WRITING THE HISTORY OF THE GERMAN JESUITS IN THE NEW SOCIETY

Transcription

1 WRITING THE HISTORY OF THE GERMAN JESUITS IN THE NEW SOCIETY Nearly a century ago, the Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deutscher Zunge (History of the Jesuits in the German-speaking countries) of Bernhard Duhr was published and soon became a standard work of first importance for the old Society. But in the same year 1895, when Duhr was commissioned to write the history of the old Society, Fr. General Martin proposed that another Jesuit of the German Province should write the history of the restored Society in Germany. For this undertaking, several figures were envisaged; finally the task went to Otto Pfülf; but since he was distracted by other jobs, he could write only about the so-called Swiss period ( ). After him nobody else tackled the enterprise until I began the work, officially commissioned by the Provincials. First such a work must be delimited in space and time. While Duhr covered practically the whole Holy Roman Empire (except for the Spanish and then Austrian Low Countries), I have chosen the kleindeutsche Lösung (the Little German Solution ), while also opting to exclude Austria. To include the Austrian Province would mean to cover practically the whole Habsburg Empire until 1909, when the Hungarian Province was created. And the Austrian Province in the restored Society has different origins, characteristics, periods and rhythms of History. But until 1947, when the Swiss independent Vice province was erected, the Jesuits in Switzerland must be included, because their history is intimately connected with that of the German Jesuits history since the beginning, as they belonged to the German Province or since 1921 to the Upper German Province. The missions too, insofar and as long as they were entrusted to the German (or one of the German) provinc(es), are included in the study, namely: the Scandinavian Missions (Denmark and Sweden); the Buffalo Mission in North America for German immigrants from 1869 until 1907; the South Brazilian Mission, for German immigrants, up to 1925; the Bombay Mission in India until the First World War (afterwards a part of it), the Pune Mission from 1929 until 1956; the Japanese Mission from 1908 until 1948; and finally the Sinoia Mission in what is now Zimbabwe from 1959 until The missions cannot be neglected in a history of the German Jesuits; particularly in the period of the exile from 1872 to 1917 when more than half of the Fathers of the province worked in them. We also have to deal with the German Jesuit presence in Rome, especially regarding the history of the Collegio Germanico.

2 2 K. SCHATZ A more difficult question is where to stop in time. I have had full access to the archives in Rome and in Munich until the year In principle, I could close the history with that year. It was a crucial event, particularly for the Society of Jesus, with few equivalents in history. But the events and evolutions immediately following the Second Vatican Council and the 31st General Congregation are no longer personally experienced history for the leading generation of today. They want to know what happened in these turbulent years, and they would be disappointed if I finished with So I have decided to continue until the beginning of the eighties, based on the published sources (which, because of the greater transparency in the Society after the Council, provide much that for earlier times would only be found in the archives), and on interviews with fellow Jesuits describing their own experiences. The main problems concern the use and evaluation of the sources. When you write the history of the Jesuits in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the problem is not the scarcity, but rather the abundance of the sources. For example it would be impossible to consult every Jesuit s personal papers; for people like Rahner, Przywara, Nell-Breuning, Hirschmann and others that would require a lifetime s work. Therefore a choice has to be made between the sources, which implies a corresponding limitation of the subject of the study. Which sources are of primary importance? Where should one begin? First, the Roman Archive of the Society and the study of the respective documents give the best basic information for the development of the provinces. It is always worth beginning here, rather than with the archives of the provinces. This is because of the centralized structure of the Society, for here the streams of information flow together. The correspondence between the General and the Provincial Superiors is of primary importance: in Rome the General is being informed about the background that will interest also the future historian; and the correspondence offers insight into the Society s internal decisions, the conditions and underlying options and also into alternative possibilities. The letters ex officio of the other Superiors and the letters of the consultors of the province or of the individual houses are also very important; they often represent different voices and opinions, notably of minorities, and so they offer a colourful and vivid image of the province. But the historical value of Roman sources also has its limits. They certainly do not present an idealized picture. On the contrary: if one reads the correspondence with Rome, one could easily overestimate the problems and defects of persons, works and situations. Generally the Superiors don t write to the General about the things which are going well (or they deal with them in a sentence), but

3 WRITING THE HISTORY OF THE GERMAN JESUITS IN THE NEW SOCIETY 3 they write abundantly about the problems and defects. Certainly these problems are real, but they may not have impinged on daily reality as much as they do on the Roman correspondence, and therefore the historian must be cautious not to exaggerate them. The second important source of basic information is presented by the Historiae domus, which are kept in the Roman archive and also in the archives of the provinces. Generally they describe how the houses developed, and mention all important changes, at least externally. For the rest, their historical value depends on the persons who wrote them. Some don t deliver more than a scanty chronicle. Others are more abundant in describing backgrounds, controversies and internal differences. The latter tend to be more engaged and consequently also partial. But I value them much more than bare chronicles, written objectively, but in which controversies do not appear. It is not difficult to detect the biases of these engaged house histories, because they are obvious; and while one may not agree with the bias, one must always take such bias into account. But at least you will discover the different or even opposing activities of individuals and the controversies between them. Thirdly, I would mention the printed records of the province (or the different provinces). Fortunately it is a Jesuit tradition to conserve the memory of the important things done by Jesuits; and for the German Jesuits we have a source of great value: the Mitteilungen aus der Deutschen Provinz (Informations from the German Province). This publication was founded by the historian Duhr in 1897, and its aim was to strengthen solidarity in a province which, after the expulsion from the Empire in 1872, was scattered over the whole world. So the Mitteilungen gave important contemporary information about Jesuit activities, especially in the Missions; but they contain also many historical articles based on Jesuit documents or on personal memories. An especially important source in the Mitteilungen are the Nachrufe (obituaries). They have a special value because in most cases they are not simple eulogies, but rather present a vivid image of each individual, with his limitations and eccentricities. Eccentrics have always flourished in our Society. But the obituaries offer historical information not only about individuals, but also about conditions of formation, about Superiors, novice masters, communities and general situations. The limitation is, that they are based on memories and narrations, and therefore not always precise on details. Thus an information regarding the First Vatican Council, found in the obituary of Fr. Wilmers, which has been accepted by many historians including myself, had to be corrected by a direct source. The Mitteilungen are of great historical value, despite the termination of the project in 1967 (because there was

4 4 K. SCHATZ nobody who could take on the responsibility), which is a great loss for the historian of the Society. But there are also the newsletters of the individual provinces, generally containing only short notices, but also obituaries, especially after Then there are the archives of the province, now brought together in Munich. They contain an enormous amount of material, but, as I have said, you must make choices if you want to do such work in a single lifetime and do not believe in reincarnation. I would say that the following materials are of special importance and need to be consulted: 1. The minutes of the province consultations. They are often only scanty notices, but upon reading the correspondence with the General, they acquire colour and allow for one to discover their significance. 2. The correspondence between the Provincials, and also between the Provincials and the Superiors of the Missions (or individual Jesuits of the Missions). These are indispensable for the history of the respective Missions. 3. Material on certain types of ministry (as popular missions, retreats, youth associations etc.) or on particular problems or controversies, for which the Roman material has given preliminary information. 4. Written memoirs of certain Jesuits. They can be of considerable value, but unfortunately they are rare. 5. And last, but not least, the files on individual houses. Generally they contain the correspondence between the Provincial and the Superior and the other Jesuits of the house. In these files you can find detailed information about the history of the house, much more than in the Historiae domus. However it is only after the Second World War that they have been conserved. It is largely probable that a lot of material was destroyed as a precaution under the Nazis. The Swiss Provincial Archive has also been important, especially its Historia missionis Helveticae. This source is of particular importance, because the catalogues of the German or Upper German Province are reticent on the activities of the individual Jesuits working in Switzerland; they indicate only that a Jesuit belongs to the Missio Helvetica or the Coetus I or II (that is Basel or Zürich). The Mitteilungen too does not give information about the pastoral work of the Jesuits in Switzerland. The obvious reason is the Jesuit article 51 of the Swiss Federal Constitution which prohibited the existence of Jesuit houses and any activity of Jesuits in Church or School, abrogated only in It is for this reason that no history of the Jesuits in Switzerland between 1847 and 1973 has ever been written until today, and the unpublished sources yield information which the catalogues do not communicate.

5 WRITING THE HISTORY OF THE GERMAN JESUITS IN THE NEW SOCIETY 5 Generally the House archives, if they exist, are less important. Normally the materials of greater importance have been handed over to the Provincial Archive. Only in the House Archives of Essen, Stockholm and of the Sophia University at Tokyo could I find documents of significant value. Besides the Archives of the Society, there are the ecclesiastical and State archives, which are also important to some extent. First the archives of the dioceses in which there were Jesuit houses (for the 19th and 20th century all the German dioceses except for Passau and Eichstätt). It was only possible to look into the inventory of the archives if there were files explicitly on the Jesuits. Generally there could be found material on the founding of houses, especially on the wishes of the bishops (not always identical to the desires of the Jesuits) and on people in the diocese who were particularly interested in an establishment of the Jesuits. Among the State archives must be mentioned first the Prussian archives for the time after the Kulturkampf, and then, in the Federal Archive of Berlin, the files on the Jesuits in the Third Reich. But both of these have already been largely explored, the first by Peter Häger, the second in writings on Jesuit resistance; nevertheless I have made some new discoveries. More came from the Swiss archives: the Federal Archive in Bern and the Cantonal Archives of Basel and Zürich. Especially the application (or non-application) of the Jesuit article and the changing attitudes of the Swiss authorities regarding the Jesuit question could be explored. This is a theme which was taboo on both sides, for obvious reasons, until The research in these Church and State archives have been done under my direction by Peter Häger, who has been paid for this work by the Deutsche Forschunsgemeinschaft (DFG). Special mention must be made of the history of the German Jesuits in the Third Reich. Most Jesuits engaged in resistance in the narrow sense, like Rupert Mayer, Alfred Delp, Alois Grimm, Augustin Rösch, Lothar König, Friedrich Muckermann and others, have already been explored, especially in the publications of Roman Bleistein. Less known is the attitude of the normal Jesuits. A special problem is, that we have candid reports to Rome only until 1938 or 1939, when letters still could be transmitted via Feldkirch in Austria (until March 1938), or via Switzerland or Valkenburg in the Netherlands, but rarely in the years of the War, or only in coded form. But despite these limitations I could make some interesting discoveries regarding personalities like Friedrich Muckermann or the case of Josef Spieker, the first Jesuit taken to a concentration camp and then liberated and sent into exile after an agreement by a convention between the Gestapo, Fr. General Ledochowski and Fr. Provincial Klein. A chapter will also be dedi-

6 6 K. SCHATZ cated to the survival of the Innsbruck Canisianum of Innsbruck in Sion in Switzerland, the fictitious secularization of some (not all) of the lesson-giving Jesuits and the respective attitude of the Swiss Jesuits and federal authorities. For the most recent decades, especially after 1965, oral history, that is reminiscences of people still alive, is of special importance. But these testimonies differ widely in value. Often I had the impression that there are as many differing histories of houses as there were Jesuits in the very same house. In many cases wherein events or developments are evaluated differently, I must limit my judgement to simply noting the controversy. Moreover, apart from this kind of bias, memories are often not exact on the details and sometimes have to be corrected by written sources. Typical of these distortions produced unconsciously by personal memory include: 1) That periods are remembered as uniform and homogeneous unities, that impressions or personal attitudes of the last phase are transferred to the beginning, or that from a diversity of expectations, hopes and fears in the beginning the person remembers finally only those which prevailed at the end. This phenomenon is typical not only of the Nazi period, but also of the time during or following the Vatican Council or of the 68 Revolution. 2) That considerations or decisions which in fact occupied a longer time are concentrated in a typical scene: at that moment I was aware that we must do or cannot do a certain thing while in reality the person continued to hesitate also after that moment, and the experience mentioned was only one element in a longer chain. Generally speaking oral history is more important for the Wirkungsgeschichte, that is the impressions produced on a larger scale and more permanently by persons or events (or for the histoire de longue durée) than for the Ereignisgeschichte, the history of the events and their immediate consequences and mutual concatenation. But it must be added that there are also persons who have a very exact memory of details, without such distortions, and often they are former Provincials or other Superiors. However here too can be easily a difference. Often their memory is very exact for the earlier years, while less so for the later events. Inevitably I have to discredit some treasured or amusing legends: such as the story that in the first plans of construction of the Berchmanskolleg at Pullach the toilets were forgotten, and the plans returned back to Rome with the remark Suntne angeli? (or, according to another version: Rome removed the refectory too). That is in fact a wandering legend, a story told also about other houses in other provinces.

7 WRITING THE HISTORY OF THE GERMAN JESUITS IN THE NEW SOCIETY 7 I indicated at the beginning that the necessary limitation in the choice of the sources involves a certain limitation in the object. More precisely: not in the material object, but a certain accent in the formal object. Though the work will cover the whole field of Jesuit activities and also of the Society s internal life, its emphasis will be on the internal strategies, considerations, options, including alternative solutions and proposals, on why Jesuits chose particular works or founded houses in particular cities instead of others. The work will appear in four volumes of text, the first covering the Swiss and the First German period ( ), the second covering the period of exile ( ), the third focusing upon the time of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich ( ), the fourth the two periods of Post-War ( ) and of Post-Council ( ). Within these periods the division will be thematic: first basic developments within the provinces; then the recruitment and formation of Jesuits; the internal life and its norms, rules and practice; achievements in the fields of scholarship and writing; important evolutions in pastoral work; the history of the individual communities; the Jesuits in Switzerland; the Missions and finally the German Jesuit presence in Rome. The work will be concluded by a fifth volume containing many appendices; the most extensive of them will be a short biography of all Jesuits mentioned in the text, giving their dates of birth and death and the positions and occupations they held in the Society. The deadline for the publication of the whole book it will be published together, not one volume after the other is the jubilee year 2014, the second Centenary of the restored Society. The first centenary was overshadowed by the outbreak of the First World War. I hope we will have more luck this time. Theologische Hochschule Sankt Georgen Frankfurt a/m Klaus SCHATZ SJ