Padre Kilian Kirchhoff OFM (given name: Josef Kirchhoff; born 18 December 1892 in Rönkhausen; executed 24 April 1944 in

Brandenburg-Görden Prison Brandenburg-Görden Prison is located on Anton-Saefkow-Allee in the Görden quarter of Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany. Erected between 1927 and 1935, it was built to be the most secure and modern prison in Europe. Both criminal and political pr ...

) was a

Catholic priest The priesthood is the office of the ministers of religion, who have been commissioned ("ordained") with the holy orders of the Catholic Church. Technically, bishops are a priestly order as well; however, in common English usage ''priest'' refe ...

, translator and dissident. He was executed by the

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

for critical remarks. Kirchhoff was arrested by the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

on October 21, 1943 for expressions critical of the regime. In the subsequent trial, the witness justified the denunciation with her hatred of priests, "because they were opponents of National Socialism".

Roland Freisler Karl Roland Freisler (30 October 1893 – 3 February 1945) was a German jurist, judge and politician who served as the State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Justice from 1935 to 1942 and as President of the People's Court from 1942 to 194 ...

sentenced Kirchhoff to death on March 7, 1944 at the People's Court in Berlin. Kirchhoff himself submitted written requests for clemency, set up and promoted by Carl Anton Baumstark, along with a group of theologians and orientalists from various universities. After the war, the intercession of the Apostolic Nuncio

Cesare Orsenigo Cesare Vincenzo Orsenigo (13 December 1873 – 1 April 1946) was Apostolic Nuncio to Germany from 1930 to 1945, during the rise of Nazi Germany and World War II. Along with the German ambassador to the Vatican, Diego von Bergen and later Ernst v ...

, the head of the Episcopal Commissariat of the Fulda Bishops' Conference in Berlin, Heinrich Wienken, and the Paderborn Bishop Lorenz Jaeger can be heard. Nonetheless, Kirchhoff's death sentence was carried out on April 24, 1944 in Brandenburg-Görden by beheading. The urn with Kirchhoff's ashes was buried on April 1, 1950 in the crypt of the Werl Franciscan monastery at Werl park cemetery.

Publications

* ''Licht vom Licht: Hymnen / Symeon der Neue Theologe'' * ''Die Ostkirche betet'' * ''Der Osterjubel der Ostkirche'' * ''Hymnen der Ostkirche''

References

1892 births 1944 deaths People from Olpe (district) People from North Rhine-Westphalia executed by Nazi Germany 20th-century German Roman Catholic priests {{Germany-reli-bio-stub Roman Catholic priests executed by Nazi Germany

Publications

Further reading

References