Aloisius Joseph Muench

Aloisius Joseph Muench (February 18, 1889 – February 15, 1962) was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of Fargo in North Dakota from 1935 to 1959, and as apostolic nuncio to Germany from 1951 to 1959. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 1959.

Muench was the most powerful American Catholic and Vatican representative in Allied-occupied Germany and subsequently in West Germany from 1946 to 1959. He served as the liaison between the U.S. Office of Military Government and the German Catholic Church in the American occupation zone (1946–1949), Pope Pius XII's apostolic visitor to Germany (1946–1947), the Vatican relief officer in Kronberg im Taunus, Germany (1947–1949), regent in Kronberg (1949–1951), as well as nuncio to Germany.

Early life and education

Muench was born on February 18, 1889, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Joseph Muench and Theresa Kraus on February 18, 1889, the first of seven surviving children. His father's ancestors were from Sankt Katharina in the Bohemian Forest near the Bavarian border, what is now Svatá Kateřina in the Czech Republic. His father, a baker, emigrated to Milwaukee at age 18 in 1882. After his ordination, the archdiocese assigned him as an assistant pastor to Saint Michael's Parish in Milwaukee. The Vatican elevated Muench to the rank of monsignor in September 1934. In a meeting with the pope, Stritch recommended Muench for the role of apostolic visitor in post-war Germany, because of his "sympathy" for the "suffering of the German people".

When Muench returned to the United States, he was offered the additional position of liaison between the U.S. post-war occupation authorities in Germany (the Office of Military Government, United States Zone, OMGUS) and the German Catholic Church. This was also on the recommendation of Stritch, after Anthony Strauss, the first choice of the Truman Administration, turned the appointment down.

Post-war Germany (1946–1951)

After the end of World War II in 1945, Pope Pius XII appointed Muench in 1946 as apostolic visitor to the allied-occupied sections of defeated Germany. In Fargo, Auxiliary Bishop Leo Ferdinand Dworschak was elected in 1947 to serve as the apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Fargo in Muench's absence.

From 1946 to 1949, Muench served as military vicar delegate of the United States Armed Forces, and in 1949 was named regent of the nunciature in Germany. Muench also served as "liaison consultant for religious affairs to the military governor", appointed by Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson. The German nunciature had been vacant since the death of Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo in 1946. Muench assumed the de facto role of nuncio before he received the title on March 6, 1951.</blockquote>

One World in Charity

thumb|A plaque in Kronberg commemorating Muench's term as apostolic visitor

Muench's pastoral letter One World In Charity was published in installments (in the U.S. first in January 1946, and in occupied Germany one year later). Truncated versions of One World, focusing on Muench's comments about the collective guilt of German Catholics and the equation of the Nazis and the allied occupation authorities began to circulate in Germany in early 1947. It and spread rapidly, due to grassroots distribution (authorized or unauthorized) and quotation in German newspapers.

One World appeared in both religious and secular publications alongside statements denying Germans' complicity in the Holocaust, especially the concept of collective guilt. One World argued that responsibility for the Holocaust lay only with a very few war criminals who had "revived the Mosaic idea of an eye for an eye". One World was cited by prison guard Josef Hering and other war criminals in their own writings. Muench wrote in a September 1946 letter that "some of these gents exploit the fact that they were in concentration camps for their own benefit, although some were there because of an unsavory past". In one restitution case, where a distant relative of Muench had been sentenced by a military court to a fine of 2,000 marks and the return of his business to a Polish Jew, Muench wrote "a lot of hardship and injustice comes about because of [restitution resulting from] denazification".

Muench was also an opponent of interreligious dialogue efforts that included Jews, opposing the organization of chapters of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ) and the International Conference of Christians and Jews (ICCJ), among others, in occupied Germany. In a 1948 letter to Carl Zietlow, a Minnesotan Protestant pastor of the NCCJ, Muench described the organization as unneeded because: "regarding anti-Semitism" he had "found very little of it".

According to Phayer, for Muench as well as Pius XII, the "priority was not the survivors of the Holocaust, but the situation of the German Catholic refugees in Eastern Europe who had been expelled from their home nations at the end of the war. Muench felt that their suffering was comparable to that of the Jews during the Holocaust".

Clemency for war crimes

Along with other German and American clerics, such as Johann Neuhausler, auxiliary bishop of Munich, Cardinal Josef Frings of Cologne, Muench was "in close contact with occupation authorities, other religious leaders, and the convicted war criminals themselves" regarding the campaign for clemency for Nazi war criminals.

In February 1950, Pius XII instructed Muench to write a letter in support of clemency for some convicted German war criminals to General Thomas Hardy, the head of the U.S. Army European Command, who had the final word on all clemency decisions; with his new appointment as papal regent, Muench was to speak as a direct representative of the pope. In his diary, Muench made it clear that he viewed as "questionable" the sentences of war criminals who had not been directly involved in medical experimentation or other extreme acts at concentration camps or the deportation of people for slave labor. Prior to this, Muench had frequently become involved in individual clemency cases, but took care not to attract undue attention or publicity to the Vatican. As the Vatican urged Muench to press harder against the U.S. authorities, Muench wrote to Undersecretary Montini (future Pope Paul VI) warning him that Rome was on "dangerously thin ice". According to Phayer, it was Muench's discretion that "saved the Vatican from becoming publicly associated with former Nazis". Muench wrote: "I have not dared to advise the Holy See to intervene, especially if such intervention would eventually become public".

Muench often preferred to work behind the scenes; for example, a letter from one of Muench's secretaries provided Reverend Franz Lovenstein the contact information he had requested "with the understanding, of course, that you are not to use his name in connection with any letters or briefs that will be sent to those gentlemen". For example, in the case of Hans Eisele, the former SS doctor convicted of experimentation on prisoners, there is some evidence that Muench's intervention with General Clay in the summer of 1948 resulted in the commutation of Eisele's execution and his eventual release in 1952.

Nunciature (1951–1959)

Muench's role as apostolic visitor was upgraded to nuncio when the Allied High Commission permitted the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) to form an independent foreign affairs ministry in March 1951. On March 9, 1951, Pope Pius XII appointed Muench as papal nuncio to Germany with the title of archbishop. Muench viewed it as no small honor to hold the nunciature formerly occupied by Pius XII himself.

Muench and Pius XII met in February 1947 and in the fall of 1948 and 1949; although initially Muench (in his letters to others) expressed satisfaction with Pius XII's grasp of the situation in Germany, he later stated that the pope was too reliant on his own, earlier experiences in Germany and did not "fully grasp" the implications of the occupation and increasing secularization.

In the 1953 dedication of the North American College in Rome, Pius XII stopped as he passed by Muench, expressed his gratitude that Muench could join him in Rome, and added "don't forget to see me before you leave".

Cardinalate and death

Muench was elevated to cardinal on December 14, 1959, by Pope John XXIII. Muench resigned as bishop of Fargo on December 9, 1959, just before he became cardinal. He died in Rome on February 15, 1962, and was buried in Fargo.

Papers

Origins

Muench's papers from course of his work in Germany are well preserved. This makes them one of a very few collections of papers from German, American, or Vatican Catholic dignitaries of that time period that are "fully accessible to historians". According to Muench's biographer, Reverend Colman Barry, Muench took his papers with him to Rome when he retired as nuncio in December 1959 and the papers were returned to the diocesan archives in 1962 after his death. After Muench died on February 15, 1962, the papers were found by Sister Ilga Braun, secretary to the Bonn nunciature since 1951, who was invited by his successor as Bishop of Fargo, Leo Dworschak to organize the papers, which she did until 1963.

Among the papers are tens of thousands of letters (and Muench's replies) from German Catholics dated from 1946 to 1959, many from convicted Catholic war criminals seeking Muench's assistance in revising their denazification sentence, having their imprisonment commuted, or seeking emigration to the United States. Muench's correspondence was vast, numbering approximately 15,000 letters in 1956 alone; but of those, only 300 addressed the Holocaust explicitly.

In addition, Muench received approximately 100 letters from U.S. Catholics and military government officials speaking frankly on taboo topics, such as anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and its survivors. Another letter from a Catholic US Army major stated that enlisted Jews sought promotions into positions where they could "control thought".

Diary

Muench kept a diary, which often recorded his recollections of conversations with important post-war leaders. For example, Muench wrote in his diary that former US President Herbert Hoover had confided in Muench his belief that "no emigrés who were not citizens for at least twenty years should be permitted to shape and execute policies in Germany". Similarly, Muench referred to Franz Cueppers, a Frankfurt banker convicted of conducting illegal foreign exchange as a "victim of Jewish lawyers".

A recurring point of interest for Muench were what he referred to as "Thirty-Niners": Jews who had fled Germany in 1933 or 1934, received United States citizenship in 1939, and then enlisted in the U.S. Armed Forces—Muench believed—"to wreak their vengeance in every way possible on the defeated foe". Prof. Michael Ott of Grand Valley State University calls the work a "critical contribution to the growing research on the question of the Roman Catholic Church's policies and actions with regard to the Holocaust during World War II". Prof. Kevin Spicer of Stonehill College calls the work an "insightful and well-researched examination".

Although Prof. John Conway of the University of British Columbia praises her use of the Muench papers, he notes that "her book suffers from the inaccessibility of the Vatican's records, since the papers for the reign of Pius XII are still-regrettably-closed".

Notes

References

Barry, Colman James. (1969). American Nuncio: Cardinal Aloisius Muench. Collegeville, Minnesota: Saint John's University Press, 1969.
Brown-Fleming, Suzanne. (2006). The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience: Cardinal Aloisius Muench and the Guilt Question in Germany. University of Notre Dame Press. .
Conway, John S. (2006). Book Review of The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience. Catholic Historical Review, 92(3): 344.
Dietrich, Donald J. (2003). Christian Responses to the Holocaust: Moral and Ethical Issues. Syracuse University Press. .
Heberer, Patricia, Matthäus, Jürgen, and Marrus, Michael R. (2008). Atrocities on Trial: Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Prosecuting War Criminals. University of Nebraska Press. .
Ott, Michael. (2007). Review of The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience. Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 25(3): 179–182.
Phayer, Michael. (1996). "The German Catholic Church After the Holocaust". Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 10(2): 151.
Phayer, Michael. (2000). The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. .
Roth, John K., and Ritner, Carol. (2002). Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust. Leicester University Press.
Ruff, Mark Edward. (2007). Book Review of The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience. Central European History, 40(1): 183–185.
Spicer, Kevin P. (2007a). Antisemitism, Christian ambivalence, and the Holocaust. Indiana University Press. .
Spicer, Kevin P. (2007b). Book Review of The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience. Church History, 76(1): 205.
Weindling, Paul. "`For the Love of Christ': Strategies of International Catholic Relief and the Allied Occupation of Germany, 1945—1948". Journal of Contemporary History, 43.3 (2008): 477–92.

External links

An inventory of the Cardinal Aloisius Muench Papers at The American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives

Nuntiatur in Deutschland: Aloysius J. Muench
Cardinal Muench Seminary
Kardinal Alois Muench – “Vater der Vertriebenen und Notleidenden” – a paper by church historian, Prof. Dr. Rudolf Grulich