HOLLWECK, FRIEDRICH GEORG. - Prelate, hagiographer, and liturgist, b. at Weislach in Baden, Dec. 29, 1856, d. at St. Louis, Feb. 15, 1927. He went to the United States in 1876; was ordained priest in 1880, and devoted himself to pastoral ministry, becoming vicar general of the diocese in 1926 and professor at the Jesuit University. In the immediate aftermath of the war of 1918 he organized the dispatch of relief to the populations in Germany affected by the war.
For twenty years he was editor of the *Pastoral-Blatt*; one of the founders and zealous collaborator of the *St. Louis Historical Review*; he also contributed to the *Cath. Enc.* But he is best known for two highly esteemed works on liturgy and hagiography: *Fasti Mariani sive Calendarium Festorum S. Mariae Virginis Deiparae* (Freiburg in Br. 1892), a liturgical study of the feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary, reworked “ex novo” in *Calendarium Liturgicum Festorum Dei et Dei Matris Mariae* (Philadelphia 1925). This is a very rich, though not exhaustive, list of liturgical feasts in honor of God, the Virgin, St. Joseph, and their relatives, celebrated in the Catholic Church and in the separated Churches, arranged month by month with their respective dates, accompanied by brief historical notes with particular reference to the place where the feast was celebrated and the rite of the feast (cf. review by J. Simon, in *Analecta Bollandiana*, 45 [1927], pp. 363-64); *A Biographical Dictionary of the Saints with a General Introduction on Hagiology* (St. Louis 1924). Despite the defects that can easily be found in works of this kind, composed single-handedly, it is the best and most complete dictionary of saints still in existence. The author worked on it for many years, undertaking several trips to Europe (1900, 1909, 1912, 1921, also for his *Calendarium*) for research; he spent long months in the archives of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, collecting, with the help of the archivist Msgr. B. Virili, a rich and unpublished harvest of data on the spread of local saints’ feasts with their respective liturgical rites. It includes the saints of the Catholic Church and of the separated Churches (the latter preceded by an asterisk), namesakes are arranged according to the dates of their feasts; the blessed follow the saints. Each saint has a brief historical note, generally prepared with care and precision, drawing on works of sound criticism, which are listed at the beginning of the volume. At times, however, H. allowed himself to be carried away by compilations of little value and fell into regrettable errors (cf. review by J. Simon, in *Analecta Bollandiana*, 44 [1926], pp. 380-83).