My Brother, the Pope

by Georg Ratzinger

  After the war, we appreciated even more the fact that we had a home with good, concerned parents and dear siblings. I must admit that I was always a bit sorry whenever I heard, for instance among the Domspatzen, that a boy was an only child. I have always been grateful to the good Lord that he set me on my path through life with siblings and that I was born into an intact family. Naturally, there was also occasional irritation about this or that, once in a while there was a difference of opinion, but most of the time peace prevailed in our house. The fact that I had a home where I knew I belonged is something for which I will thank the dear Lord for the rest of my life.

  At that time we had to make sure first of all that we got hold of identification papers, because only someone with identification had a right to ration cards. Again, as during the war, the economy was run on a quota basis, so that each person was entitled to only a predetermined quantity of meat, sausage, butter, sugar, and so on, per month. In our case, besides identification papers, we also had to present our discharge papers from the American prisoner of war camp.

  Soon it was said that all the men released from captivity had to show proof of employment. Then we turned first to our seminary and petitioned the rector, Johann Evangelist Mair, whom we had always respected highly. He did not want us to work somewhere else and allowed us to work in the seminary. So we did not have to go someplace where we were strangers and do jobs for which we were not at all qualified but, rather, had the privilege of staying where we liked.

  In fact, our seminary desperately needed an overhaul. It was now completely empty, after having served during the war, first, as a military hospital and, just recently, through the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), as temporary housing for refugees from East Germany and Rumania. So my brother and I rode each day by bicycle to the seminary and helped to reorganize it. There we even got something extra to eat from the canteen kitchen, without having to use our ration stamps. There were other ex-seminarians there who were happy just to meet again with old schoolmates.

  Our main task was to carry tables, desks, and other pieces of furniture into the seminary building. In doing so, we also refurbished the office of one of the prefects. That was a lot of fun for all of us, because we knew we were doing something meaningful and were making our small contribution to the reconstruction. In the evening, we rode back home and there enjoyed the peace and quiet of our parents’ house. So it continued well into the autumn.

  On Saint Corbinian’s day, November 20, 1945, all the seminarians who were home again met at the seminary for a great Solemn Mass of Thanksgiving. Saint Corbinian is the patron of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, the herald of the faith who came to us more than 1,200 years ago from France. This reunion on his feast day was very uplifting and joyful for us.

  Saint Corbinian is still today one of the most revered saints in Bavaria. His relics rest in the crypt of the cathedral in Freising, in a golden casket standing on the original sarcophagus of the saintly bishop and herald of the faith. Corbinian was probably born in the last third of the seventh century near Melun on the Seine River in France, the son of an Irish mother and a Frankish father. At first he lived as a hermit near the church of his native place, while his reputation for holiness spread throughout the land. Around the year 710, he undertook a pilgrimage to Rome, where Pope Constantine I consecrated him a bishop and gave him permission to preach. Around 714, he came on his pilgrimage to the city of the popes through Bavaria, where Duke Grimoald would gladly have kept him on as bishop. In fact, Corbinian settled in Freising on his return and began successful mission work among the people, who for the most part were still pagans. Among other things, he dedicated one church in honor of Saint Stephen, alongside of which the famous monastery, Abtei Weihenstephan, was founded. The herald of the faith was highly esteemed, and the duke, too, was well disposed toward him, until Corbinian rebuked him for his illicit marriage with a blood relative. For fear of his revenge, the Bishop had to flee and lived at first in the monastery of Kains near Meran, until Grimoald died and his successor, Hugibert, brought him back to Freising. The saint was welcomed enthusiastically by the people but died shortly afterward, probably around 728. At his request, his remains were laid to rest first in Kains but then were translated to Freising by one of his successors, Bishop Arbeo, on November 20, 765.

  That autumn the gymnasium had opened again, and by December the seminary, too, was sufficiently restored to continue its work and house students. So the rector invited us to come back. Although both of us had already completed school, we gladly helped and assisted and used the time to prepare ourselves for our approaching theology studies. At that time, the pastor of the parish in Haslach—Stefan Blum was his name—loaned my brother, who was starving for reading material, a whole series of books about theology and philosophy, so that he could get something of a head start in those subjects. Indeed, before the war he had also urged my brother to transfer to the minor seminary because he recognized his talent and his vocation.

  At Christmas 1945, a class reunion took place in the house of one of the nonseminarian classmates. Many of our former fellow students who had come through the war unscathed attended. A number of them told that their parents were now saying they too had seen that everything would end this way; that it had been completely clear the war could not be won, but they had never expressed this openly, so that none of their children would let it slip out. From a certain point in time on, it was unmistakable that Hitler would lose the war. Yet at that time, many simply did not have the courage to speak openly about it in their family circle at least. Since there was no public transportation at the time, we remained together the whole night “chatting”, until we went home again the next morning.

  In December, also, a letter arrived in the mail from Freising informing us that the major seminary there was going to reopen. The Alumnatskurs, that is, the degree course—today it is called the pastoral course—had already begun in November. So on January 3, 1946, we were able to familiarize ourselves with our new seminary and four days later to begin our studies at the college. Because of the war, my brother and I were now in the same situation. Neither of us had an Abitur [the examination qualifying a student for university]; we had only a diploma—today one would say we had finished eleventh grade with a certificate of matriculation. With that, one was allowed to study at a college or a university; however, we had to make up several courses, as determined by the competent dean of studies. This was handled in a very humane way. Naturally we had to enroll in a Latin course, in which we translated hymns from the Breviary, and take some remedial Greek—in that class we read the New Testament in the original—and also complete courses in secular history—the name of the subject in the curriculum in those days time was “profane history”—and biology. At that time, much more attention was given to these secular subjects at a theological college than today. And then it started!

  The Archdiocesan Major Seminary in Freising had also served during World War II as a military hospital for wounded prisoners of war from many countries and likewise had to be put back in order before it could open its doors to the newly enrolled candidates for the priesthood. Only after the discharge of some of the wounded did rooms become available again; at the start of the new year 1946, then, there was finally space for all the candidates.

  While large sectors of Munich had been destroyed by the hail of Allied bombs, the “cathedral hill” (Domberg) of Freising and its famous Marian church had been spared. Nevertheless, conditions were Spartan by today’s standards, and the seminarians were housed in an extremely restricted space. Most of them had to spend the night in dormitories and stayed in the study halls during the day; there was no opportunity to withdraw into a private place, and the strict house rules allowed only a little freedom. But that did not bother the young men. After years of war and Nazi terror, they were grateful to be able finally to pursue their vocation.

  As we entered the seminary building, a young man wearing
a white “Roman collar” (a characteristic sign of a cleric) crossed our path; he was carrying a whole stack of books, which he held down with his chin so they did not fall to the floor. Immediately we knew we were in the right place. We mistook him at first for a priest, but later we learned he had not yet been ordained a priest but was a seminarian in his final year of coursework. At any rate, we walked into a large room that had originally served as a banquet hall (and today once again has this function), the so-called “Red Hall”, which is famous for its valuable paintings from Tyrol. At that time, however, it had been converted into a large study hall. It was filled with several dozen beginning students who, like us, had come there to study theology. They were to become the “legendary” first postwar generation of priests in Freising.

  Gathered together in that place were about 120 men who could not have been more different—and yet all of them were inspired by the desire to become a priest. The ages ranged from not-yet-nineteen-year-olds, like Joseph Ratzinger, to almost-forty-year-olds. Many of the more mature men had been through the whole war, had fought at the front and experienced its horrors firsthand. They had gone through trials and endured dark nights of suffering that had marked them deeply. To them, the younger seminarians seemed like immature children who lacked any depth of experience—in their opinion, the soil in which an authentic response to a priestly vocation had to develop. Nevertheless, they were all united in their gratitude for having survived those difficult years and in their enormous resolve to make up finally for what they had missed. They had become witnesses to the truth of Christ’s prophecy to Peter that not even the gates of hell could prevail against his Church. The Brownshirt regime had tried in vain to destroy them. Even in the days of darkest gloom, the Church had proved to be the place of their hopes. Despite all her human weaknesses, she had become the counterbalance to the demonic ideology of National Socialism. The task that now lay ahead was to make the faith a basis for a better Germany and ultimately for a better world.

  An advanced seminarian who had already completed most of his studies became our “prefect”, as we used to say then, in other words, our tutor. His name was Alfred Läpple, and he was later professor of catechetics and religious education and also dean of the Theology Faculty at the University of Salzburg.

  In 1939, Alfred Läpple (b. 1915) needed only a few more months to complete his studies at the University of Munich. Läpple was already working on his dissertation when the Nazis closed the Theology Faculty in retaliation against the Archbishop of Munich, Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber. He was then drafted into the military, served in the air force, and was present at the occupation of the Baltic states and also on the Russian front. Finally, he ended up in Westphalia as an American prisoner of war and was sent to a gigantic POW camp near Le Havre in France. His language skills were helpful to him there: he made himself useful as a translator for the camp administration and convinced them to accommodate the three hundred or so Catholic priests from among the almost 500,000 prisoners in a separate block and to offer theological lectures for them. Not until November 1945 did he return to bombed-out Munich, where he learned that the seminary program had just been reinstated in Freising.

  In an interview with the magazine 30 Days (1 / 2006) Professor Läpple reminisced about that time. “I called the Freising seminary to learn what to do. I had spoken with the new rector, Michael Hock. . . . He had been my prefect of studies at the junior seminary. . . . He said: Dear Alfred, I was expecting you, I have a fine job for you. You’re to be prefect of studies for the new men, those who have never been in seminary. I went, and he led me into the largest room (roter Saal) in the seminary, which was usually opened only for solemn celebrations. They had arranged desks and chairs, and there were sixty beginners. Rector Hock told them: Dear boys, here’s the best man I’ve found for you, you’ll be well off with him. Among those sixty boys there were also the two Ratzinger brothers. A few days later, during a break, this young man approached me, whom I still didn’t know. He said: I am Joseph Ratzinger, and I have some questions for you. From those questions our first work together arose. And it was the beginning of many conversations, of many walks, of many impassioned discussions and of many works done together.” In the same interview, Professor Läpple also recalled the first question the young Joseph Ratzinger asked him: “How did you manage to keep the faith during all the time of the war?” His answer must have impressed the young seminarian: “I told him that it had been my mother’s prayers. . . . And that I knew that Christ loved me, and if I was spared, then it would be Christ who would consume my life.”

  “He was like a dry [sponge] soaking up water almost greedily”, Läpple described his first impression of the young candidate for the priesthood, who was to become pope someday. “When in his studies he came across something new, that could correct or open new paths in terms of what he already knew, he was full of enthusiasm.”

  We took a liking to Läpple from the start. He was self-assured and sociable and always spoke what was in his heart. He always gave us a whole series of lessons, at least one per day, usually in the early morning, even before breakfast or else right afterward. We liked him very much and appreciated him academically, too. We knew he would earn a doctorate. At first he had been a student of Professor Theodor Steinbüchel (1888-1949), who taught in Munich before the war and then went to Tübingen in 1941. His former teacher had also suggested the topic of his dissertation, The Individual in the Church: Characteristics of a Theology of the Individual according to John Henry Cardinal Newman, which he submitted in 1952. Since then he has written a great deal, more than 150 publications, which have been translated into many languages. In this he was helped by the fact that he had a great gift for languages; simply put, he was a very special man.

  Yet the rector of the major seminary, who addressed the introductory remarks to us, impressed us also. Doctor Michael Hock had spent many years in the Dachau concentration camp. As editor-in-chief of the church newspaper, he had had a public profile as an enlightened opponent of the Nazis and had written things that did not sit well with the regime. He was a very kindly man who was always concerned about us, and we all held him in high esteem. Therefore at the seminar everybody called him “Vater Höck”.

  Doctor Michael Hock (1903-1996) had studied at the Germanicum in Rome by the good offices of the Archbishop of Munich, Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber, and was ordained a priest there in 1930. When he returned to Germany the following year, the Cardinal appointed him prefect of the Archdiocesan Minor Seminary in Freising. In addition, Höck was appointed editor-in-chief of the Münchener Katholische Kirchenzeitung in 1934. Again and again he expressed “between the lines” his objections to the Nazi regime, which led to various clashes with the Gestapo and repeated confiscations of the church newspaper. In April 1940, the paper was finally forbidden, and Hock was put on trial. Although the court exonerated him, the Gestapo arrested him shortly thereafter and whisked him away, first to a prison in Berlin for interrogation, then to the Oranienburg concentration camp, and finally, together with the future Auxiliary Bishop Johannes Neuhausler and the Evangelical Lutheran theologian Martin Niemoller, to the dreaded Dachau concentration camp. There he stayed and suffered until the liberation of the camp by the Americans in April 1945.

  The vice-rector was our former chaplain in Traunstein, a late-vocation priest by the name of Baumgartner; our instructor for the history of philosophy was a Professor Fellermeier; and the cathedral choirmaster’s name was Franz Xaver Geisenhofer. Also in our seminary was the future Cardinal Leo Scheffczyk (1920-2005). He was from Upper Silesia and had already studied Catholic theology at the University of Breslau before the war; he then completed his studies with us in Freising. He was together with Läpple in the Alumnatskurs that the advanced students attended. Besides that, there were three other theological and two philosophical courses of studies, the latter for us beginners. Scheffczyk seemed to us at first a bit conceited, but as we got to know him better, we noticed that h
e was not vain at all; he was just shy and somewhat lacking in self-confidence. It happens rather often in life that timidity is mistaken for conceitedness. At any rate, he preached interesting sermons that fascinated us, and he could sing very well—he had a wonderful high tenor voice. Later he became a great theologian and a world-renowned Mariologist, whom Pope John Paul II raised to the rank of cardinal in his last consistory in appreciation of his services.

  Another unusual fellow student was Matthias Defregger (1915-1995), a grandson of the famous painter Franz von Defregger, who later became Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Munich and then Auxiliary Bishop. Apparently he had lost his parents at an early age and liked to tell stories about his mother, a fashion designer from France, who must have been a very interesting woman. In the military, he had been promoted to the rank of Major and was therefore a high-ranking officer, which is why there were rumors about him after the war. And so I could name them one after the other and tell how they all later found their place in life in one way or another.

  We immediately felt comfortable in this circle. Yes, and then the coursework really got started! Early in the morning, Mass and meditation in the seminary chapel led off the daily routine. Breakfast followed, and then classes began. In the afternoon, after the midday meal, further lectures and seminars were held. Sunday Mass was not celebrated in the seminary chapel but, rather, in the Freising cathedral, which for us was always an especially valuable opportunity and a wonderful spiritual experience.

  Joseph Ratzinger (to the far right of the altar) serving Mass

  At other times, some of us were accommodated in rooms with ten to fifteen beds, while others had smaller rooms with fewer beds; my brother and I usually slept in different rooms. The rooms were unheated, and in winter it was bitter cold. The wash water that had already been set out in the evening was then covered in the morning with a thin crust of ice that we first had to break.