Leonhard Steinwender
Personalia
Born:
Died:
Profession:
Persecution:
Imprisonment 12.03.1938,
Imprisonment 19.04.1938 - 10.11.1938,
Buchenwald concentration camp 10.11.1938 - 16.11.1940
KZ Number:
Memberships
Curriculum Vitae
Leonhard Steinwender visits the Erzbischöfliche Borromäum in Salzburg and studies theology according to the Matura 1908. After completing his theological training, he was consecrated to the priest in 1912 by the Salzburg archbishop Johannes Cardinal Katschthaler (1900–1914). He then acts as a co-operator in Brixlegg/Tirol – here also as a prese of the Catholic Burschenverein – and then in Nonntal in 1915. In 1924 he joined the student association Austria .
He is active in the Christian Social Party, after the First World War in Salzburg the dominant political force. In 1917–1938, he became chief editor of the “Salzburg Chronicle“in which he has represented an anti-national socialist course from the beginning. He also promotes the Christian-German turner movement and initiates its new foundations as a counterweight to the German-Volk associations as a function of the Salzburger Turnerschaft. In 1927, he was elected a canonist in the Mattsee College (Canonicus Externalus sine praebenda) and appointed as a militiate vicar in 1937.
As a gifted speaker, he also performs at church or political events in the German Reich, including at the 71th German Catholic Day in Essen in 1932. In 1934, he is appointed as an advertising director to the regional management of the VF in Salzburg and is responsible for the training and press department. In 1935, the vigilance of a postman prevents an attempted bombing of letters, which is to meet, among others, Archbishop Sigismund Waitz and Leonhard Steinwender. On 11 March 1938 theSalzburg Chronicle“the last editorial from his feather: “Free railway – Austria!‘
In the night of the connection, he is forced to be dragged out of his apartment and arrested, but shortly afterwards released from the “protective custody”. On 19 April 1938 he was arrested again and after seven months in Gestapo-Haft in Salzburg on 10. November 1938 at Gestapo Berlin command Book forest transferred to the concentration camp. Here, as a priest, he is separated from the other inmates in order not to establish contact. Despite the many spies and “leaks” in the camp, it is possible to form religious circles in secret first among known compatriots and like-minded people.
For this, a hidden place was searched behind a barrack or in the nearby forest. This place of the meeting had to be changed again and again. So we sat in the sunshine around some tree trunk, or stood under the trees in the rain or snowstorm and held our Sunday celebration. Of course, comrades were always set up as guard posts, who had to report every suspected near of an SS man or an insecure prisoner, because the purpose of our cooperation had to be disguised.
Here, in the absence of a misale, cross or other religious sign, only the spoken word applies. The memory of the homeland belongs to the ritual during these religious encounters, such as the spiritual connection with the Sunday divine service in the respective home parish and the memory of the relatives.
We built up the thoughts that should rise us beyond the gloomy misery, to the year of the Church, and we sought to experience this with our home: ... We went with the fronleichnam procession through the blooming fields of the ears and fragrant meadows, we stood at Allerseelen with the graves of the dead. This certainty helped us in the spiritual rise from the misery, which gave us lurkingly. Thus we were perhaps more loyal and more grateful members of the home body behind the heavy-powered wire fences and machine gun towers of the KZ than we were, because without the need of a hard existence, we might consider their strong life forces too little.
The camp order and the daily work make every religious gathering difficult. Only Sundays and great festivities like Christmas or Easter remain. From Schikane, however, just on Sunday “voluntary work“ dismissed.
After more than two years Leonhard Steinwender arrives on 16. November 1940 free again. He receives a ban on the palate for Salzburg and then goes as Vikar in 1940–1945 to Petting near Waginger See in Oberbayern. In addition to his pastoral activity, he teaches in the folk school and helps farmers in harvesting. He is led by the Gestapo in Munich because of his political activity as a state enemy A. Here in Petting he experiences the end of the war.
He immediately begins to write his memory of the stay in the concentration camp. In his book "Christ in concentration camp. Ways of grace and sacrifice“He describes his personal destiny and life in the camp.
I want to dare the attempt to present religious life in the concentration camp, to follow the traces of grace that faithful people gave in the hardest years of their lives a mysterious force.
After the war, Leonhard Steinwender returns to his old functions. The Salzburg archbishop Andreas Rohracher (1943–1969) instructs him to build a new church newspaper. On 14 November 1945, as the main editor until his death, he took over the lead of theRupertibots“, the new church newspaper of the Archdiocese of Salzburg. He finds his last resting place in the canonic mine of the Stift Mattsee.
Citations
Krause, Peter/Reinelt, Herbert/Schmitt, Helmut (2020): Farbe tragen, Farbe bekennen. Katholische Korporierte in Widerstand und Verfolgung. Teil 2. Kuhl, Manfred (ÖVfStG, Wien) S. 341/342.
