Zeugen für Christus: Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhunderts (review)

Zeugen für Christus: Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhunderts. Edited by Helmut Moll, 2 vols. (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 1999. Pp. lxiv, 651; xxiv, 652-1308. DM 98, 00.)

This massive work is a fruit of Pope John Paul II's words in his 1994 apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente: "In our century the martyrs have returned, many of them nameless 'unknown soldiers' as it were of God's great cause. As far as possible, their witness should not be lost of the church. . . . The local churches should do everything possible to ensure that the memory of those who have suffered martyrdom should be safeguarded, gathering the necessary documentation" (par. 37).

These pages record, in meticulous detail and where possible with pictures, the stories of some 700 Germans of both sexes who, in the century just closed, suffered violent deaths out of hatred for the faith: under Nazism and Communism, in mission countries, and while resisting rape ("martyrs of purity") or defending its victims. The number of these "witnesses for Christ" is "far more than we initially supposed," writes the Bishop of Mainz and President of the German Bishops' Conference, Karl Lehmann, in a foreword.

The work is a monument to German industry. Criteria for inclusion are taken from those established by the learned canonist Prospero Lambertini and later Pope Benedict XIV (1740-1758) for the canonization of martyrs: a violent death, motivated by hatred of the Church and the faith, and willing acceptance of God's will despite mortal danger. No one is included whose death did not with certainty satisfy all three conditions.

Writing of the martyrs in the Nazi period, the editor says: "The church points with pride to its martyrs not in order to cover up its failures, but out of gratitude." More than 160 diocesan priests and almost sixty male religious were martyred by the Nazis. There were also 110 lay martyrs of both sexes: among them a seventeen-year-old apprentice, and two nineteen-year-olds, one a female convert from Judaism. The oldest lay martyrs were 73 and 74 respectively. Women comprised fourteen percent of the total, many of them highly educated people in prominent positions or persons of Jewish origin. "It is certain that there were many times more than we were able to find," the editor writes. He also pays tribute to the many non-Catholic martyrs, part of the 12,000 commemorated by Pope John Paul II at an "Ecumenical Commemoration of Twentieth-Century Witnesses to the Faith" in Rome's Colosseum on May 7, 2000.

The list of communism's victims, starting in 1917--a laywoman and 108 priests including five bishops and an abbot--consists mostly of "Volksdeutsche," ethnic Germans settled for generations in Russia or the Balkans. This category also includes more than sixty "martyrs of purity," most of them religious Sisters (the oldest 93 and 88 respectively) but many laywomen as well. Of the eighteen killed while trying to defend victims of rape, thirteen were priests, two religious Sisters. The list of over 170 missionary martyrs begins in Papau New Guinea in 1904 and ends in Zimbabwe in 1988.

Army Lieutenant Michael Kitzelmann, age 26, was shot on the Russian front in 1942 for writing in a letter: "At home they remove the crucifixes from the schools, and here they tell us we're fighting against godless communism." Before his execution he forgave the sergeant who had denounced him. His farewell letter to his loved ones said the Catholic chaplain had just visited him: "God has granted me the grace of a holy death. I go ahead of you to our heavenly homeland. Divine Redeemer, grant me a merciful judgment when I come to you. Praised be Jesus Christ!"

The university student Robert Limpert, deeply religious and an open critic of the Nazis, distributed fliers demanding that his home town of Ansbach be declared an open city. On...