My Brother, the Pope

by Georg Ratzinger

  I can no longer say exactly when I first heard the call to the priesthood, for actually it had always been clear to me that that was where my destiny lay. When I was an altar boy and served Mass, I already knew that that would be my place: now I was an acolyte, but later I myself would have the privilege of standing in the priest’s place. I never doubted it for a moment; it all happened naturally, in an almost organic development. I never really had to think about it, so sure was I of my vocation.

  Of course, it is a different situation with every priest. I know, for example, a pastor who had already started a career when a First Mass was celebrated in his hometown. Initially he did not want to attend, but he was actually compelled to participate in that first Holy Mass of a young priest. At first, he stood way in the back of the church; then he was pushed farther and farther toward the front by the crowd, until, at the end of the Mass, he was standing almost right before the altar. At that moment he realized he belonged there, and he decided to become a priest.

  Here there is simply no “golden rule”, no set prescription. I, at any rate, never had to wrestle with myself and did not need to make a difficult decision. Actually it was clear to me from the beginning—although serving at the altar and, of course, perhaps more than anything else, the spirituality of our family had something to do with it—that I would go into ministry. For me, that was always something self-evident.

  I do not know whether I was consequently an example to my brother in a certain way. At least he saw in me what that life could be like, when he himself decided to follow me on that path. We never talked about it directly, but I can well imagine it may have encouraged him a bit at least or confirmed him in his decision. Of course the anti-Christian spirit of the times strengthened our resolve to follow that path “now more than ever”, with all its consequences, and to remain true to our vocation, come what may.

  In any case, I went to the Archdiocesan Minor Seminary already in 1935, when we were still living in Aschau. Since the seminary did not offer its own classroom instruction, we went from there to the humanistic gymnasium in Traunstein. Joseph came to the same gymnasium in 1937, but for two years he still lived at home, until in 1939 he likewise entered the seminary. My brother was the last one in a gymnasium class; the next class after his already belonged to the government-run high school.

  Rather hesitantly integrated into the community: Joseph Ratzinger ca. 1940 on a school outing (middle row, fourth from the left)

  To start with, there were thirty-eight of us children in the sexta (the first gymnasium class), thirty-five boys and three girls who were all Evangelical Lutheran. At that time most people in our region were simple craftsmen or farmers, for whom it was simply not customary to send a daughter for higher education. Moreover, most of the teachers were older gentlemen and accordingly had conservative opinions and were often religious as well; there were no female teachers yet at our gymnasium back then. Only later did a few younger teachers arrive, who brought a different mentality into the school, and among them there were also fanatical Nazis. One of them was, for instance, our new headmaster, after his predecessor had died of pneumonia. Still, most of them were not, and they maintained good relations with the seminary as well.

  The academic year was divided then into trimesters, not into semesters like today. It began with Easter. The Easter holidays were followed by three months of school, then a long break for summer vacation, which we called the “major holidays”, and in September it continued until the Christmas holidays, when the second trimester ended and after which the third began. Only later was the beginning of the school year moved to the fall.

  At the beginning of each trimester, a flag-raising ceremony took place. For this occasion, the whole school had to line up in formation; then the temporary headmaster gave an inflammatory Nazi speech, and finally the flag was hoisted. At that, the school music teacher intoned the German national anthem, which we were all supposed to sing in chorus. Of course there was something unintentionally comical about the way he first gave the “German salute” and then with his outstretched hand set the tempo and conducted, while a youth hoisted the flag of the German Reich. At the end of the trimester, the flag was then taken down again. The provisional headmaster, Herr K., was also our mathematics teacher. He was a short Saarlander with a big paunch. Therefore we used to call him “Kelly-belly”. He was actually a believing Christian but at the same time a decided Nazi; how he was able to combine the two I do not know to this day. At any rate, the flag-raising was followed by the salute to the Führer, during which he regularly got mixed up. He used to say, “To our much loved, ardently loved, cordially loved Führer Adolf Sieg, aaah, no, well . . . to our cordially loved, ardently loved Führer Adolf Sieg. . . . ” Of course, he was supposed to say: “Adolf Hitler: Sieg Heil!” but somehow he never managed to say that; he always pronounced only the words “Adolf Sieg”, and we could hardly keep from laughing.

  Later on, when I had already left the school, some Nazi bigwig or other often came from the provincial leadership in Munich and regularly scolded the conservative gymnasium, which must have been very unpleasant.

  At the gymnasium, naturally, I had Latin classes, and one of our teachers was a philologist of ancient languages, Doctor K. His son became a priest and for a long time was pastor in Trostberg. At any rate, this Doctor K. liked to talk an especially enthusiastic brand of politics, and we took advantage of it. Someone always used to ask him how the war was going, and he began to hold forth; a torrent of words just poured out of him. Of course we did that, not out of any interest in politics, but only so that Latin class would go by faster and he would no longer have time to ask us questions about our homework.

  Then came Saturday. Originally we had Saturdays off from school, but soon they introduced a new subject called “N.G.”—Nazionalsozialistisches Gedankengut (Nazi ideology), and, of all days, it was scheduled for that day. For this class one of our teachers had to speak about a Nazi topic. I still remember well one of our teachers, Herr Fauner from Amberg, who was a brave, conservative man and had little interest in the Nazis. When it was his turn, he gave a talk on the VDA, the Verein für das Deutschtum im Ausland, the “League for German Culture Abroad”, a German academic association to which he belonged. It had been founded long before in 1908 and naturally had nothing to do with the Nazis. Another teacher always used to tell about the First World War, and each of his lectures ended with him quoting Herrn von Schlieffen (Alfred Graf von Schlieffen, 1833-1913, General Field Marshal and General Chief of Staff of the German Empire), who had worked out the battle plan for the First World War and even on his deathbed declared, “Strengthen the right flank for me!” That was the lesson, and afterward we also went to the athletic field and had to play at a sport, because we were all supposed to get fit for war.

  My brother was a first-class student from the beginning, much better than I ever was. When I had already been drafted into military service, in 1942, Mother once wrote to me that he was one of the top three students in the gymnasium. It was just that “calisthenics”, as we called physical education classes then, did not suit him at all; he was a poor athlete and not good at drawing, either—art class used to be called “drawing” then. That made him “only” the third best student, whereas in the humanities and the sciences he was always the best.

  To be honest, we detested sports. Our father always used to tell about his time as a soldier in Passau, in which he had to do physical exercises and let his head roll around over his shoulders. He always used to say, “As farmers we have so much work and can never keep up with it all, and here I am in Passau rotating my head!” That alone took the enjoyment out of sports for us. To be sure, neither of us was very gifted in that area, either, but there was also this innate dislike, a regular aversion to it.

  In early 1939, the pastor in Haslach, Stefan Blum (who made the circuit of several churches, including Hufschlag) recommended that the twelve-year-old Joseph, too, should enter the Archdiocesan Minor Seminary s
o as to have a really systematic introduction to the spiritual life. Joseph was enthusiastic about the idea. His brother, who had already been at the boarding school for four years, had told him only good things about it, and he had already made friends with a few seminarians. For his parents, however, it was not an easy decision, for it meant an additional financial sacrifice. His father’s pension was rather meager, and so his mother now had to take a job during the holiday season as a cook at a hotel in Reit im Winkl so as to earn something more. His sister, though, after receiving her diploma and doing the year of service in agriculture that was obligatory for girls at the time, had taken an office job in a big company in Traunstein and thus eased the family budget somewhat. Through these common acts of self-denial, Joseph Ratzinger remarked later, the family also developed an “inner solidarity . . . that bound us deeply together” (SE 44). Thus, sacrifice brought them all together, and right after Easter 1939, at the beginning of the new school year on April 16, the younger son, too, was able to enter Saint Michael’s Archdiocesan Minor Seminary, which had been founded ten years before by Cardinal Faulhaber.

  In the recommendation letter that Herr Ratzinger submitted to the minor seminary on March 4, 1939, Hubert Pöhlein, the assistant headmaster at the Traunstein gymnasium, praised young Joseph as a “well-behaved, diligent, and reliable” student. The physician Doctor Paul Keller emphasized in his medical certificate that “the boy’s digestion and physical strength” had “improved”: although moderately underweight, the lad was in the best of health. Joseph had passed the entrance examination with a grade of “1” in religion, “1-2” in reading, “1” in language, “2” in spelling, and “1” in essay-writing. Because Herr Ratzinger had painstakingly calculated that he could raise only 700 reichsmark per year for his two sons—his monthly pension was 242 reichsmark—the tuition was set at that precise amount.

  Of course it was not so uncommon for two sons from the same family to intend to become priests at the same time. I know several examples that I have encountered during my career, for instance, the former pastor of Saint Francis Church in Munich, Hans Wammerdinger, who was originally from Wasserburg, where his father used to deliver bread; his brother likewise became a priest. I remember, too, how our seminary choir was once asked to substitute and to sing in Saint Oswald parish in the city of Traunstein, because the parish choir was in Anger that Sunday, where two brothers were celebrating their First Mass together. So it was not that unusual at all for several boys in a family to become priests and the daughters, nuns. Nevertheless, it was of course something of a burden for our parents. That is why our mother occasionally went to Reit im Winkl to work there as a cook during the tourist season and to earn additional money. She used to send me off, saying, “Take good care of Joseph”, because the whole situation at boarding school was something rather new and unfamiliar to him.

  It had not bothered me in the least; I actually felt at home from the very beginning at boarding school. Things did not suit Joseph so well, however; it is more accurate to say that he did not like it at all. But he himself says today that it did him good, because if he had always stayed at home, he would quickly have become a loner. To be sure, in community he had to pay a price that did not suit him, but he did become acquainted with community life and was thereby equipped with social skills he might otherwise have developed only with difficulty.

  That was to date the most profound upheaval in his life. The young Joseph Ratzinger had to understand that he was one of those people who is simply not made for life at a boarding school. “While at home I had lived and studied with great freedom, as I wished, and had built a childhood world of my own”, Cardinal Ratzinger explained in Milestones. “Now I had to sit in a study hall with about sixty other boys, and this was such a torture to me that studying, which had always come so easily to me, now appeared almost impossible” (M 25). Even more drastic for that freedom-loving individualist was the experience of suddenly having to share a dormitory with forty boys. “For me that was an unprecedented restriction, in which I suddenly had to fit into a system. It was extraordinarily difficult for me”, he admitted (L).

  The daily routine was strictly regulated. We used to rise at 5:20 A.M., even though that is unimaginable today. Then we washed and dressed and prepared for Mass, which began at 5:40. The whole seminary participated in it.

  At that time the priests celebrated facing the high altar. The marvelous painting over the high altar, a depiction of our Lord being taken down from the Cross, was unfortunately damaged recently in a fire. Then there were also two side altars. Five priests staffed the seminary, namely, the rector, the three prefects, and the spiritual director. So besides the Mass at the high altar, Masses could be celebrated at the two side altars, also. The Masses took a rather long time, because in those days practically every seminarian went to Holy Communion.

  Mass was followed by early morning study until 7:10, then breakfast. After breakfast we had to pack our schoolbags, and at 7:30 we lined up for our walk to school. Punctually at 7:35, the whole seminary, all nine classes, walked in two files down to the school, which began at 8:00.

  After school came the midday meal, after which we had to go to the playing field, which I never really felt very inclined to do. There various games were played. Soccer was forbidden; instead we played handball, dodge-ball, treibball,1 and other ball games.

  At 3:00 in the afternoon, study hall began, which was interrupted at 4:00 by a coffee break—coffee was served with a roll. At 4:55, the college preparatory courses began, and the evening meal was at 7:00. After that we finally had free time: usually we played billiards and board games in the study hall, but sometimes we also read books.

  At 8:05 P.M., we had spiritual reading, and, at 8:20, evening prayer in the chapel, where we all gathered again. That was always very moving—the almost dark chapel filled with the students’ prayers. At the conclusion of evening prayer, one of the prefects went to the front and blessed the whole community. Afterward we observed strict silence and went to the dormitories. These were large rooms with forty-two beds. This, too, is unimaginable today, but at the time we thought nothing of it. Two students from the upper grades also slept in the dormitories for the lower grades in case something happened and someone needed help. During the night a small, dark red light always burned.

  The dormitory was for Joseph Ratzinger an “unprecedented confinement”

  Everyone had a locker in the corridor and his own desk in the study hall and, besides that, a closet compartment in which we could store the foods we had received from home. So in the early years, my brother, when he came from home, always brought along the sandwich Mother had prepared for me for the coffee break.

  As I said, all these things did not bother me, and I made many friends in the seminary. But for my brother it was something of a trial. At any rate, we seminarians were a close-knit community at the gymnasium, too, where we made up around one-third of the student body. The other two-thirds were the local students who lived with their parents, and to some extent there were already a few genuine Nazis among them, which of course inevitably led to conflicts.

  I can still remember well how in 1940 we drove to the castle in Tittmoning, which meanwhile had been converted into a country boarding school. A vehement confrontation developed when the Nazis sang songs mocking the Church. Then we seminarians joined forces and conducted a debate that might have led to violence if the teacher had not arrived just in time. Now he himself was a Nazi, too, but he wanted to give the appearance of neutrality, as though he were mediating between the two groups. But of course we were a thorn in the Nazis’ side; we knew it and came to feel it on a regular basis.

  After the passage of the “Hitler Youth Law” on December 1, 1936, it was a duty for all fourteen-year-olds to enter the Hitler Youth; with the enactment of the “second enforcement order” dated March 25, 1939, they could be compelled by the police to do so even against the will of the parents. From that point on, a distinction was made between
the “core H.Y.”, those who had previously entered voluntarily, and the “compulsory H.Y.”, those who had been incorporated into it by force as a result of this law. Unlike the “core H.Y.”, the “compulsory H.Y.” members received no uniform, which identified them, so to speak, as second-class German youths. All girls had to join the “League of German Girls”. In order to go through the formality at least of obeying this law and to avoid further sanctions that would have resulted from non-compliance, from then on the seminary registered all the boys who had reached that age with the H.Y. That was the case with Georg Ratzinger as well as with Joseph two years later.

  As early as 1938, we were registered by the seminary with the Hitler Youth (HY) and then virtually by class assigned to various groups of the compulsory HY. That was the law, there were no exemptions, and furthermore the seminary would have run the risk of being shut down if it had not complied. That did not change until the beginning of the war, when the seminary was closed and turned into a military hospital. Consequently, all the minor seminarians became students at the public schools and lived with their parents or relatives again. With that, the compulsory HY collapsed; from then on it existed only on paper, because the seminarians had suddenly scattered to the four winds. We seminarians, naturally, no longer felt obliged to go to the meetings.

  On August 9, 1938, the Bavarian Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs issued an order that henceforth the discount in tuition would be granted only to students, both boys and girls, who belonged to the HY. Although the monthly pension of the retired policeman Joseph Ratzinger at that time was only 242 reichsmark, he refused to get involved in it.