Jan. 24, 1997
Jakob Gapp (1897-1943): Marianist and Martyr
by the Rev. James L. Heft, S.M.
On Sunday the 24th of November, on the Feast of Christ the King,
Jakob Gapp, a Marianist priest, was beatified by John Paul II in a ceremony held
at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Fr. Gapp was executed by the Nazis in Berlin in
1943 because he spoke out so often and so forcefully against Nazi ideology.
After careful study of documents and testimonies about Fr. Gapp, officials in
Rome approved Gapp’s beatification, a ceremony indicating that his life has
manifested striking virtue. Indeed, it has.
Gapp was born in western Austria in 1897, the seventh child of a
working-class family. After serving in the Austrian army in World War I, in 1920
he entered in 1920 the Society of Mary, the same Roman Catholic religious order
that founded the University of Dayton in 1850. By the 1930s in Austria,
extensive unemployment had dramatically increased the numbers of the poor. As a
young priest, Gapp was known among his Marianist brothers as having both a
strong sense of justice and a love for the poor. Gapp involved his students in
assisting the poor through collecting food and money for them, and helping them
find jobs. He constantly taught his students a deep sense of social
responsibility, and repeated as a motto: "Action is more important than theory!"
During the cold Tirolian winters, he himself often chose not to use the coal
allotted to him to heat his personal room, but instead passed it on to poor
families.
By the mid 1930s, he began to realize that Nazi ideology was deeply
incompatible with Christianity. He studied publications by leading Nazis, in
particular Alfred Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century, and set against
them articles written by Catholics critical of the Nazis. He quickly came to the
conclusion that National Socialism was "abhorrent and totally irreconciliable
with the Catholic faith."
When the Nazis came to power in Austria in March of 1938, Gapp spoke out even
more forcefully against them. Some of his primary school students told him that
another teacher in the school told them that they should "hate and kill Czechs
and Jews," and asked him if he agreed. Even though Gapp realized the children
could have been sent to trap him, he spoke out clearly that they were to love
everyone equally, for they were all human beings, and added, "God is your God,
not Adolf Hitler." Gapp’s reputation as an outspoken enemy of the Nazis made his
religious superiors fear for his life. Over the next few years he was reassigned
several times in Austria, and then, when it was clear that the Nazis were
pursuing him, to Bordeaux, France in January of 1939. There, he was to be a
confessor, no longer a teacher. Yet he continued his earlier work by helping to
form the consciences of those who confessed to him. As their confessor, he
stressed their social responsibility in speaking out against the Nazis, and, as
a consequence of his persistent opposition to the Nazis, was once again
reassigned, this time to Spain.
Even though in Spain he was safe from the reach of the Gestapo, he found that
he was not at ease with a number of his Spanish Marianists who, in Gapp’s
judgment, did not treat some of their employees justly, and, worse yet, were not
opposing the Nazis as he believed every Christian should be doing. Gapp was
insistent and his own brothers had him transferred within Spain three times in
the next three years.
Finally, in August of 1942, Gapp, then stationed in Valencia, in the North,
got word from some men who said they were Jewish and living just north of the
border, in southern France. They told him they were interested in Christianity
and wanted to see him. He received such messages several times over the next two
months. On November 9th, he drove over the border to help them but
was immediately arrested by the Gestapo, who had been behind this deception. He
was detained in several French prisons, and finally taken to another prison in
Berlin, where, without any legal defense, he was accused of "high treason"
against the German government.
He was informed at noon on August 13th that he would be executed
at 7:00PM that night. That afternoon, he wrote several letters, one to his
religious superior in which he said he had had plenty of time to think since
November, and that though he had suffered difficulties, he was very happy and at
peace. He also wrote to his family urging them to "live well and suffer
everything for the love of God." He was beheaded that night. The Nazis refused
to return his body to his family, for fear that he would be considered a martyr
by those who agreed with him.
One of his interrogators, a Karl Ludwig Neuhaus, is still alive. He has never
forgotten Gapp, and remembers that Himmler demanded that every detail of the
Gapp interrogation be sent to him. The judge who sentenced Gapp to death told
Neuhaus that Himmler had remarked that Germany would be winning easily if there
were only more party members as committed as Gapp was to his Christian faith.
Many questions remain even after the story is told: where did Gapp find the
courage to oppose the Nazis? Why did he see more clearly than others the evil of
the Nazi regime? Why didn’t more of his Marianist brothers oppose the Nazis as
he did? Whatever the answers to such questions might be, we can be thankful that
Jakob Gapp did what he did, and that the Catholic Church has seen fit to single
him out as an example of true and striking virtue. He was beatified so that
others might be moved by his example. As Gapp said, to act is more important
than just to theorize. Obviously, there might be great risk in following his
example; yet, there is even greater risk in not trying, in our own time, to
speak the truth at whatever risk and to promote a deeper sense of social
responsibility, especially for those who are without means and standing in our
own society.
James L. Heft, S.M.
University Professor of Faith and Culture and Chancellor
