The Visitation of Alois Ersin, S.J., to the Province of Lower Germany in 1931

Chapter 10 The Visitation of Alois Ersin, S.J., to the Province of Lower Germany in 1931 Klaus Schatz, S.J. Translated by Geoffrey Gay 1 Situation and Problems of the Province Around the year 1930, the Lower German province of the Society of Jesus was expanding but not without problems and internal tensions.1 The anti-Jesuit laws passed in 1872 during the Kulturkampf had been abrogated in 1917.2 The Weimar Constitution of 1919 had dismantled the final barriers that still existed between the constituent elements of Germany and granted religious freedom. The German province numbered 1,257 members at the beginning of 1921, when the province was divided into two: the Lower German (Germania Inferior) and the Upper German (Germania Superior), known informally as the northern and southern provinces. The southern or Upper German province, with Munich as its seat, comprised Jesuit communities in the states of Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden, and Saxony. These consisted of Munich (three residences), Aschaffen- burg, Nuremberg, Straubing, Rottmannshöhe (a retreat house), Stuttgart, and Dresden. The northern or Lower German province, with Cologne as its seat, was spread over the whole of northern Germany and included the territory of Prussia and the smaller states of northern Germany (of which only Hamburg had a Jesuit residence). At the time of the division, the new province contained fifteen residences: Münster in Westphalia, Dortmund, Essen, Duisburg, Düs- seldorf, Aachen, Cologne, Bonn, Bad Godesberg (Aloisiuskolleg), Waldesruh, 1 See Klaus Schatz, S.J., Geschichte der deutschen Jesuiten 1814–1983, 5 vols. (Münster/W.: Aschendorff, 2013) for greater detail. 2 Kulturkampf or “culture war” was a series of laws initiated by German chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815–98, in office 1871–90) between 1871 and 1878 to subject the Roman Catholic Church to state control. The Jesuit law was passed in 1872. Attempts to repeal the law in the 1890s failed. Success only came in April 1917. The Weimar Constitution (1919) guaranteed religious freedom, and the Jesuits were permitted to work throughout Germany. See Róisín Healy, The Jesuit Specter in Imperial Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2003). © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��9 | doi:�0.��63/978900439484�_0�� <UN> The Visitation of Alois Ersin, S.J. 237 Figure 10.1 Houses of the German provinces. (map) From Klaus Schatz, Geschichte der deutschen Jesuiten 1814–1983, 5 vols. (Münster/W.: Aschendorff, 2013), 3:117 Koblenz, Trier, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, and Berlin. With the exception of the last three, all were in the two western provinces of Westphalia and the Rhineland, with two-thirds (ten of fifteen) in the Rhineland. But the years of “exile” during the Kulturkampf had left their mark. Houses of formation still remained outside of Germany. There were the two novitiates (s’Heerenberg in the Netherlands for the north, and Tisis bei Feldkirch in the Vorarlberg, Austria, for the south), the residences for philosophy and theology in Valkenburg (the Netherlands), and a school in Feldkirch, plus a residence in Luxembourg. As one would have expected, the Dutch residences and Luxem- bourg were assigned to the Lower German province and the Vorarlberg to the Upper German province. The following years saw the expansion of the Jesuit presence in eastern Ger- many. In 1928, the “Gymnasium am Lietzensee,” later known as the “Canisius- kolleg,” was founded in Berlin. Other residences opened in Königsberg and Schneidemühl (Piła). But Jesuit expansion was more obvious in Silesia, with houses in Breslau, Oppeln, Beuthen (Bytom), and a novitiate in Mittelsteine (Ścinawka Średnia) in 1925. This thriving area was erected into a vice-province in 1927 before gaining full provincial status and becoming the East German province on February 2, 1931. The province covered the territory east of the <UN>.

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