Maximilian Kaller
[1] Between 1905 and 1917, he practised as a missionary priest at St. Boniface parish in Bergen on Rügen Island in the Hither Pomeranian Catholic diaspora within Breslau's Prince-Episcopal Delegation for Brandenburg and Pomerania.
On 2 September 1930, Kaller was invested as bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ermland (an archdiocese since 1992) by Pope Pius XI and consecrated in Schneidemühl, afterwards taking the episcopal see in Frauenburg (today's Frombork).
In the year of Kaller's investiture, his diocese, which had turned exempt in 1566 when its original metropolitan Archbishopric of Riga, had become Lutheran and was de jure dissolved, became again suffragan to an archdiocese.
[1] Kaller was also appointed apostolic visitator to the then 8,000 Catholic faithful in Memelland, a Lithuanian-annexed formerly East Prussian area, whose then four Catholic parishes had been seceded from Ermland diocese and subsequently formed part of the Territorial Prelature of Memel (Klaipėda)]], German: Freie Prälatur Memel; Lithuanian: Klaipėdos prelatūra; Latin: Praelatura Territorialis Klaipedensis) existing between 1926 and 1991.
On 10 June 1939, Pope Pius XII appointed Kaller apostolic administrator of the Territorial Prelature of Memel, after Lithuania had ceded Memelland under German pressure to Nazi Germany in March the same year.
[1] On 7 February 1945, during World War II, the Nazi Schutzstaffel forced Kaller out of his episcopal office while the Soviet Red Army was overrunning Ermland diocese.
Frauenburg's cathedral chapter then elected the aged Canon Johannes (Jan) Hanowski, a German of Polish ethnicity and long-term archpriest of Allenstein (today's Olsztyn), as capitular vicar, i.e. provisional head of the see, on 28 July 1945.
[6] Kaller, who had been stranded by the end of the war in Halle upon Saale, made his 720-kilometre (450 mi)-long way back to his see and arrived on one of the first nights of August 1945 in Allenstein/Olsztyn, taking on the jurisdiction from Hanowski.
)[8] Addressing the Polish authorities in the annexed area of his diocese, Kaller declared that he wanted to continue his episcopate within Poland, but officials said it was for neither him nor them, but Warsaw to decide that.
[6] On his way back, accompanied by Borowiec, Kaller cried and told him that the jurisdiction in the Polish-occupied diocesan area would be passed on to Teodor Bensch, a German-born naturalised Pole, who would arrive within days officiating as apostolic administrator.
Kaller could not appoint the four new canons for the chapter any more but was expelled the next day, transferred by lorry to Warsaw, accompanied by Borowiec, who also joined him on the train to Poznań on 18 August.
Both were personally acquainted since their common time in Berlin (Pius as Nuncio to Germany and Kaller as priest), and the latter reported to the pope on the destitute situation of the expellees from eastern Europe.
On 7 July 1947, Kaller died suddenly of a heart attack in Frankfurt am Main and was buried besides St. Mary's Church in Königstein im Taunus.
[1] On 11 July 1947, the Ermland chapter, residing in the Allied Bizone, then elected Provost Arthur Kather (1883–1957), officiating before his exile at St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Elbing (today's Elbląg), capitular vicar, as provided by canon law in case of sede vacante.
