HOLWECK, FRIEDRICH GEORG. - Prelate, hagiographer and liturgist, b. at Weisloch in Baden, 29 Dec. 1856, d. at St. Louis, 15 Feb. 1927. He went to the United States in 1876; a priest in 1880, he devoted himself to the pastoral ministry, was vicar general of the diocese from 1926 and a professor at the Jesuit University. In the immediate post-war period of 1918 he organized the sending of relief to the populations struck by war in Germany.
For twenty years he was director of the Pastoral-Blatt; one of the founders and a zealous contributor of the St. Louis Historical Review; he also contributed to the Cath. Enc.. Above all, however, he is known for two highly esteemed works of liturgy and hagiography: Fasti Mariani sive Calendarium Festorum S. Mariae Virginis Deiparae (Freiburg im Br. 1892), a liturgical essay on the feasts of the Most Holy Mary, redone "ex novo" in the Calendarium Liturgicum Festorum Dei et Dei Matris Mariae (Philadelphia 1925). This is a very rich, though not complete, list of liturgical feasts in honor of God, of the Virgin, of St. Joseph and of their relatives, celebrated in the Catholic Church and in the separated Churches, arranged month by month under their respective dates, accompanied by brief historical notices with particular reference to the place where they are celebrated and to the rite of the feast (cf. the review by J. Simon, in Analecta Bollandiana, 45 [1927], pp. 363-64); A biographical dictionary of the saints with a general introduction on logology (St. Louis 1924). Despite the defects that can easily be found in works of this kind, composed at a stretch by a single person, it is the best and most complete dictionary of the saints still in existence. The author worked at it for many years, undertaking several journeys to Europe (1900, 1909, 1912, 1921, also for his Calendarium) for research; he consulted for long months the archive of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, gathering there, with the help of the archivist Msgr. B. Virili, an abundant and unpublished harvest of data for the spread of the feasts of local saints with the related liturgical rite of the feast. In it appear the saints of the Catholic Church and of the separated Churches (the latter preceded by an asterisk), namesakes are arranged according to the date of their feasts; the blesseds follow the saints. Each saint has a brief historical notice, generally drafted with care and precision, drawing on works of sound criticism, indicated at the beginning of the volume. At times, however, H. allowed himself to be carried away by compilations of little value and fell into unpleasant errors (cf. the review by J. Simon, in Analecta Bollandiana, 44 [1926], pp. 380-83).