Franz Jägerstätter

Franz Jägerstätter, (also spelled Jaegerstaetter in English; born Franz Huber, 20 May 1907 – 9 August 1943) was an Austrian farmer and conscientious objector during World War II. Jägerstätter was sentenced to death and executed for his refusal to fight for Nazi Germany. He is venerated as a martyr and has been beatified by the Catholic Church.

Life


Jägerstätter was born in Sankt Radegund, Upper Austria, a small village between Salzburg and Braunau am Inn where nearly everyone was Catholic. He was the child of Rosalia Huber, a chambermaid, and Franz Bachmeier, a farmer. As his parents could not afford a marriage, Franz was first cared for by his grandmother, Elisabeth Huber, who had a reputation as an exceptionally devout woman. His biological father was killed in World War I in 1915, when Franz was seven or eight years old. In 1917, his mother married Heinrich Jägerstätter. As the marriage didn't result in children of Jägerstätter's own, he adopted his wife's son and gave over the farm to him after Franz married in 1936.

As a boy, Franz was a better than average student and an avid reader, apparently leaving school after his 14th birthday, as permitted by law. His fellow villagers remembered the Franz of early manhood fondly as "a jolly, robust, fun-loving, hot-blooded, 'he-man' type", intelligent and "bull-headed", who tended to be "ahead of the crowd" in his interests and to wish to be the first to try something new; he was the first in his village to own a motorcycle. While he regularly went to Mass, there was little to foreshadow the devotion he was known for in later years, and he once embarrassed the pastor of the village by asking him about the possibility that the Virgin Mary had other children after Jesus. In 1922, he participated in the local Passion play, acting as one of the soldiers who cast lots for the seamless robe of Christ.

The young Franz was also remembered as a good fighter. On one occasion, he spent several days in jail as a consequence of a fight with members of the Heimwehr provoked by the attention paid by members of the group to local girls. In August 1933, an illegitimate daughter, Hildegard, was born to Jägerstätter and a local farm maidservant, Theresia Auer. Although some friends expressed doubts about Jägerstätter's paternity of the girl, he voluntarily paid money for her support and visited her often. Perhaps due to circumstances related to the girl's conception, Jägerstätter apparently underwent an "exile" around this time during which he was obliged to leave Sankt Radegund for several years, working in the iron mines of Eisenerz. In the social democratic working class environment he first experienced a crisis of meaning, but returned to his homeland as a deeply pious person.

In the mid-1930s, Jägerstätter made a turn towards morality and piety that most of his neighbours recalled as "so sudden that people just couldn't understand it", "almost as if he had been possessed by a higher power", although others described it as more gradual. In 1934, Jägerstätter intended to enter a monastery, but the parish priest advised him against it.

On Maundy Thursday (9 April) of 1936, he married Franziska Schwaninger (4 March 1913 – 16 March 2013), a deeply religious woman. After the wedding liturgy, the couple went on a pilgrimage to Rome, where they received a blessing from Pope Pius XI. Most members of the community attributed Jägerstätter's conversion to his wife's influence or the sight of the pope, but other evidence indicates that his choice of a wife and decision to travel to Rome may have rather been influenced by a conversion that had already taken place; one friend recalled that he observed Jägerstätter had already become much more pious when he returned from the iron mines in late 1934 or 1935. The marriage resulted in three daughters: Rosalia (b. 1 September 1937), Maria (b. 4 September 1938), and Aloisia (b. 5 May 1940).

When German troops moved into Austria in March 1938, Jägerstätter rejected the offered position as Radegund mayor. He was the only person in the village to vote against the Anschluss in the plebiscite of 10 April; nevertheless, the local authorities suppressed his dissent and announced unanimous approval. He was dismayed to witness many Catholics in his town supporting the Nazis, writing, "I believe there could scarcely be a sadder hour for the true Christian faith in our country". Although he was not involved with any political organization and underwent a brief period of military training, he remained openly anti-Nazi. He avoided any contact with the NSDAP, nor did he seek the help of local representatives to avoid being drafted into the Wehrmacht.

On 8 December 1940, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, he joined the Third Order of Saint Francis. In summer 1940, the local parish priest, Josef Karobath (1898-1983), offered him to work as a sacristan, as Jägerstätter daily attended mass anyway. He was therefore deferred from military service four times.

Drafted for the first time on 17 June 1940, Jägerstätter, aged 33, was again conscripted into the German Wehrmacht in October and completed his training at the Enns garrison. He refused to take the Hitler oath, but could return home in 1941 under an exemption as a farmer.

Faced with his experiences in military service, the suppression of the church, as well as reports on the Nazi T4 euthanasia program, he began to examine the morality of the war. In order to discuss it with his spiritual directors, Jägerstätter drew up a list of questions about the justification of the war. A central one was how much obedience a good Christian owes to the state authorities when they demand things that conflict with the teachings of the Gospel. He even went to Linz to discuss this with his bishop, Josephus Calasanz Fließer, but emerged from the conversation saddened that the episcopate seemed afraid to confront the issues.

Arrest and death
After many delays, Jägerstätter was again called to active duty in February 1943. By this time, he had three daughters with his wife, the eldest not quite six. He maintained his position against fighting for Nazi Germany and, upon entering into the Wehrmacht garrison in Enns on the evening of 1 March, declared on 2 March his conscientious objection. His offer to carry out non-violent services was ignored. He was immediately arrested, repeatedly interrogated, and placed in custody, first at the Linz remand prison, then from 4 May at Tegel Prison in Berlin. From the prison he wrote: "Is it not more Christian to offer oneself as a victim right away rather than first have to murder others who certainly have a right to live and want to live — just to prolong one’s own life a little while?"

Accused of Wehrkraftzersetzung ("undermining military morale"), Jägerstätter was sentenced to death "and loss of military dignity and civil rights" in a military trial at the Reichskriegsgericht in Charlottenburg on 6 July 1943. His wife and his parish priest visited him a few days later in jail and tried to talk him into serving, but did not succeed. When Jägerstatter was told of the fate of the Austrian Pallottine father Franz Reinisch, who had been executed for his refusal to take the Hitler oath, his conscience was calmed. Jägerstätter expressed that it would be better for his four daughters to see their father as a martyr rather than as a Nazi collaborator.

He was deported to Brandenburg-Görden Prison on 9 August, where he was executed by guillotine that afternoon, at age 36. Minutes before his execution, he was given the option to sign a document to save his life and declined, abjuring any complicity with the Nazi regime. Jägerstätter's last recorded words before his death were, "I am completely bound in inner union with the Lord".

Jägerstätters's remains were cremated in the city of Brandenburg. Austrian school sisters who worked there were able to take possession of the urn and bring it to Upper Austria after the end of the war. In 1946, the urn was buried at the Sankt Radegund cemetery.

Legacy and beatification
Jägerstätter was criticized by his countrymen, especially by those who had served in the military, for failing in his duty as a husband and father. The municipality of Sankt Radegund at first refused to put his name on the local war memorial and a pension for his widow was not approved until 1950.

Jägerstätter's fate was not well known until 1964, when US sociologist Gordon Zahn published his biography, In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter. Thomas Merton, Trappist monk and peace activist, included a chapter about Jägerstätter in his book Faith and Violence of 1968. A 1971 film treatment of his life made for Austrian television, Verweigerung ("The Refusal") (originally titled Der Fall Jägerstätter), by director Axel Corti, starred Kurt Weinzierl. A bronze plaque with his quotation about conscientious objection was dedicated at the Pacifist Memorial in Sherborn, Massachusetts, in 1994. His case was a topic of the annual Braunauer Zeitgeschichte-Tage conference in 1995. The death sentence was nullified by the Landgericht Berlin on 7 May 1997. A Stolperstein for Jägerstätter in Sankt Radegund was laid in 2006.

The beatification process was opened in 1994. In June 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued an apostolic exhortation declaring Jägerstätter a martyr. The Austrian bishops had described Jägerstätter as a "shining example in dark times". On 26 October 2007, Jägerstätter was beatified in a ceremony held by Cardinal José Saraiva Martins at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Linz. His feast day is the day of his baptism, 21 May. In 2016, Jägerstätter's relics were embedded in the altar of the parish church of St. Radegund, and he is regarded co-patron of this church, which makes his feast day a solemnity.

The documentary Franz Jaegerstaetter: A Man of Conscience was released in 2011. A film about Jägerstätter, A Hidden Life, written and directed by Terrence Malick, premiered in May 2019 at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival, and was given a general release in the US on 13 December 2019. The film is inspired by the book Franz Jägerstätter: Letters and Writings from Prison, edited by biographer Erna Putz, with Malick acquiring its adaptation rights for the production.