Pope Benedict: His role in the Nazi years: The Independent

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By Tony Paterson in Traunstein
21 April 2005


Pope Benedict XVI has sought to allay fears of a rigid, authoritarian papacy by promising, in his first broadcast Mass, to reach out to Catholics and other faiths.

As questions continued to be asked about his wartime past, he also announced that his first papal visit abroad would be to his native Germany.

But in the Bavarian town of Traunstein, where Joseph Ratzinger studied during his early years, his past resurfaced in the form of a large black German eagle and swastika, stamped in black ink on a document dating from his school days. The document is proof of the new Pope's qualification as an anti-aircraft "helper" in the Second World War. It is still kept in his file at Traunstein's Chiemgau school.

"I would like to show you more of the file, but much of it is protected under Germany's data-protection law. So I'm afraid I'm not allowed to," Klaus Kiesel, the school's director, said yesterday.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=631615

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1. Does a penchant for the hippie favourite Hesse reveal Ratzinger's secret s

Does a penchant for the hippie favourite Hesse reveal Ratzinger's secret side?
By Boyd Tonkin, Literary Editor
21 April 2005


If Pope Benedict XVI really does draw inspiration from Hermann Hesse's Der Steppenwolf, then the famously rigid arch-conservative must have a hitherto unknown secret side. That, as it happens, would be highly appropriate. In his eerie, dream-like fictions, the Swiss novelist (1877-1962) returned again and again to divided characters and warring doubles in the throes of a surreal, traumatic journey towards wholeness and unity.

Hesse's psychoanalysis with a disciple of Jung underlies the mystic quest in his 1927 novel. Its artistic outsider of a hero, Harry Haller the "Steppenwolf", moves through the alien night-time city in search of the "Magic Theatre". There, ritual and fellowship will break down his conflicts and miseries.

Yes, you might read it as a Christian allegory, but equally as a psychedelic trip or a plunge into the underworld of Jungian archetypes.

Ratzinger's reported admiration for Hesse has more obvious oddities. We know that the Pontiff withdrew in disgust from the "relativistic" chaos of German student radicalism in the late Sixties. Yet Hesse's works famously wowed the hippies of the time. His books laid one of the cultural foundations of the New Age thinking that the Pope seems to abhor.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=631614