Alois Grimm

Alois Grimm (24 October 1886 in Külsheim, Germany – hanged 11 September 1944 in Brandenburg-Görden) was a Jesuit priest, patristic scholar, educator, and victim of Nazi religious hostility.

After graduation from Gymnasium (German high school), the young Grimm could not decide as to whether he should follow a navy career or become a priest.

As patristic scholar, Grimm worked on a critical edition of the Ambrosiaster for the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) in Vienna, Austria.

Grimm's research was aimed at making a critical edition of the Ambrosiaster, which would determine the original version as well as provide an accurate account of the development of variant texts.

The rise of Nazism in Germany caused complications for the Jesuits at Sankt-Blasien, many of whom were openly opposed to the Nazi Party, its ideology, and its political program.

Father Grimm was among those who became increasingly vocal in his opposition to Nazism while at Sankt Blasien, and he attracted the negative attention first of more sympathetic colleagues and then of the authorities.

Father Grimm returned to Tisis, Austria, where he taught Latin in a nearby Catholic seminary and assisted in the local parish.

The notoriously hysterical chief justice of the Volksgerichtshof, Roland Freisler screamed in response, as was his wont, "Fishes are caught in different ways.

His public defender, Joachim Lingenberg, wrote afterwards: "Father Grimm's defense belongs to the most frightful memories of my life.

[2] On 12 August 1944, Roland Freisler stripped Father Grimm of all civil rights and privileges damnatio memoriae and sentenced him to death for two counts of undermining the fighting spirit of the German Wehrmacht and for defeatism.

Five years after the execution, Grimm's ashes were given a resting place at the Kolleg St. Blasien[4] by its Superior, Otto Faller: "Dear friend, this will be our vow on your silent grave, to live for the kingdom of God, which knows no end, for the Society of Jesus, for the youth and religion of our home land.