PREVYSING, KONRAD von. - Cardinal, born 30 August 1880 at Kronwinkel (archdiocese of Munich and Freising), died 21 December 1950 at Berlin. He studied law at the Universities of Munich and Würzburg; entered the diplomatic service and served as secretary of the Bavarian embassy at the Quirinale. His stay in the centre of Catholicism decided him to devote himself to the ecclesiastical life. In 1908 he therefore entered the Canisianum College in Innsbruck, and after obtaining a degree in theology and being ordained priest, four years later he became secretary to Cardinal Bettinger, Archbishop of Munich. As a preacher at the church of St Paul and in the Cathedral, he was appointed on 12 September 1932 by Pius XI Bishop of Eichstätt.
After the conclusion of the Concordat of 1933, the first difficulties arose from the German side because of the ecclesiastical policy pursued by the Hitler government, a policy openly prejudicial to the rights guaranteed to the Catholic Church in the articles of the same Concordat. In December 1934, together with Bishop Bering of Osnabrück, acting on behalf of the German episcopate to whom this task had been entrusted by the Holy See, he conducted negotiations with the Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs, Kerrl. On this occasion the Prelate did not fail to denounce to the government the campaign of hatred directed against the Church, the persecutions of priests and Catholic associations, as well as the support which the Hitler government and party accorded to anti-Christian movements. To the remonstrances of the two bishops Kerrl replied evasively. Transferred to the government of the diocese of Berlin in 1935, the Prelate’s activity in defence of Catholic rights became particularly intense and energetic after the definitive rupture between the Holy See and Hitlerite Germany in 1937, the year of the publication of the encyclical *Mit brennender Sorge*. On 27 May of that same year, in reply to the slanders and governmental attacks staged to diminish the importance of the papal document of two months earlier, the Prelate addressed a 17-page memorandum to Minister Goebbels, refuting point by point the accusations of immorality levelled against the clergy in the trials of Catholic priests. The indefatigable action of the prelate continued in the following years. But the conditions of the Church did not improve after the election of Pius XII, who, by appointing a commission of three bishops, of which Preysing was also a member, had sought in this way to make new negotiations with the political authorities possible with a view to improving relations with Hitlerite Germany. With the outbreak of war the Prelate never left Berlin and always remained among his faithful, although the Cathedral and the episcopal palace were struck by bombs. In recognition of the work carried out in defence of the Church and of the zeal shown in the exercise of his ministry, Pius XII created him in the Consistory of 18 February 1946 Cardinal of the title of St Agatha of the Goths, a deaconry raised *pro hac vice* to the rank of a presbyteral title.