Heinrich Hennen

After graduating from the episcopal grammar school Collegium Augustinianum Gaesdonck near Goch on the Lower Rhine, Heinrich Hennen began his theological training in Münster and continued it in Innsbruck, where he joined the student fraternity Unitas-Greifenstein in 1930.

He was ordained a priest in Münster in 1933. He was initially sent to help out at the parish of St. Joseph in Bottrap and was appointed chaplain at St. Michael in Bottrap in 1934. He never made a secret of his opposition to the Nazi regime. For example, he got into an argument with a representative of the German Labor Front (DAF) at a funeral. The proceedings initiated in August 1938 on the grounds of an offense against the Treachery Act were dropped by order of the Special Court in Dortmund on 13 October 1938. In order to protect Heinrich Hennen from the Gestapo, he was transferred to the Heilig-Geist-Kirche in Münster as chaplain on March 30, 1939. Here, too, he was monitored by the Gestapo.

As head of the parish library, he preached on "The Good Book" on Borromeo Sunday at the beginning of November 1941 and said: "Unfortunately, there are books and textbooks in secondary schools in Germany today that do not objectively present the facts of Catholic church history." This sermon gave the Gestapo the reason to take him into protective custody in Münster on November 19, 1941. On January 30, 1942, he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp and assigned to the "Plantage" work detachment. As an orderly on Block 13/6, he planned a joint church service with the Catholic prisoners from Poland, Germany and Austria for Easter 1944, but two informers in the room made it too dangerous. However, he managed to distribute communion in secret on Easter Sunday. Nothing is known about his further life in the camp.

After his release on April 5, 1945, he turned to the Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber (1917-1952), who appointed him as a co-operator in Edling near Wasserburg from April 10, 1945 to July 10, 1945. By his own admission, he was able to recover well here. He then returned to his old position as chaplain at the Heilig-Geist-Kirche in Münster. From September 1948, he assumed the office of diocesan president of the Borromeo Association. Due to his failing health, his home bishop Michael Keller (1947-1961) appointed him to the ecclesiastical administrative service of the Episcopal Vicariate General.