Short History of the "roman meetings" at the General Assemblies

For exactly ten years now, the Römertreffen, i.e. the informal meeting of former or active members of the RIGG, has been held at the General Assemblies of the Görres Society. The first time in 2013, the General Assembly was in Tübingen, the chosen venue for the evening round was Ranitzky am Markt. This year the General Assembly will - how appropriate! - will be in Tübingen again and the meeting will be held this time in the Neckarmüller restaurant. In all those years - except in Covid times - the meetings were held, always on Saturday evenings after the reception. But the tradition of such meetings goes back much further, to the time before the Second World War.

For as early as 1932, at the General Assembly in Paderborn, the Rector of the Campo Santo Teutonico, Hermann Maria Stoeckle (+ 1972), met with about 30 former Camposantines. At the final meeting they set up their own table, "where - according to Stoeckle's report to Cardinal Franz Ehrle - one could talk to each other more closely. I was thus able to establish relations with those former fellow members of our house who still feel connected to it and are willing to occasionally do something for those who joined the great Camposanto family after them".

For this one must know that at that time most of the Görresians in Rome were priests at the German College. Possibly even all the collegians entered the Görres Society at that time.

In the following years Stoeckle repeated these meetings at the General Assemblies. In Hildesheim in 1936, he met "a number of gentlemen from our Camposanto circle, Johann Peter Kirsch, again emaciated, but as always confident, Hubert Jedin, Eduard Stakemeier, Alois Thomas. We were able to sit down together for a few cosy evenings". In 1937, Stoeckle became director of the RIGG - for lack of another solution during the difficult Nazi period.

After the Second World War, Rector August Schuchert (+ 1962) suggested resuming the tradition of camposantine meetings in the 1950s. His successor Rector Johannes Emil Gugumus (+ 1979) wrote about it to Erwin Gatz:

"As far as I have heard, this also happened often. I myself was only able to attend the general assemblies from 1967 onwards. From 1963 to 1966 I could not leave because of the Council and before that I could not get away for business.

From 1967 onwards, it was customary for Prelate Ludwig Voelkl, as director of the Roman Institute (1959-1971), to invite the former scholarship holders. Since most of them were also former camposantines, the circle of people was congruent and I was usually there too. It is difficult to arrange two meetings in the rich programme, one for the scholarship holders and one for the former camposantins. This was never mentioned in the official programme, but was agreed upon at the beginning of the conference."

Details
Category: From around the world