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Fr. Alfred Delp
ALFRED DELP, S.J. (15 September 1907 - 2 February 1945) was a German Jesuit priest and philosopher of the German Resistance. A member of the inner Kreisau Circle resistance group, he is considered ...view moreALFRED DELP, S.J. (15 September 1907 - 2 February 1945) was a German Jesuit priest and philosopher of the German Resistance. A member of the inner Kreisau Circle resistance group, he is considered a significant figure in Catholic resistance to Nazism.
Born in Mannheim, Germany to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father, he left the Lutheran church at 14 and received the sacraments of First Eucharist and Confirmation as a Catholic. Graduated top of his school class, he joined the Society of Jesus in 1926. He worked as a teacher in Feldkirch, Austria and completed his theology studies in Valkenburg, Holland (1934-1936) and Frankfurt (1936-1937).
He was ordained a Catholic priest in Munich in 1937 and worked on the editorial staff of the Jesuit publication Stimmen der Zeit (“Voices of the Times”) from 1939 until Nazi suppression in 1941. He was then assigned as rector of St. Georg Church and also secretly helped Jews who were escaping to Switzerland.
He joined the Kreisau Circle in 1942 to develop a model for a new social order. Though he knew nothing of the plot to overthrow Hitler, he was arrested eight days after the attempt on Hitler’s life in Munich in July 1944, brought to trial, and, refusing to leave the Jesuits, was executed for high treason on 2 February 1945 at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin, aged just 37.
He was honored posthumously for his martyrdom, with theatre halls, memorial chapels, schools and colleges throughout Germany named after him.view less