Gulf Pine Catholic
•
February 27, 2015
23
B
ook
R
eview
German Catholics assess rise, fall of Nazism
from personal perspectives
REVIEWED BY GRAHAM YEARLEY
Catholic News Service
“My Battle Against Hitler”
and
“His Humble Ser-
vant”
are two memoirs of German Catholics who both
resisted the totalitarian menace of Nazism.
Von Hildebrand was a Protestant who became Cath-
olic, a professor of philosophy and an ardent critic of
National Socialism from its formation in the beer halls
of Munich in the early 1920s until its defeat in 1945.
Sister M. Pascalina Lehnert belonged to the order of
the Teaching Sisters of the Holy Cross and, starting in
1918, she worked as a housekeeper and eventually as an
adviser to Eugenio Pacelli, when he was the papal nun-
cio to Germany. During World War II, when Cardinal
Pacelli had been elevated to the papacy, he instructed
Sister Pascalina to direct his clandestine services to hid-
ing and supplying the thousands who had turned to the
Vatican for help.
Von Hildebrand displayed from an early age a re-
markable independence from the ideologies and preju-
dices of his time. Born in 1889 into a wealthy and ar-
tistic family (his father was a noted sculptor), the Von
Hildebrands were nominal Protestants who baptized
Dietrich, their only son, as was expected of members
of their class.
But Dietrich displayed from a young age a fervor for
religion uncharacteristic of his family. When taken to
a Catholic church to view the paintings and sculptures
as a child, he ignored the art and was seen genuflecting
and praying at every station of the cross.
He despised all forms of anti-Semitism, even the
milder forms commonly shared by most German Cath-
olics and Protestants. He valued the integrity and ho-
liness of individuals in a time when both fascism and
communism saw the value of an individual as part of a
collective mass serving the state. He recognized early
that National Socialism appealed to the darkest instincts
of Germans for militarism, ultra-nationalism and anti-
Semitism at a time when Germany had been beaten and
humiliated by the Allies.
Von Hildebrand started studying philosophy in 1906
and was a student of Edmund Husserl, one of the pro-
genitors of phenomenology. Eventually, Von Hildeb-
rand taught philosophy at the University of Munich
through the 1920s until he was forced to flee Germany
in 1933 to avoid arrest for his open opposition to Na-
zism.
He resettled in Vienna, and began a weekly news-
paper,
Der Christliche Standestaat (The Christian Cor-
porate State)
, dedicated to attacking the falseness of
Hitler’s intellectual underpinnings for National Social-
ism. In 1938, Von Hildebrand and his wife were forced
to flee Austria when Hitler annexed it. They went first
to Switzerland, then France, and on to Portugal where
they sailed first to Brazil and then the United States in
1940. Von Hildebrand would become a faculty member
at Fordham University in New York, teaching there un-
til 1960. He would continue to write and publish until
he died in 1977.
Although Von Hildebrand was one of the earliest
critics of Hitler and courageously kept up his opposi-
tion when many equally hostile to Nazism kept quiet,
he was not well known and was content to remain that
way, not seeing his work as anything extraordinary. The
publication of
“My Battle Against Hitler”
is an attempt
to bring the work of this remarkable man to the public.
The first two-thirds of the book is a memoir he
wrote for his second wife, Alice Jourdain, who met
Von Hildebrand years after he fled Germany and Aus-
tria. The remaining third is a collection of essays from
Der Christliche Standestaat on the anti-personalism of
modern states and ideologies, the menace of quietism,
and the profound sin of anti-Semitism. The memoir is
a whirl of theologians and philosophers and friends all
largely unknown to contemporary readers, but the es-
says still have the sting of righteous anger and show
the courage of a man willing to face up to evil and call
it evil.
Sister Pascalina served as housekeeper and later as
a personal adviser to Pope Pius XII for 40 years. Less
than a year after Pius XII died, Sister Pascalina wrote
her memoir, titled in English
“His Humble Servant”
but more accurately translated from the German as
“I
Was Allowed to Serve Him.”
The motive for her memoir
was to honor the man who had been her employer from
1918 to 1958.
Her memoir is a stream of adulation for Pope Pius,
in whom not the smallest fault is found. Eventually, her
credibility is undermined by her devotion.
Sister Pascalina outlived the pontiff by 25 years and
long enough to experience the questioning of Pope Pius’
seeming lack of action and vocal opposition to Nazism
during the Holocaust. Sister Pascalina passionately ar-
gued that the pope saved hundreds, if not thousands, of
lives and provided direct support and relief to those in
hiding from the Germans. She argued that Pope Pius
believed that speaking out directly in criticism of Hitler
would only result in more Catholics and Jews dying.
Pope Pius did make several statements against the
persecution of Jews and Catholics. Sister Pascalina, at
the direction of the pope, supervised the vast relief ef-
fort to Romans and people in hiding. What she does not
mention is that she herself had become famous and that
she was faced with similar allegations. Her last years
were difficult and she hoped that the English translation
of her book would help to restore Pope Pius’ reputation.
It was not completed at the time of her death on Nov.
13, 1983.
Most of the more scandalous charges against Pope
Pius have been refuted, but his reputation has never
been restored and questions remain. One of the unin-
tended results of reading
“His Humble Servant”
is that
it compels readers to read further about Pope Pius and
the Second World War.
“Pius XII and the Holocaust”
by Jose M. Sanchez and
“Pius XII and the Second
World War”
by Saul Friedlander are both balanced and
thoughtful assessments of this controversy.
Yearley is a graduate of the Ecumenical Institute at
St. Mary’s Seminary and University in Baltimore.
These are the covers of
“My Battle Against Hitler”
by
Dietrich Von Hildebrand and
“His Humble Servant:
Sister M. Pascalina Lehnert’s Memoirs of Her Years
of Service to Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII”
by
M. Pascalina Lehnert. The books are reviewed by
Graham Yearley.
CNS
