Corbinian (Alexander) Hofmeister OSB

Alexander Hofmeister, born in Bohemia, comes under the care of his sister as a seven-year-old after the early death of his parents. He first moves to Tittling, then to Landshut and finally comes to Dingolfing. There he visits the Gymnasium and goes to the Benediktinerabtei Metten in Lower Bavaria, on the advice of his native priest. After the Matura he entered the Order of the Benedictine (OSB) and receives from the first Profess on 16. November 1911 the order name Corbinian. He studied philosophy and theology at first as part of his home studies at the monastery, then changes to the University of Innsbruck and decides to study at the Theological University in Eichstätt.

At the beginning of the First World War, he was consecrated to the priest in Metten in 1914. At the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, he then completed a philology study (English and French) which he completed in 1919. After a longer study stay in 1924–1926 in Benediktinererzabtei S. Vincent in Latrobe (Pennsylvania/USA) as well as in Belmont Abbey (North Carolina/USA) and in Downside Abbey in England he returns to the monastery school in Metten in 1927 as a teacher for new languages. In 1929 he is chosen as abbot.

From the outset, it is sceptical to rejecting national socialism. During his term of office, he must decide on the National Socialist authorities at 31 December. March 1939 the over a hundred-year high school “Alma Mater Metamensis“ and close the monastery and the religious seminar. In the Benediktinerabtei Ettal there are more and more meetings with persons of resistance.

In 1943, Crobinian Hofmeister Ostern was arrested by the Gestapo and initially imprisoned in the Berlin police prison because of his collaboration in the resistance group around the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhöfer, Johannes Neuhäusler (the later Munich Weihbischof) and Wilhelm Admiral Canaris. From April 1944 to April 1945, he will be KZ Dachau transferred and accommodated there as a “special prisoner” in the commandanturar residue of the concentration camp in cell 35. Here he meets the Evangelical pastor Martin Niemöller (cell 30) and Johannes Neuhäusler (cell 32).

After the war, in 1946, Abt Corbinian took up the German Benedictines of the Bohemian Abtei Braunau in Metten, who later became homeless. Augustiner Chorherrenstift Rohr is handed over as a new home in Lower Bavaria.