News around the globe
Dr. Britta Kägler, Professor of Bavarian Regional History and European Regional History, will give her inaugural lecture at the University of Passau - delayed by Corona - on the topic of "Rethinking Education Bavaria's Education Offensive and the Founding of the University of Passau in the Educational Policy Context of the 1960s and 1970s". The lecture fits in with the 400th anniversary of the University.
On 4 June at 7.30 pm Stefan Heid will give a public lecture on "The beginnings of pilgrimages to Jerusalem" in the conference room of the Marienhaus of St Walburg Abbey in Eichstätt. Those interested are welcome.
Prof. Dr. Christoph Markschies (Berlin) has been the new President of the Union of Eight German Academies of Sciences and Humanities since May, and thus sits at a key point in German science policy with an annual volume of 70 million euros from the federal and state governments.
As is well known, the Nazis tried to instrumentalise ongoing encyclopaedia companies. The best-known example is the "Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens" (Hand Dictionary of German Superstition) (1927-1942), which was ransacked in the 1930s and is nevertheless in every library because of its wealth of material. The Paderborn priest Theodor Klauser, who was at the Campo Santo Teutonico from 1925-1927 and 1931-1934, was commissioned as early as 1935 by his Bonn teacher Franz-Joseph Dölger to compile a dictionary of antiquity and Christianity.
Finally, a normal General Assembly of the Görres Society is to take place again, this time in Aachen. On Saturday evening, the informal "Römertreffen" will take place again (if you are interested, please contact
The private initiative "fideliter intellegens" of Catholic doctoral students is offering a summer academy on the topic of "Man and Technology" at Ottobeuren Abbey (24-28 August).
The Archive of the Catholic Military Bishop is organising a conference at the Catholic Military Bishop's Office in Berlin from 29 September to 1 October 2022 on the history of Catholic military chaplaincy in the Bundeswehr after its foundation in 1956. The deadline for registration is 30 June. The programme includes interesting lectures on Franz Jägerstätter, Manfred Graf von Pourtalès, the Wehrmacht, conscientious objection and ecumenism, among others.
The journal "Das Münster", founded in 1947 and published by Schnell & Steiner, deals with Christian art and art studies. The library of the Campo Santo Teutonico owns it from the 1st volume onwards, in the RIGG's collection. One could probably write a small lecture on the relationship of the RIGG to the journal alone. Already in the first volume there is a necrology on Joseph Wilpert, the (first and only) head of the archaeological department of the RIGG from 1901 until the First World War. The second volume contains an essay by Engelbert Kirschbaum, then director of the RIGG, on the excavations under Saint Peter. His successor as director of the RIGG, Ludwig Voelkl, published several essays on Christian archaeology in the "Münster".
On 5 May, a celebration to mark 10 years of Hildegard of Bingen's canonisation will take place at St Hildegard's Abbey in Eibingen. On 7 October, a ceremony will be held in Rome to mark 10 years of Hildegard of Bingen as a Doctor of the Church. At the Abbey of St. Hildegard, the very active St. Hildegard Academy, led by Sister Dr. Maura Zátonyi, has been running since 2019.
During my Easter stay in Berlin-Steglitz, I came across a commemorative plaque on an outside window of the town hall there, which reads:
"On 4 November 1901, the 'Committee for School Trips' was founded here in the Ratskeller and was given the name Wandervogel. The German youth movement emerged from this original cell".
Römisches Institut der Görres-Gesellschaft
