Background
Michael von Faulhaber was born in Klosterheidenfeld, Lower Franconia, on 5 March 1869.
Michael von Faulhaber was born in Klosterheidenfeld, Lower Franconia, on 5 March 1869.
Professor of Old Testament exegesis at Strasbourg from 1903.
He was appointed Bishop of Speyer in 1911 and Archbishop of Munich-Freising in 1917. In 1921 he was made a Cardinal.
Shortly before Christmas 1933, the Cardinal preached a series of sermons in St Michael’s Church, Munich, which stood up for the values of the Old Testament against Nazi neo-paganism.
The Cardinal had earlier visited Hitler at Berchtesgaden on 4 November 1936 and come away impressed by his diplomatic finesse, believing that he would continue to respect the rights of the Catholic church. This proved to be an illusion, as was made apparent in the papal encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge (With Deep Anxiety) of 1937, partly drafted by von Faulhaber, which protested against Nazi violations of the Concordat with the Holy See. Nonetheless, the Cardinal was supportive of Nazi foreign policy at the time of the Anschluss with Austria and the Czech crisis of 1938. In November 1939 he celebrated Hitler's 'miraculous' escape from Johann Georg Elser's assassination attempt with a solemn mass in Munich. In spite of various approaches from the Resistance, von Faulhaber remained non-committal about the plot against Hitler, eventually denouncing it, after interrogation by the Gestapo in 1944.
Thus, in spite of his courageous defence of Catholic principles, attempts to present von Faulhaber as a champion in the struggle against Nazi tyranny would appear to be exaggerated.
He died in Munich on 12 June 1952.
(The sermons defended the principles of racial tolerance a...)
1934Maintained good working relations with the Nazi authorities while seeking to preserve the vital interests of the Catholic church. A Bavarian monarchist, von Faulhaber's attitude to the Weimar Republic was highly ambiguous. At times he impugned its legality, describing its origin in November 1918 as characterized by perjury and high treason. Under the Third Reich he tried to steer a middle course. The Concordat of 1933 between the régime and the church inhibited open opposition, though von Faulhaber did protest when it became apparent that the Nazis were consistently violating the agreement.
Published the sermons under the title Judentum, Christentum, Germanentum. It was the Cardinal’s call to respect the Jewish religion, which was undoubtedly an act of considerable courage, but his pointed distinction between Israel before the coming of Christ and modern post-Christian Jews reflected traditional Catholic ambiguity. ‘Antagonism to the Jews of today’, the Cardinal insisted, ‘must not be extended to the books of pre-Christian Judaism’, suggesting that his prime motive was to defend the tradition and authority of the Catholic church, rather than the Jews themselves. Nevertheless, Cardinal Faulhaber did on several occasions condemn racial hatred as a poisonous weed in German life and warned ‘that God always punished the tormentors of His Chosen People, the Jews’.
During the anti-semitic pogrom of 9 November 1938 he provided a truck for the Chief Rabbi of Munich to salvage religious articles from his synagogue, though there was no open protest by Faulhaber or any other Catholic bishops against the atrocities.
