Joannes Baptista Sproll

A memorial plaque to Bishop Sproll in Rottenburg. It reads: On 23 June 1938 the National Socialists stormed the apartment of Dr. Joannes Baptista Sproll, 1870-1949, the seventh Bishop of Rottenburg. In the same year, the government forced the bishop into exile; he could not return to his diocese from Krumbad until after the war

Joannes Baptista Sproll (German: [joˈanːəs bapˈtiːsta ˈʃpʁɔl]; 2 October 1870 – 4 March 1949) was a German bishop and prominent opponent of the Nazi regime.

Biography

Sproll was born in Schweinhausen, near Biberach, the son of a street mender, Josef Sproll, and his wife, Anna Maria née Freuer. He attended the Latin school in Biberach and the Gymnasium Ehingen. He studied Catholic theology at the University of Tübingen from 1890 to 1894. In 1898, he received his Ph.D. for his work on the history of the law and constitution of the Tübingen monastery of St. George. On 14 June 1927 he became the Bishop of Rottenburg.

During the Nazi era, Sproll often spoke out against the regime, and his abstention from the plebiscite over the Anschluss led to preliminary proceedings and staged demonstrations against him. At the end of August 1938, Sproll was expelled from his diocese and could not return again until 1945. On 1 August 1940 Conrad Gröber, Archbishop of Freiburg, and the Vicar General of the Diocese of Rottenburg (acting for Sproll) protested against the euthanasia programmes in Grafeneck; this was also the year of the protest of the Bishop of Münster, Clemens August Graf von Galen. Sproll died in 1949 in Rottenburg am Neckar.

Sproll's coat of arms. Motto in Latin meaning, "Stronger in Faith"

Inscription St. Martin Erolzheim 1943

Sproll initially welcomed the Reichskonkordat between Nazi Germany and the Holy See, but later publicly opposed the Nazis. His demonstrative absence from the Reichstag election on April 10, 1938 (where only a Nazi-dominated unified list was allowed) – which was combined with a referendum on the Anschluss of Austria – led to an investigation and demonstrations orchestrated by the Nazi authorities against him. On July 23, 1938, Sproll was expelled from his diocese, only returning in 1945. On the same day, SA men stormed the Rottenburg Bishop's Palace. During this time, he lived in Krumbad, a district of the town Krumbach (Bavarian Swabia), today Günzburg district in the Diocese of Augsburg, under Gestapo surveillance. Sproll's separation from his diocese, his refusal to resign to the then nuncio in Germany, Cesare Orsenigo, and his early and unwavering opposition to Nazi tyranny earned him the popular title of "Martyr Bishop". He himself summed up this period:

The open persecution of bishops and priests and the difficulties of worship and religious education have brought one good thing: they have opened the eyes of the Catholic people and welded clergy and faithful into a united front. In this unity, they broke the tenacious resistance of the Church's enemies and preserved their sacred faith in God, Christ, and the Church over two difficult decades of hardship.

— 

As early as July 5, 1934, during a sermon at the Fulda Bishops' Conference, Sproll, according to Franz X. Schmid, provided inspiration for the drafting of Faulhaber's encyclical Mit brennender Sorge:

Boniface holds the cross in one hand and the gospel book in the other. This is the symbol of an apostolic calling, the symbol of golden fidelity. […] But alongside it, many raise the axe to destroy the Church […] to smash the cross he erected in German lands, to tear the image of the Crucified from the hearts of the Germanic people. […] Christianity will have to endure great storms against this so-called "religion of blood and race." Fearlessly, you must hold fast to the sacred heritage you received from your parents. 'Stand firm in the faith!' the apostle urges.

— Franz X. Schmid (2019). Hidden Inspirer. Lindenberg: Kunstverlag Josef Fink. p. 48. ISBN 978-3-95976-197-0.

On October 4, 1938, amid the Sudeten Crisis, Sproll wrote to his diocesan flock: "A war more terrible than humanity has ever experienced has been averted from us." At a men's pilgrimage on September 19, 1939, Sproll made positive comments about Jews and their religion and negative remarks about the Kristallnacht pogrom. On August 1, 1940, Archbishop Conrad Gröber of Freiburg and the Vicar General of the Diocese of Rottenburg, Max Kottmann, protested in Berlin on behalf of Sproll against the euthanasia program (the murder of the sick) at the NS killing center Grafeneck, one year before Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen of Münster publicly protested. On September 8, 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War, Sproll wrote in a pastoral letter:

"Already, from all our communities, the able-bodied men have rushed to the borders, following the call of the Führer, to protect home and hearth, and we know that they will fulfill their duty, faithful to their military oath, even at the cost of their lives."

Despite these "disconcerting" words, the cleric and church historian Franz X. Schmid attests that Sproll was never a "war supporter or glorifier," but, as a "member of the Peace Association of German Catholics, an avowed pacifist."

In 1941, a papal envoy asked Sproll to resign. He refused, which Franz X. Schmid sees as the reason why Sproll was never properly honored by the Church after 1946. Sproll had become a "persona non grata."

References

• Krieg, Robert A. (2004). Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany. Continuum. pp. 92–4. ISBN 9781441191205.