HARTMANN, FELIX von. — Cardinal, archbishop of Cologne, b. at Münster in Westphalia on 15 December 1851, d. at Cologne on 11 November 1919. Ordained a priest in 1874, he devoted himself to legal studies in Rome (1874–80), then to the ministry for ten years (1880–90), and subsequently became secretary to the bishop of Münster and vicar general; upon the death of his bishop he was elected capitular vicar (1910), and then, on 6 June 1911, bishop of the same diocese. Cardinal Fischer chose and obtained him (9 April 1913) as his coadjutor with the right of succession at Cologne and, having become archbishop of that city on 25 May 1914, he was raised to the purple with the title of cardinal priest of S. Giovanni a Porta Latina. As president of the Fulda Episcopal Conferences, he stood at the head of the German episcopate for many years.
He proved himself an indefatigable defender of Catholic orthodoxy against the errors of Ermanno Schell, Kraus, and the movement known as Reformkatholizismus, whose leading figures were Herhard, Müller, and Schnitzer. He devoted himself to works of Christian charity during the first European conflict (1914–18). The establishment founded at Paderborn for the benefit of all prisoners held in Germany was due to his zeal. He obtained from the Emperor for imprisoned priests the treatment accorded to officers. In the field of charity he promoted a kind of confederation among all the charitable works in Germany.
In social action he took care to avoid every exaggeration and to preserve unconditional fidelity to the directives of Rome. Thus, in the extremely difficult question of Christian trade unions, he immediately followed the line of conduct marked out by Pius X in the encyclical Singulari quadam of 24 August 1912—namely, tolerance toward Christian trade unions, with the appropriate safeguards indicated in the same papal document—although until that day he had followed a somewhat different policy in the Kölnische Volkzeitung.
He promoted, with solemn celebrations, the twelfth centenary of the beginning of the evangelization of Germany through the work of s. Bonifazio (1919), and laid the foundations of the celebrated Neudeutschland association, which did so much good among German youth.