Norbert Trippen. Josef Kardinal Frings (1887-1978), Volume 1: Sein Wirken fuer das Erzbistum Koeln und fuer die Kirche in Deutschland. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2003. 677 pp.

Norbert Trippen. Josef Kardinal Frings (1887-1978): Band I: Sein Wirken für das Erzbistum Köln und für die Kirche in Deutschland. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2003. 676 S. EUR 34.90 (broschiert), ISBN 978-3-506-79999-9.

Reviewed by Martin Menke (Rivier College)
Published on H-German (July, 2005)

Josef Cardinal Frings was one of the most important churchmen in post-war German Catholicism, a dominant figure during reconstruction and eventually in the Second Vatican Council and beyond, though the Council will be the subject of the second volume of Trippen's biography.

There is much to commend in Norbert Trippen's extensively detailed biography of Josef Kardinal Frings. Proceeding chronologically, Trippen fairly quickly surveys Frings's middle-class origins in the Rhenish town of Neuss and his childhood in a solidly Catholic milieu (although Trippen never uses the term). Study in seminaries at Innsbruck and Bonn led to his ordination. Even as a young priest, Frings was ambitious. He abbreviated his studies wherever possible in order to move on to the next degree level. He completed his doctorate at the University of Freiburg on New Testament exegesis before spending two decades as a parish priest. From 1937 until 1942, Frings led the archdiocesan seminary, where he apparently introduced a friendlier atmosphere than his predecessor, without relinquishing any of the rigor and hierarchical thinking that characterized seminary training at the time. In 1942, Frings unexpectedly was appointed archbishop of Cologne. From 1942 until his death in 1978, Frings then served as archbishop, which meant that in addition to his responsibilities for his own archdiocese, he also led the Cologne ecclesiastical province, which included the dioceses of Aachen, Mnster, Osnabrck, and later Essen. In 1945 Frings became chairman of the Fulda Bishops' Conference, which represented the German hierarchy. Traditionally, this role alternated between the archbishops of Breslau and Cologne. Frings's new leadership role reflected the death of Cardinal Bertram, archbishop of Breslau, rather than the changing political circumstances.

Trippen provides a detailed narrative of Frings's efforts to rebuild the institutional church from the ruins of the war, but also of Frings's demands that the British authorities provide adequate food and coal to the German population. The best part of the work probably is the treatment of Frings's role in the years between the end of hostilities in Cologne and the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany. Trippen describes how Frings forcefully interceded with the Allied occupation forces for Germans both in his archdiocese and throughout Germany. Most interesting is Frings's consideration of stealing coal as a moral issue. Much to the outrage of the British authorities, Frings declared that, in contrast to the organized theft of entire carloads, stealing from coal trains just enough coal to heat one's home was no sin. "Fringsen" became a term for the type of petty theft many Germans saw themselves forced to rely on for survival. While particularly the British Military Government, but also U.S. Military Governor Lucius D. Clay did not care for Frings, they had to respect his skill in negotiating improvements for his flock. When shortly after the war Frings traveled to Britain, the British Military Government, making his travel arrangements, equated His Eminence with a Field Marshal. In the archbishop's dealings with allied authorities, Trippen does point to one of Frings's weaknesses, namely his own occasional lack of sensitivity to his environment. For Frings to demand increased food deliveries at a time when the level of food deliveries to the British zone of occupation necessitated the introduction of rationing in Britain showed that Frings did not always understand matters beyond his own diocese.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Frings personally oversaw the reconstruction of Cologne's churches and other ecclesiastical buildings. Frings endorsed the practice whereby there would neither be wide-scale demolition of partially ruined buildings nor the slavish reconstruction of the old. In a region as rich in historic ecclesiastical architecture as Cologne, finding this compromise of old and new was no easy task.

While Trippen does not develop this idea, Frings was aware of the unique responsibility and opportunity the Catholic Church possessed in the aftermath of World War Two to re-establish and maintain a strong role in public life. Even apparently local events and measures, such as the struggle to maintain the denominational character of public schools in the newly created state of North-Rhine-Westphalia or the 1948 celebration of the seven-hundredth anniversary of the date construction began on Cologne cathedral took on national and even international importance. Furthermore, Frings feared that political divisions among German Catholics and even among German Christians as a whole might empower the socialists and communists, so he publicly endorsed the Christian Democratic Union. Another example of his occasional inability to see the larger picture was his dissatisfaction with the CDU's failure to give a constitutional basis to the right of parents to determine the education of their children.

As Trippen indicates, Frings was a complicated individual, full of contradictions. On the one hand, much of his liturgical and pastoral thinking could be characterized as progressive (at least during the era of Pius XII); on the other hand he adhered strictly to canon law and frequently requested guidance from the Holy See, even in fairly minor matters. Furthermore, Frings relied heavily on trusted advisors, such as his competent Vicars General David and Bhler. One gets the sense that Frings enjoyed the occasionally heated debates among his immediate subordinates as a way of helping him make up his own mind. On the other hand, it appears that Frings kept his innermost thoughts very much to himself.

Trippen lets many of the archival sources speak for themselves by quoting them extensively. The reader gets a good sense of the language Frings and his closest advisors used. Unfortunately, these extensive quotations also reveal one of the weaknesses of this lengthy work. Too often, quotations are left to speak for themselves without sufficient context or analysis. While there is much value to letting historical figures speak for themselves, current biographical scholarship generally relies on the biographer to give the reader some insight into the object of his study. Also, there is no concluding analysis--perhaps this will be presented in the second volume; the work ends with an account of Frings's private life, his Hausmusik, and vacations in the Swiss and Austrian Alps. Another significant weakness is that the work does not place Frings in the context of his times very well. In particular, one wonders what other German bishops were doing to address challenges similar to those faced by Frings, both regarding internal matters and those affecting German society at large. How did Frings's treatment of expellees from Germany's eastern province differ from that of the archbishops of Paderborn or Mnchen und Freising? Furthermore, Trippen praises Frings for holding an effective and productive diocesan synod in 1954, but does not compare it to diocesan synods that may have been held elsewhere. Similarly, what is the reader to conclude from the fact that there was no Gestapo file on Frings before his elevation? Was this unusual for a Catholic clergyman responsible for the formation of future priests, all potential enemies of the state? Trippen, while not engaging in hagiography, does not offer much criticism of Frings. For example, the reader repeatedly learns that Frings had a number of detractors among the archdiocesan clergy, but the extent of this discontent is left unexplored. For some of these lacunae, one cannot hold Trippen responsible. For example, in his efforts to reveal the reasons why the Holy See and the cathedral chapter chose Frings rather than the bishop of another diocese to head this metropolitan see, Trippen must rely primarily on the records of the Third Reich's Ministry for Church Affairs because the ecclesiastical archives remain closed, even to a member of Cologne's cathedral chapter. Finally, the structure of the work, which is a hybrid of chronological and thematic approaches, interrupts the narrative and analytical flow. There are far too many needless repetitions that eventually become off-putting to the reader.

Despite these significant reservations, however, it is important for historians, not only of German Catholicism but also of post-war Germany in general, to be alerted to the important role Frings and his brothers in office played in the country's development. There is not only a need to build on this ample introduction to Cardinal Frings, but Trippen's work points out the need for more work on figures such as the bishop of Berlin, Konrad Cardinal Preysing, and others. Much work remains to be done on the role of the churches in post-war Germany. As this work shows, the German Catholic Church of 1945 stood at the beginning of a process in which the Catholic milieu largely disintegrated, but that does not mean one can discount the role of the Catholic Church in post-war Germany.

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Citation: Martin Menke. Review of Norbert Trippen, Josef Kardinal Frings (1887-1978), Volume 1: Sein Wirken fuer das Erzbistum Koeln und fuer die Kirche in Deutschland and Trippen, Norbert, Josef Kardinal Frings (1887-1978): Band I: Sein Wirken für das Erzbistum Köln und für die Kirche in Deutschland. H-German, H-Net Reviews. July, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10747

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