Clemens August Graf von Galen
![Clemens August Graf von Galen](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/CAvGalenBAMS200612.jpg)
Born into the German aristocracy, Galen received part of his education in Austria-Hungary from the Jesuits at Stella Matutina in the town of Feldkirch. After his ordination he worked in Berlin at St. Matthias. He intensely disliked the secular liberal values of the Weimar Republic and opposed individualism, modernism, secular humanism, atheism, anarchism, communism, socialism, liberalism and democracy. A staunch German monarchist, conservative, nationalist, medievalist, traditionalist and patriot, he considered the Treaty of Versailles unjust and viewed Bolshevism as a threat to Germany and the Church. He espoused the stab-in-the-back theory: that the German military was defeated in 1918 only because it had been undermined by defeatist elements on the home front. He expressed his opposition to secularism in his book ''Die Pest des Laizismus und ihre Erscheinungsformen'' (The Plague of Laicism and its Forms of Expression) (1932). After serving in Berlin parishes from 1906 to 1929, he became the pastor of Münster's St. Lamberti Church, where he was noted for his political conservatism before being appointed Bishop of Münster in 1933.
Galen began to criticize Hitler's movement in 1934. He condemned the Nazi "worship of race" in a pastoral letter on 29 January 1934, and assumed responsibility for the publication of a collection of essays which fiercely criticized Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and defended the teachings of the Catholic Church. He was an outspoken critic of certain Nazi policies and helped draft Pope Pius XI's 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical ''Mit brennender Sorge''. In 1941, von Galen delivered three sermons in which he denounced the arrest of Jesuits, the confiscation of church property, Nazi attacks on the Church, and in the third, fiercely condemned the state-approved mass killing in the involuntary euthanasia programme of persons with mental or physical defects (''Aktion T4''). The sermons were illegally circulated in print, inspiring some German Resistance groups, including the White Rose.
Following this, in September 1943, another condemnation was read at the order of von Galen and other bishops from all Catholic pulpits in the diocese of Münster and across Nazi Germany, denouncing the killing of "the innocent and defenceless mentally handicapped and mentally ill, the incurably infirm and fatally wounded, innocent hostages and disarmed prisoners of war and criminal offenders, people of a foreign race or descent". Provided by Wikipedia
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1by Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946, Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946, Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946Other Authors: “...Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946...”
Published 1988
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2by Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946, Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946
Published 1946
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3by Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946, Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946
Published 1943
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4by Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946, Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946
Published 1948
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5by Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946
Published 1941
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6by Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946
Published 1944
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7by Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946
Published 1981
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8by Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946
Published 1946
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9
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10by Galen, Clemens August, Graf von, 1878-1946
Published 1978
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