PREYSING, KONRAD von. — Cardinal, born on 30 August 1880 at Kronwinkel (archdiocese of Monaco and Frisinga), died on 21 December 1950 in Berlin. He studied law at the Universities of Monaco and Würzburg; he entered the diplomatic service and became secretary of the Bavarian embassy at the Quirinal. His stay in the centre of Catholicism led him to devote himself to ecclesiastical life. In 1908, therefore, he entered the Collegio Canisianum in Innsbruck and, having obtained a degree in theology and been ordained a priest, four years later became secretary to Cardinal Bettinger, archbishop of Monaco. A sacred orator at the church of S. Paolo and a preacher in its Cathedral, on 12 September 1932 he was appointed 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 pursued by Hitler’s government, a policy openly infringing the rights guaranteed to the Catholic Church in the articles of the Concordat itself. In December 1934, together with the bishop of Osnabrück, Bering, and in the name of the German episcopate, to which the Holy See had entrusted this task, P. conducted negotiations with the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, Kerl. On that occasion P. did not fail to denounce to the government the campaign of hatred to which the Church was subjected, the persecution of priests and Catholic associations, as well as the support which the government and Hitler’s party were giving to anti-Christian movements. Kerri responded evasively to the protests of the two bishops. Transferred to the government of the diocese of Berlin in 1935, P.’s activity in defence of the rights of Catholics became particularly intense and vigorous after the definitive rupture between the Holy See and Hitlerian Germany in 1937, the year in which the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge was published. On 27 May of that same year, in response to the calumnies and governmental attacks staged to diminish the importance of the papal document issued two months earlier, P. addressed a seventeen-page memorandum to Minister Goebbels, refuting point by point the accusations of immorality levelled against the clergy during trials of Catholic priests. The prelate’s indefatigable activity continued in the following years as well. But the condition of the Church did not improve after the election of Pius XII, who, by appointing a commission of three bishops, of whom P. was also a member, had likewise sought in this way to make new negotiations with the political authorities possible, with the aim of improving relations with Hitlerian Germany. When war broke out, P. never left Berlin and always remained among his faithful, although the Cathedral itself and the Episcopal Palace were hit by bombs. In recognition of the work he had carried out in defence of the Church and of the zeal he had shown in the exercise of his ministry, Pius XII created him, at the Consistory of 18 February 1946, cardinal of the title of S. Agata dei Goti, a diaconia elevated pro hac vice to a presbyteral title.
BISL.: M. Maccarrone, Il nazionalsocialismo e la S. Sede, Roma 1947, pp. 114, 187, 217; J. Neuhäusler, Kreuz und Hakenkreuz, Monaco di Baviera 1946, part 1ª, pp. 279-80; part 2ª, pp. 162-63, 277-81, 342-43; anonymous, in L'asservatore romano, 18-19 February 1946, p. 7; anonymous, Dohumente aus dem Kampf der katholischen Kirche im Bistum Berlin gegen den Nationalsozialismus, Berlino 1946, passim: A. Schwerdtfeger, S. E. der Kard. von P., Stoccarda 1950.