{{short description|German Franciscan administrator of Reichsgau Wartheland}} '''Hilarius Breitinger''', OFM Conv (7 June 1907 – 23 August 1994) was a German Franciscan prelate made apostolic administrator of the Reichsgau Wartheland during World War II by Pope Pius XII, one of the most controversial examples of the reorganization of occupied dioceses during World War II. Breitinger's appointment and those like it were the justification of the Polish Provisional Government for declaring the Concordat of 1925 "null and void" in 1945.
==Early life== Breitinger was born as '''Lorenz Breitinger''' on 7 June 1907 in Glattbach near Aschaffenburg.<ref name="ms">{{in lang|de}} Martin Sprungala. "[http://www.ostdeutsche-biographie.de/breihi07.htm Breitinger, Hilarius] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090810235800/http://www.ostdeutsche-biographie.de/breihi07.htm |date=2009-08-10 }}". Ostdeutsche Biographie.</ref> His parents were Martin, a carpenter, and Barbara Breitinger.<ref name="ms"/> He decided to study theology and enter the Order of Friars Minor ("Franciscans") after high school.<ref name="ms"/> He was ordained in 1932.<ref name="ms"/>
According to Phayer, Breitinger is the "key to unraveling" the contradictory accounts of Catholicism in Poland between Poles of German ethnicity (Nazi term Volksdeutsche) and those of Polish ethnicity.<ref name="p6"/> At the invitation of Primate Hlond, Breitinger (a German expatriate of Franconian descent) entered Poland in 1934 and began administering to Poles of German ethnicity in Poznań's church of St. Anthony of Padua,<ref name="p6"/> under the authority of the Bundestreffen der Landsmannschaft Weichsel-Warthe (LWW) as a pastor at a local Franciscan church.<ref name="ms"/> Breitinger wrote in a letter to Pius XII that he "did not like" pastoral work.<ref name="p6"/> While a pastor, Breitinger learned the Polish language.<ref name="ms"/>
After the German invasion of Poland, Breitinger was arrested on September 1, 1939<ref name="ms"/> and asked to report to local police as "formality".<ref name="p6"/> Instead, Breitinger, the German expatriate, and ''Volksdeutsche'' were led around the countryside in a "three-week life-threatening ordeal".<ref name="p6"/> Forced to undergo a gamut of verbal and physical abuse, Breitinger was at one point hit in the head with a brick which he later theorized would have been fatal if not for his glasses.<ref name="p6"/> Some of his fellow captives succumbed to the ordeal or were murdered.<ref name="p6"/> Eventually, Breitinger was abandoned as the vigilantes found themselves between the retreating Polish and advancing German armies.<ref name="p7">Phayer, 2008, p. 7.</ref>
When the German army came upon Breitinger and the ''Volksdeutsche'' they sang "Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles'", the German national anthem.<ref name="p7"/> Similar accounts of abuse of ''Volksdeutsche'', especially ethnic German priests, are common during this period, and Breitinger's story comports in large part to that of August Rauhut.<ref name="p7"/> However, for the next four years, Poland's 1.5 million ''Volksdeutsche'' "could literally cash in on the cruelties that the German occupational authorities heaped upon their Polish neighbors", until Polish and Soviet forces ended the German occupation.<ref name="p8">Phayer, 2008, p. 8.</ref> During this period, Breitinger came to regard Polish Catholicism as "superficial" as—in his letters—he tried to explain how "all this was possible in a Catholic country".<ref name="p9">Phayer, 2008, p. 9.</ref> However, Breitinger's formerly "disenchanted" opinion of Pius XII reversed in 1943 when he wrote that the pope's "heroic silence" would "create the foundation for a new peaceful order in the world".<ref>Phayer, 2000, p. 29.</ref>
==Assistant to Paech== [[File:NS administrative Gliederung 1944.png|thumb|right|A map of Nazi Germany showing the Wartheland]] In 1941, Pius XII appointed Poznań's Capitular vicar Joseph Paech (1880–1942), a Pole of German ethnicity, as apostolic administrator to the Catholic faithful of German language within Reichsgau Wartheland.<ref name="ms"/> Breitinger was Paech's right-hand assistant, who took part in the negotiations with the Reichsgau.<ref name="ms"/> Heart disease forced Paech to retire from the post in 1942, and Breitinger was appointed as his successor on May 2, 1942.<ref name="ms"/> For the Catholic parishioners of Polish language in Wartheland Cesare Orsenigo appointed Poznań's Auxiliary Bishop Walenty Dymek as apostolic administrator on 9 April 1942, however, in August the same year he declared his resignation due to the German obstruction and violence.<ref>Dymek's appointment had been delayed because he was under German arrest, when Paech was invested. After Dymek's release it was then carried out in secret in order not endanger his life. Cf. Jerzy Pietrzak, "Die politischen und kirchenrechtlichen Grundlagen der Einsetzung Apostolischer Administratoren in den Jahren 1939–1942 und 1945 im Vergleich", in: ''Katholische Kirche unter nationalsozialistischer und kommunistischer Diktatur: Deutschland und Polen 1939–1989'', Hans-Jürgen Karp and Joachim Köhler (eds.), (=Forschungen und Quellen zur Kirchen- und Kulturgeschichte Ostdeutschlands; vol. 32), Cologne: Böhlau, 2001, pp. 157–174, here p. 163. {{ISBN|3-412-11800-1}}.</ref>
==Administrator to the Wartheland== In May 1942, Pius XII made Breitinger apostolic administrator to Catholics of German language in the Reichsgau Wartheland, a portion of Poland annexed into Nazi Germany.<ref name="p6">Phayer, 2008, p. 6.</ref> Though this action fell short of the German demand that a new German church administration be created for the occupied territories (subject to the terms of the ''Reichskonkordat'', which would have given Nazi Germany a voice in appointments), "betrayal was exactly what the Poles felt".<ref name="p6"/> Breitinger was nominally responsible for the spiritual well-being of German Catholics living in Poland. Breitinger was the recommendation of Cesare Orsenigo, the nuncio to Germany. After Cardinal August Hlond, the Primate of Poland, was forced to flee, Breitinger assisted Bishop Dymek, whom Hlond had appointed vicar general of Poznań, in the administration of the Diocese of Gnesen-Posen (the diocese of the primate).<ref name="p6"/>
Breitinger was, however, more sympathetic to the condition of Polish Catholics than Cesare Orsenigo, the nuncio to Berlin (with his authority extended to Poland).<ref name="p29">Phayer, 2008, p. 29.</ref> For example, when relaying a letter critical of the Pope's silence on the condition of Poland to Orsenigo, he also gave a second copy to Bishop Michael von Faulhaber (correctly) trusting only the second to deliver the letter to Rome.<ref name="p29"/> Breitinger's second correspondence to Rome in 1942, he reported that unlike in Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, another Nazi Gau comprising also annexed Polish area, in Arthur Greiser's Nazi prototype region of Wartheland ''Volksdeutsche'' Catholics were pressured to "drop their affiliation with the church" to secure advancement and the other fruits of the occupation, while Polish Catholics were treated far more harshly.<ref name="p29"/>
Many members of the Polish Catholic hierarchy and the Polish government-in-exile regarded the appointment of Breitinger and other German bishops to Polish territory as a violation of the Concordat of 1925.<ref name="p30">Phayer, 2008, p. 30.</ref> However, Bishop Dymek, and Gniezno's Cathedral Capitular Eduard van Blericq, whom Hlond had appointed vicar general for Gniezno, had pleaded to comply Greiser's policy of ethnic segregation in order to prevent him suppressing any church life.<ref>Jerzy Pietrzak, "Die politischen und kirchenrechtlichen Grundlagen der Einsetzung Apostolischer Administratoren in den Jahren 1939–1942 und 1945 im Vergleich", in: ''Katholische Kirche unter nationalsozialistischer und kommunistischer Diktatur: Deutschland und Polen 1939–1989'', Hans-Jürgen Karp and Joachim Köhler (eds.), (=Forschungen und Quellen zur Kirchen- und Kulturgeschichte Ostdeutschlands; vol. 32), Cologne: Böhlau, 2001, pp. 157–174, here p. 162. {{ISBN|3-412-11800-1}}.</ref> For example, in September 1942, the exiled Bishop Karol Mieczyslaw Radonski wrote two letters to Rome protesting these appointments which—in his view—"signaled the Vatican's willingness to let Hitler have the northwest sector of Poland that he had incorporated into his Greater Reich".<ref name="p30"/> Radonski criticized Pius XII directly: "''et Papa tacet, tamquamsi nihil eum interesset de ovibus''" ("and the pope keeps quiet as though these matters are of no interest to him").<ref name="p31">Phayer, 2008, p. 31.</ref> The appointment of Breitinger and other German prelates was the pretext of the Polish Provisional Government for declaring the Concordat "null and void" in 1945.<ref>Diskin, 2004, pp. 28–29.</ref>
==Return to Germany== As the Red Army advanced, Breitinger fled Poland in 1944, returning to his Franciscan order in Germany.<ref name="ms"/> In 1947 he became the Guardian of the Franciscan monastery of Würzburg, transferring to the Upper Bavarian monastery of Maria Eck in 1953, and to a Vienna seminary and hospital chaplaincy in 1959.<ref name="ms"/> In 1964, he was elected the provincial leader of the Austrian Franciscans monasteries.<ref name="ms"/>
In 1972 he returned to the Guardian of the Graz monastery and the pastor of Graz-Mariahilf.<ref name="ms"/> In 1978, he returned to Maria Eck in Upper Bavaria.<ref name="ms"/> In Maria Eck, he began to write his memoirs, published in 1984.<ref name="ms"/> In 1992, Pope John Paul II gave a special blessing to Breitinger on his birthday, expressing his "appreciation of his tireless pastoral ministry and apostolic ministry deserving as Apostolic Administrator of German Catholics in the Warta".<ref name="ms"/> Breitinger died on August 23, 1994.<ref name="ms"/>
==Works by Breitinger== *1984. ''Als Deutschenseelsorger in Posen und im Warthegau 1934–1945: Erinnerungen''. Mainz: Grünewald.
==Notes== {{reflist|2}}
==References== * Diskin, Hanna. 2004. ''The Seeds of Triumph: Church and State in Gomułka's Poland''. Central European University Press. * Phayer, Michael. 2000. ''The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965''. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. {{ISBN|0-253-33725-9}}. * Phayer, Michael. 2008. ''Pius XII, The Holocaust, and the Cold War''. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-253-34930-9}}.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Breitinger, Hilarius}} Category:1907 births Category:1994 deaths Category:People from Aschaffenburg (district) Category:Pope Pius XII and World War II Category:Conventual Friars Minor Category:German people of World War II Category:Cultural history of Poland during World War II Category:Holy See–Poland relations