PREYSING, KONRAD von. - Cardinal, b. 30 Aug. 1880 at Kronwinkel (archdiocese of Munich and Freising), d. 21 Dec. 1950 at Berlin. He studied law at the University of Munich and of Würzburg; he entered the diplomatic service and was secretary of the Bavarian embassy at the Quirinal. His stay in the center of Catholicism decided him to devote himself to the ecclesiastical life. In 1908 he therefore entered the Canisianum College in Innsbruck and, having earned a degree in theology and been ordained a priest, four years later he became secretary of Cardinal Bettinger, archbishop of Munich. A sacred orator at the church of St. Paul and a preacher in that Cathedral, he was appointed on 12 Sept. 1932 by Pius XI bishop of Eichstätt.
After the conclusion of the Concordat of 1933, the first difficulties arose on the German side because of the ecclesiastical policy practiced by Hitler's government, a policy openly injurious to the rights guaranteed to the Catholic Church in the articles of that same Concordat; in Dec. 1934 the P. conducted, together with the bishop of Osnabrück, Bering, in the name of the German episcopate, to which this task had been entrusted by the Holy See, negotiations with the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs Kerl. On that occasion the P. did not fail to denounce to the government the campaign of hatred to which the Church was subjected, the persecutions against priests and Catholic associations, as well as the support that the government and Hitler's party accorded to anti-Christian movements. To the remonstrances of the two bishops Kerl replied evasively. Transferred to the government of the diocese of Berlin in 1935, the P.'s activity in defense of the rights of Catholics became particularly intense and energetic after the definitive rupture between the Holy See and Hitler's Germany in 1937, the year of publication of the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. On 27 May of that same year, against the calumnies and governmental attacks staged to diminish the importance of the papal document of two months earlier, the P. addressed a 17-page memorial to Minister Goebbels, refuting point by point the accusations of immorality leveled at the clergy on the occasion of trials against Catholic priests. The prelate's tireless action continued in the following years as well. 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 the P. was also a member, had likewise sought in this way to make possible new negotiations with the political authorities with the aim of improving relations with Hitler's Germany. When the war came, the P. never left Berlin and always remained among his faithful, although the Cathedral itself and the episcopal Palace were struck by bombs. In recognition of the work carried out in defense of the Church and of the zeal shown in the exercise of his ministry, Pius XII created him in the Consistory of 18 Febr. 1946 cardinal of the title of St. Agatha of the Goths, a deaconry elevated pro hac vice to a presbyteral title.
BISL.: M. Maccarrone, Il nazionalsocialismo e la S. Sede, Rome 1947, pp. 114, 187, 217; J. Neuhäusler, Kreuz und Hakenkreuz, Munich 1946, part 1, pp. 279-80; part 2, pp. 162-63, 277-81, 342-43; anonymous, in L'Osservatore romano, 18-19 Febr. 1946, p. 7; anonymous, Dokumente aus dem Kampf der katholischen Kirche im Bistum Berlin gegen den Nationalsozialismus, Berlin 1946, passim: A. Schwerdtfeger, S. E. der Kard. von P., Stuttgart 1950.