Karl Leisner

Karl Leisner (28 February 1915 in Rees – 12 August 1945 in Planegg, Germany) was a Roman Catholic priest interned in the Dachau concentration camp.

When he was six years old, the family moved to Kleve, a city on the lower Rhine, where his father worked as a civil servant.

[1] In 1934, when he was nineteen, Leisner entered the seminary in Munich,[2] and was named Diocesan Youth Leader by Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Münster.

He spent six months in compulsory agricultural work during which, despite Nazi opposition, he organized Sunday Mass for his fellow workers.

[4] On 17 December 1944, Gaudete Sunday, a fellow prisoner, French Bishop Gabriel Piguet, secretly ordained him a priest.

[3] The necessary paperwork with the authorization for the ordination, as well as other necessary items, were smuggled into the camp by "Mädi", the "Angel of Dachau", a young woman named Josefa Mack.

Some imprisoned Protestant pastors helped organize the event and a Jewish violinist played music near the barracks to create a diversion.

On a visit to Berlin in 1996, Pope John Paul II recognized Leisner as a martyr for the Catholic faith and beatified him, together with Bernhard Lichtenberg, another Nazi resister.

Throughout his life, the few but intense times of personal encounter with Our Lady in the Original Shrine in Schoenstatt remained the decisive milestones for Karl Leisner on his path of calling.

"Christ, my passion" - led by this ideal, he worked in the diocesan youth and wrestled his way to a decision for a celibate life as a priest.

From the ideal and the fraternity of this group, Karl Leisner drew the strength to accept his fate, which was burdened by the tuberculosis of the lung as well as the difficult conditions in the concentration camp, as the will of God and to offer his life as a martyr.