1859
place of birth = Hildesheim, German Empire
date of death = death date and age|1945|07|06|1859|03|14
place of death =Schloß Johannesberg, Jauernig, Czechoslovakia

Adolf Cardinal Bertram (March 14 1859 – July 6 1945) was archbishop of Breslau and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

Early life

Adolf Bertram was born in Hildesheim, Lower Saxony in Germany. He studied theology at the University of Munich, the University of Innsbruck, and the University of Würzburg, where he obtained a doctorate in theology, and at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he earned a doctorate in Canon law in 1884. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1881. On April 26 1906, he was elected bishop of Hildesheim and received his papal confirmation June 12 1906. Eight years later, on May 27 1914 Adolf Bertram became bishop of Breslau, a decision which was confirmed by the pope on September 8 1914. While he held the title of a prince-bishop, the Prince-Bishopric of Breslau had long ceased to exist at this time.

Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church

On December 4, 1916 prince-bishop Bertram was created a cardinal "in pectore", owing to fears that there would be Allied hostility (especially from the Italian side) to the Church if his promotion were revealed. After hositilities subsided, he was published on December 5, 1919 and received the title "Sant' Agnese fuori le mura" on December 18 1919. In 1930, after Breslau became a metropolitan see, he was further elevated to archbishop.

Final Years

From 1919 until his death, Cardinal Bertram was also the Chairman of the Fulda Conference of Catholic Bishops and thus the highest representative of the Catholic Church in Germany. Throughout World War II Cardinal Bertram remained in Breslau. In 1945, during the so-called Siege of Breslau, he resisted the pressure from the Nazi government to leave the city until much of the population was evacuated in the wake of the Soviet assault (Festung Breslau). Bertram finally decided to leave the city in the late February or early March 1945 and spent the rest of the war at his summer residence at castle Johannesberg in Jauernig in Sudetenland, where he died on July 6 1945 at the age of 86. Several days later, Adolf Cardinal Bertram was buried at the local cemetery in Ves Javorník (Oberjauernig). It is said that he died partly because of enormous stress caused by the ethnic cleansing in post-World War II Sudetenland and other parts of German eastern territories. Especially so the persecution of Germans by the Czech and Polish (Armia Ludowa) militias that acted in league with the Red Army and took part in the expulsion of German people from land annexed by Poland and re-taken by Czechoslovakia (despite the Munich Agreement on the Sudeten Germans). His body was exhumed in 1991 and was reburied at the metropolitan cathedral in Wrocław (Breslau), now in Poland. He was succeeded as the Chairman of the Fulda Conference of Catholic Bishops by Josef Frings.

His Legacy

Ideologically Bertram opposed to what he called the immorality and "neopaganism" of the Nazi Party. In 1930 for example, he refused a religious funeral for a well known Nazi official on the grounds that the principals of National Socialism were incompatible with the Catholic faith. [lhttp://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0015.html]

In a widely publicized statement, he criticized as a grave error the one-sided glorification of the Nordic race and the contempt for divine revelation that was increasingly taught throughout Germany. He warned against the ambiguity of the concept of “positive Christianity,” a highly nationalistic religion that the Nazis were encouraging. Such a religion, he said, “for us Catholics cannot have a satisfactory meaning since everyone interprets it in the way he pleases.” [lhttp://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0015.html]

Because of this he was confined in his actions ever more by the Nazi authorities. Few months after his death Time Magazine wrote about Betram:

Died. Adolf Cardinal Bertram, 86, outspoken anti-Nazi Archbishop of Breslau and dean of the German Catholic hierarchy, whose tireless resistance to Hitler's "neopaganism" was climaxed last March in his defiance of orders to evacuate Breslau before the advancing Russians; presumably in Breslau. His death left the College of Cardinals with 40 members—fewest in 144 years. [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,803627,00.html?promoid=googlep "The strongly anti-Nazi archbishop of Breslau, Adolf Bertram, died this month, probably near Breslau." - Time Magazine, 23 July 1945] ]

After the war, some historians claimed that Bertram scheduled a Requiem Mass upon Hitler’s death. However, these claims were rejected by most scholars as wrong and inaccurate:

In point of fact, this is what we know: Bertram was elderly and ill when the war ended. When he died (just weeks later), his papers included a handwritten order scheduling a Requiem Mass for "all" Germans who died in the war, [thereby implicitly] including Hitler (who was originally reported to have died while fighting the Red Army), and for the protection of the Catholic Church in Germany. This order was never sent, and the Mass was never held. Bertam’s personal secretary later reported being unaware of this paper or any such proposed order. In fact, the order itself was crossed through with two broad strokes. In other words, the evidence suggests that someone (perhaps Bertram, but perhaps not) considered scheduling a Requiem Mass but that Bertram canceled it. [lhttp://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0015.html]

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Footnotes

References

* [http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/b/bertram_a.shtml Entry at Bautz' Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (in German)]
* Cornwell, John. Hitler's Pope. 1999. ISBN 0-670-88693-9.
* [http://www.visitator-breslau.de/index.php?aktuell=lexikon_b At the site of the Apostolic Visitator of Breslau]