Seliger Engelmar (Hubert) Unzeitig CMM
Personalia
Order Name:
Born:
Died:
Profession:
Persecution:
Imprisonment 21.04.1941 - 03.06.1941,
Dachau concentration camp 03.06.1941 - 02.03.1945,
Murdered on 02.03.1945
Curriculum Vitae
Hubert Unzeitig was born in Greifendorf in Schönhengstgau, north of Brno in Moravia, as one of six children in a farming family. His father died as a prisoner of war in Russia in 1916, leaving his mother to raise the children alone. Two of his sisters later joined the Mariannhill Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood.
Due to financial poverty, Hubert Unzeitig only attended elementary school and worked in agriculture straight afterwards. In 1928, he finally entered the seminary of the Missionaries of Mariannhill (CMM) in Reimlingen/Nördlingen in Germany, where he graduated in 1934. He then entered the novitiate of the Mariannhill Missionaries in St. Paul near Arcen in Holland, where he was given the religious name Engelmar. He made his first profession on May 1, 1935 and then studied theology in Würzburg, where he also learned French. He was finally ordained a priest on August 6, 1939.
In the summer of 1940, Engelmar Unzeitig was transferred to Riedegg Castle in the newly founded Mariannhiller Province in Upper Austria near Gallneukirchen. Around thirty French prisoners of war were already housed in Riedegg at this time. Engelmar Unzeitig, who speaks their language, takes care of them and holds church services for them every Sunday with French sermons, although this is forbidden.
Engelmar Unzeitig is a strict opponent of National Socialism, which he considers to be godless and anti-church. He also firmly rejected the persecution of the Jews. He made no secret of his opposition and also spoke openly about his thoughts at school in front of Hitler Youth and in sermons.
His public statements that Christ, in contrast to Adolf Hitler, was entitled to rule over everything, including earthly things, and his repeated criticism of the persecution of Jews ultimately resulted in him being reported to the Gestapo.
On April 21, 1941, Engelmar Unzeitig was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the Linz police prison. On June 3, 1941, he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp for violating the Treachery Act. Even in this bleak environment, he worked as a chaplain and was even able to convert an SS-Unterscharführer and a Russian prisoner to the Catholic faith.
In the last weeks of December 1944, the situation in Dachau became increasingly dire: in just a few weeks, a typhus epidemic had gripped the entire camp. Death raged cruelly. People infected with typhus were crammed into certain barracks because the infirmary could no longer hold them. Defencelessly exposed to their illness, the sick died like flies; camp statistics show a daily average of more than a hundred deaths. One barrack, occupied by 1600 men, had only 400 men left after a few weeks. The conditions in the barracks were appalling. The sick lay delirious in their own excrement, moaning, screaming, going mad and tossing and turning in fits. They were covered all over with lice (the disease carriers!) and fleas and lay on bare boards.
Because of the imminent danger of death, hardly anyone was prepared to take on a nursing post in the infested barracks.
In this situation, the camp management remembered the clergy. Twenty priests volunteered to help, ten Germans and ten Poles.
He sacrificed all his free time for the poor comrades from different nations. He gave them much more than his time and selfless efforts: all his priestly love. That was his goal, while death reaped a terrible harvest.
In February 1945, Engelmar Unzeitig himself fell ill with typhus and died just one day after his 34th birthday, on March 2, 1945 at 7:20 in the morning. The death certificate bears the inscription departure by death and states typhoid exanthema as the cause of death.
His ashes are first buried in Dachau and interred in 1968 in the Sacred Heart Church in Würzburg.
On September 24, 2016, Engelmar Unzeitig is beatified in Würzburg
Citations
- Mikrut, Jan (2000): Blutzeugen des Glaubens. Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhunderts. Band 2 (Wien), p. 263–270.
