My Brother, the Pope

by Georg Ratzinger

  Otherwise we lived rather simply. We grew up to be very thrifty, for on the income of an ordinary policeman we could not afford to be extravagant. Father had to manage the money carefully so that there would be enough. Still, our parents thought it was very important for us to make a proper impression. Mother, fortunately, eased the strain on the family budget considerably. First, because we always had a garden in which she grew vegetables. During the summer months we did not need to buy vegetables, because she planted and harvested lettuce, cabbage, and carrots herself. Working in the garden was her passion. Naturally, she also planted a few beautiful flowers, which gave her so much joy.

  Then, too, our mother always used to knit diligently. She herself made the caps, sweaters, socks, scarves, gloves, and everything else we wore in the winter. So she just had to buy the yarn, which greatly eased the strain on our father’s budget. At that time, in rural areas at least, it was not customary to buy knit woolen clothing. At any rate, we always had two pairs of gloves to choose from: mittens, which left only the thumbs free, and then five-fingered gloves. For my father and for us, Mother was simply a great windfall.

  The extended Ratzinger family on the eightieth birthday of the paternal grandmother, Katharina Ratzinger, at the Ratzinger farm in Rickering. Sitting on the ground to the left is Georg (7), to the right, Joseph (4); Maria (9) is standing in a light-colored dress; standing, on the far right, are the parents Joseph and Maria Ratzinger. Standing on the left is Uncle Anton, and sitting in front of him is their priest uncle, the Reverend Alois Ratzinger.

  I was acquainted with both my grandmothers. My mother’s mother, Maria Rieger-Peintner, did not pass away until 1930. Until then she lived in Rimsting. I visited her once with my mother. She was a rather sour woman and an expert scold, so I was told.

  The only thing I recall now about my grandmother on my father’s side (Katharina Ratzinger, nee Schmid, 1851-1937) is that she was a very old lady with a black kerchief. Other than that, I unfortunately have no memories of her. I saw her only once, when she celebrated her eightieth birthday (in 1931). On that occasion, there was a big party with all her relatives. It was celebrated a short distance upstream along the Danube, in Altenmarkt, I think. There is even a photo of the event, which the local historian and former senior civil servant Johann Nußbaum from Rimsting published in his book about the roots of our family.3 The original is in the possession of my relatives, the family of Anton Messerer in Rickering bei Schwanenkirchen, the place where my father was born, too. Their grandfather was one of my father’s brothers.

  My father’s uncle was also originally from Rickering; this was my great-uncle, Doctor Georg Ratzinger, a priest and a politician who was eventually elected to the German Imperial Parliament. Our father often spoke about him and about his main published work, Geschichte der kirchlichen Armenpflege (A history of the Church’s work for the poor), which was also his dissertation. He had written it at the suggestion of the renowned Church historian Ignaz von Döllinger. In it he demonstrated how the care for the poor that flourished during the Middle Ages ended with the Reformation. He did write other books, too, though, for example, Die Volkswirtschaft in ihren sittlichen Grundlagen (The moral foundations of the political economy), which was an attempt to reconnect economic theory with a Christian ethic, centered on “the social question”. Moreover, he deserves credit for having been an enlightened opponent of child labor. Currently a historian from Trier, Doctor Karl-Heinz Gorges, is working on a monograph about him, and then of course I should mention Doctor Tobias Appl from Regensburg, another historian who is an assistant professor of Bavarian history and has published articles about him. He gave a talk at a conference on the life and work of my great-uncle that was held here in Regensburg in 2008.

  Doctor Georg Ratzinger (1844-1899), as a member of the Bavarian Patriotic Party, was a member of the House of Representatives of the Bavarian Parliament from 1875 to 1877 and a member of the German Imperial Parliament from 1877 to 1878. From 1893 to 1899, he was again elected to the Bavarian Parliament, first as a member of the Bavarian Farmers’ Union and, then, from 1894 on, as an independent representative. As such, he then belonged again to the Imperial Parliament from 1898 until his death one year later.

  Ratzinger had the reputation of being an outstanding writer with an inclination to polemics. At the height of the Kulturkampf that Imperial Chancellor Bismarck conducted against Catholic Germany, his writings were confiscated and he himself was arrested for interrogation. For a time, he was editor-in-chief of the Fränkisches Volksblatt in Würzburg. He was one of the most important pioneers in German Catholic journalism. As a conservative disciple of Döllinger, he was regarded with suspicion by the State but also by ecclesiastical circles loyal to the State, which made an academic career as a Church historian impossible. For that reason alone, he went into politics. He described himself as “anti-imperial” and as a “clerical-socialist”. He rejected Prussia’s militaristic striving to become a great power. In his opinion, militarism was a burden that fell chiefly on the shoulders of taxpaying workers and farmers and served the monopolistic ambitions of high finance. He recognized and foresaw as early as 1895 that these militaristic tendencies would end in a world war. He was convinced that such a fate could be warded off only by reorganizing the State according to the principles of Catholic social teaching.

  Even during his lifetime, Ratzinger’s career was accompanied by various attempts to slander him. Today his undoubtedly considerable accomplishment as a Catholic social reformer is overshadowed by the accusation that he was the author of two anti-Semitic works published under the names “Doctor Robert Waldhausen” and “Doctor Gottfried Wolf”.

  Father spoke well of him, but then we never learned anything in particular about him. It was just that we knew and were glad that among our ancestors there was a figure who had played a certain part and had achieved something of significance. In any case, his example had nothing to do with our decision to become priests. We never read his writings in my family, and his opinion about the Jews, which he allegedly did not even publish under his own name, was not something we knew about.

  If we are to believe the family tree that hangs in the museum of the papal house in Marktl am Inn, the Ratzingers were an old farming family. Their genealogy can be traced uninterruptedly back to the year 1600, when one Georg Ratzinger, a farmer in Ratzing in the Diocese of Passau, was first mentioned in the church records. In fact, their roots extend much farther back. As the historian Herbert Wurster demonstrated at the above-mentioned scholarly conference about Doctor Georg Ratzinger, the family goes back to one Razi, who lived in the late tenth century in Sandbach in the Diocese of Passau. As the entry from the years 947-970 indicates, he was employed by the Church of Passau and perhaps even founded the hamlet of Ratzing, which is located 0. 6 mile from Sandbach. From him was probably descended an official by the name of Dietricus de Rezinge, who appeared in the records of the monastery in Vornbach around the years 1173-1200. The municipal court of what is today Innstadt in Passau was assigned in 1258 to one Heinrich Razinger; thus he was “a high-ranking and evidently accomplished servant of the Prince-Bishop of Passau”. Obviously the family at that time was well-to-do; in any case, one Otto Ratzinger was mentioned in 1318 as a citizen and homeowner in Innstadt (Passau). One of these two Ratzingers, according to Wurster, may have been the founder of the second Ratzing in what is today the district of Freinberg in Innviertel (today in Upper Austria), where he evidently acquired land and a country house. In any case, the local estate “Recing”, later “Räzinger am untern Freinberg”, is mentioned for the first time in 1304 in a document of the cathedral chapter in Passau. Thus on the Ratzinger estate developed the farming branch of a once bourgeois family that has been documented uninterruptedly from 1600 on. Since 1801, the family has owned the Strasser estate in Rickering, on which the grandfather of Benedict XVI was also born.

  Father’s father was also originally from Rickering, a hamlet that belongs to the parish in Schw
anenkirchen. The oldest child of his parents was a girl by the name of Anna, who was born before their marriage. Then our father, Joseph Ratzinger, was born as their second child. He really never felt at ease there during his youth, because as the oldest son he had to help with the work on the farm at a very early age. That was difficult, hard work. Then he went to elementary school. At that time an assistant pastor by the name of Rosenberger taught there who played an important role in his life and made a deep, formative impression on him. He gave very intensive and valuable instruction in religion, which even then our father is said to have appreciated very much.

  In addition he had a teacher, Herr Weber, who accepted children into the church choir at an early age. He led them in performing seven- or eight-part choral Masses, and our father was involved. Later, he liked to tell us over and over that even as a boy he had sung along in the church choir in Schwanenkirchen under the direction of Herr Weber. So early on, he was enthusiastic about church music, which apparently played an important role in the spiritual life of that parish.

  During that time, our father developed his love for music. Then one day he bought himself a zither and took a few lessons; everything else he taught himself. In any event, he owned a whole box of sheet music that was always on the kitchen cupboard, right beside the zither. In the evening, then, he often took it down from there and played and sang for us. There was always a special mood when we gathered around him and he played at first a stirring march and then some song from that period. Today, probably, no one would understand those songs; they were a bit maudlin and sentimental, but at the time they moved us deeply. At any rate, it was always very nice when Father played the zither, and it certainly predisposed me to embark on my own career in music. Otherwise, Father was a strict but also a very fair man. He always told us when something was wrong, but he never scolded us unnecessarily and reprimanded us only when we really deserved it. He certainly was a person to be respected, even though he was always modest and friendly toward everyone. He wore a handlebar mustache, as was the fashion then, and was always impeccably dressed. For special occasions Mother cleaned the helmet, saber, and belt of his policeman’s uniform very thoroughly with Sidol (a cleaning solution), for everything had to be bright and shiny.

  After our father finished elementary school, he went on to attend classes that were taught on holidays. These were for former elementary school students who already had a job, like Father, who long since had had to help at home with the work on the farm. These classes always were held on Sundays, and although other subjects were taught, too, religious instruction was central.

  On October 20, 1897, at the age of twenty, he had to report to the barracks in Passau and became a soldier. He was probably a much better soldier than my brother and I ever were. He became a noncommissioned officer and also wore the Schützenschnur, the decoration for marksmanship, because he was a very good marksman, and he had also been recommended for this distinction by his superiors. By no means did he consider his time in the military an unpleasant memory—unlike us; I must admit I was not happy about being a soldier; nor was my brother. But my father actually liked to reminisce about his time in the military. He served for two years in the Sixteenth Royal Bavarian Infantry Regiment in Passau and three more years in the reserves; then he retired as a noncommissioned officer. He often told us stories from that time. For instance, there was one very vain Lieutenant von Hazy. When the commandant called him “Lieutenant Hazy”, he did not move. Once again: “Lieutenant Hazy”; but nothing happened. But then when he said, “Lieutenant von Hazy”, he would answer with a thunderous “Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann!”

  After his time in the military, Father returned home at first. Soon it became clear, though, that, not he, but his young brother Anton would inherit his father’s farm. Why that was so, Father never told us. He then had to decide what further career path to take, and he probably inquired about where he had the best chances with his training as a noncommissioned officer. They told him there were two possibilities, namely, with the police force, which at that time was called the rural police, or with the railroad company. I do not know what his reasons were at the time, but in any case he applied to the police force and was accepted.

  The Bavarian State Archives in Munich still have on file his service record, which the local historian Johann Nußbaum from Rimsting found a few years ago. It states that he was “25 years old, Catholic, single, 5 feet 5 inches tall”. His first assignment was in Niederambach near Schrobenhausen. After several transfers, he was appointed sergeant in Königssee after six and a half years, and eight and a half years after that, in 1917, he was promoted to a deputy constable in Kolbermoor, only two years later to constable in Unterneukirchen, then in 1921 to station chief. In thirty-five years of service, he was transferred fourteen times. “To outward appearances, he seemed lanky and tough. He wore a mustache that went gray early.” So he is described by Nußbaum, who was able to speak with contemporary witnesses. “His demeanor was sober and stern. A robust man, modest and taciturn—typical for men from the region between the Danube and the Bavarian Forest.”

  At that time it was customary for policemen to be transferred often, if only to safeguard against any “special dealings”. I certainly cannot list all the posts to which he was assigned at one time or another. He was on Lake Konigssee once, in Holledau, and during the First World War in Ingolstadt, where the local police unit was reinforced at the time, because there was a lot of industry there and the authorities feared an outbreak of riots among the workers.

  Joseph Ratzinger, Sr., the Pope’s father, as a young officer

  The young policemen were poorly paid, and he probably said to himself that with those wages he could not feed a family. So he waited to marry until he was earning enough money. By then he was already forty-three. We never learned that he became acquainted with our mother by way of a personal announcement; he never told us that.

  As was customary for policemen at the time, despite the fact that he was forty-three years old, he had to ask his superior first for permission to marry. Nußbaum found in the Bavarian State Archives the following letter also: “On November 9 (1920), I intend to marry the single cook Maria Peintner, born January 8, 1884, in Mühlbach, District of Rosenheim, and I hereby request the permission necessary to do so.” After only one week he received permission.

  Then there was the wedding. I think it took place in Pleiskirchen, where my sister and I then were born also. He lived there in a neighborhood called Klebing beside a little lake or pond, where the frogs were always croaking.

  I visited Pleiskirchen for the first time a few years ago, thanks to arrangements made by one of our auxiliary bishops, Bishop Karl Flügel, who died in 2004. It is a pretty place with a very beautiful church and a castle with origins that go back to the eleventh century.

  Nevertheless, our mother felt very uneasy in the house situated so remotely on the lake and was often afraid. That is why Father obtained a dog for her, but it proved to be even more timid than Mother, even though it was probably a very fine dog otherwise.

  Generally those were troubled times. Inflation was raging then, prices soared immensely, and you paid as much as 200 million reichsmark for a loaf of bread. At that time my father was paid daily, but no sooner did he have his money in his hands than it was no longer worth anything, because the prices had gone up again. When I came into the world in 1924, Father later told me, my mother was very sick. She had almost not survived it. He himself was on an errand at the time, and when he came home I was already there in a basket, he said.

  Yet there must have been beautiful moments, too, because our mother always used to say that the best time for her was when the children were still small. One year later, in May 1925, my father was then transferred to Marktl. That is where my brother, Joseph, was born.

  The transfer document from the “Bavarian Rural Police Administration” dated April 22, 1925, is still preserved in the Bavarian State Archives. Thereafter the station chief of
police took up “his new position in the same service capacity with his previous basic wage as accounted for in the budget” on May 1. On November 1, 1927, Joseph Ratzinger, Sr., was then promoted “in the name of the government of the Free State of Bavaria” to security commissioner at salary level 6 with a yearly income of 2,124 reichsmark. As chief of the police station in Marktl, he was naturally one of the dignitaries of that locale, although he always conducted himself with reserve and modesty, as contemporaries testified. “In the relatively short time that he was here, he won for himself the respect of the inhabitants of Marktl by his sense of justice as well as his cooperation and friendliness in dealing with them”, wrote the local newspaper, Der Burghauser Anzeiger in 1929 upon his departure. Marktl am Inn, the Süddeutsche Zeitung said after the election of Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy, was located literally “between heaven and hell”, that is to say, halfway between the Marian shrine in Altötting and the Austrian town of Braunau am Inn. There, on April 20, 1889, a man was born whose shadow soon loomed over the childhood of little Joseph and his brother, Georg: Adolf Hitler.

  If God speaks to us in history through signs, then perhaps also through this one: Marktl is 18.5 miles from Braunau; it is also 18.5 miles between Wadowice, the birthplace of Blessed John Paul II, and the concentration camp Auschwitz. Wadowice, too, had its nearby Marian shrine, the Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, only 12.5 miles away, with its “weeping” icon of the Mother of God. Both popes, therefore, were born in immediate proximity to places that symbolize, like no others, the rise and inhumane cruelty of National Socialism. Yet the two birthplaces are likewise under the protection of the Mother of God, who always vanquishes evil.