Maximilian Kaller

Bust of Kaller in Frombork's Archcathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Andrew, Frombork. Maximilian Kaller (10 October 1880 – 7 July 1947) was Roman Catholic Bishop of Ermland in East Prussia from 1930 to 1947. However, de facto expelled from mid-August 1945, he was a special bishop for the homeland-expellees until his death.

Early life Kaller was born in Beuthen (Bytom), Prussian Silesia, into a merchant family, the second of eight children. With the population of Beuthen being of German and Polish ethnicity he grew up bilingual in German and Polish. He graduated from the Gymnasium in 1899 with Abitur and started theological studies in Breslau (today's Wrocław) at the episcopal see of his then home Prince-Bishopric of Breslau. There he was consecrated a priest in 1903.

He was the chaplain in the parish of Groß Strehlitz (today's Strzelce Opolskie) in the Breslau diocese. From 1917, he was the priest at Berlin's second oldest Catholic Church, Saint Michael's Garrison Church. Kaller's jurisdiction comprised Catholic parishes of the dioceses of Chełmno and of Gniezno-Poznań, which had been separated from their episcopal sees by the new Polish border in 1918 and 1920, respectively. Franz Hartz succeeded Kaller as Prelate of Schneidemühl.

From 1925, Ermland diocese comprised all of the Prussian Province of East Prussia in its borders of 1938. 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. Ermland diocese, together with the new Berlin diocese and Schneidemühl prelature joined the new Eastern German Ecclesiastical Province under the newly elevated Metropolitan Archbishop Adolf Bertram of Breslau.

In 1932, Kaller consecrated the new diocesan seminary for priests in Braunsberg in East Prussia (today's Braniewo). Under his jurisdiction, Ermland diocese issued a new diocesan hymnal and a diocesan ritual (cf. Rituale Romanum) in Latin and the three native languages of the diocesan parishioners (German, Lithuanian and Polish).

After World War II After World War II, most Germans were expelled to Allied-occupied Germany, including Marquardt who had to leave in July. 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.

Kaller, who had been stranded by the end of the war in Halle upon Saale, made his -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. He started to develop new plans for his diocese especially aiming at overcoming the nationalist antagonism between Catholics of the German and Polish languages, reshaping the diocese in the spirit of German-Polish reconciliation.

Kaller further appointed an ethnic Pole as new cathedral provost, since his predecessor provost, Franz Xaver Sander (also official), and five more fellow cathedral canons had been killed by the invading Soviets. (The other killed canons were Andreas Hinzmann, Dr. Franz Heyduschka, Dr. Wladislaus Switalski, Anton Krause and Dr. Bruno Gross.) 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. Afterwards, in a private conversation, Hlond urged Kaller to resign which he did for the jurisdiction in the Polish-occupied diocesan area, but retained the office of Bishop of Ermland, The Holy See later confirmed him and thereafter Kather represented Ermland diocese in the Fulda Conference of Bishops until his death.

On 29 July 1957, the Ermland chapter, with the surviving capitulars living in what had become West Germany, elected Hoppe as capitular vicar, who had been expelled from the Soviet-occupied Ermland diocesan area (Kaliningrad Oblast) in 1947. Hoppe held that post until Pope Paul VI terminated the apostolic administration of Ermland diocese and finally appointed again a bishop to the see on 28 June 1972, then named Warmia (Polish for Ermland), however, not comprising the former diocesan area within the Soviet Union. Paul VI then elevated Hoppe to Apostolic Visitator of Ermland taking care of Ermland's diocesans living in Germany.

Legacy In July 1979, Kaller's successor, Warmia's Bishop Józef Glemp, visited Straelen, where he had earlier improved his German. On his way to Nuremberg, Glemp stopped in Königstein to visit Kaller's grave. On 10 October 1980, Kaller's 100th birthday, Glemp celebrated a pontifical requiem in honour of Kaller in Frombork's Archcathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Andrew, Frombork, commemorating in his preaching Kaller's personality as priest and his benedictory work for the diocese. In 1997, Archbishop Edmund Michał Piszcz of Warmia and the community of Ermlanders in western Germany commemorated Kaller and placed busts of him in Germany and Poland. On 4 May 2003, the procedure for his beatification started.