Franz and Franziska Jägerstätter: Love Stronger than Death

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Franz Jägerstätter would have turned any woman's head.

He was handsome, rugged, and adventurous. After a careless youth, which included street fighting with the local toughs and fathering a child out of wedlock, he met his match. Her name was Franziska—Fani to him. She would be his soulmate through life and death.

Fani was a devout Catholic. So when the native Austrian sweethearts married in 1936, they sped off on a honeymoon that was just their style—a pilgrimage to Rome on a motorcycle. Afterward, they settled down to farming in their home village of St. Radegund, and looked forward to a long and happy life together.

Inspired by his wife's devout Catholicism, Franz began studying the Bible and reading the lives of the saints. He took on the job of sacristan of the tiny village chapel. Neighbors reported hearing the formerly wild youth singing hymns while he farmed his fields. His new companions, Fani, the saints, and Our Lord Himself, had changed him. But for that, we might never have known the names Franz and Franziska Jaegerstaetter, or the story of a love stronger than death.

In 1938, the Nazis annexed Austria, uniting it politically with Germany. As the troops marched in, the great mass of Austrian citizens cheered—some from a sense of the power Hitler would bring; some from fear to stand against him. Franz was unmoved by either.

He alone, of the men in all the village, stood publicly against it.

A close family friend relates that Franz had had a vision in a dream. He saw a train wending its way through the mountains. Everywhere that the train passed, there were hoards of people clamoring to jump on. Franz heard a voice: "Get off the train! This train is going to hell."

With Austria now in his grasp, Hitler began recruiting fresh soldiers for his army. Soon Franz was drafted. He kissed his wife, his elderly mother, and his little daughters goodbye and went off to basic training. He felt it was his duty to serve his country. But when the time came to fight, he refused. Hitler had invaded Poland and bled its people. Franz would not, could not inflict harm on innocent people. He offered instead to serve as a medic. He would go into combat and risk his life not to harm but to heal.

Loser. So the villagers called him. Only cowards and delinquents didn't fight. Franz turned to his parish priest, who urged him to think of his family. The Nazis did not brook opposition under any form. What would happen to them if Franz died?

Fani herself struggled with Franz's decision. She shared his convictions but feared what defying the Nazis would mean.

"In the beginning, I really begged him not to put his life at stake, but then, when everyone was quarreling with him and scolding him, I didn’t do it anymore… If I had not stood by him, he would have had no one."

On the night before he was beheaded, Franz wrote her this final message.

"Dearest wife and mother. It was not possible for me to spare you the pain that you must now suffer on my account. How hard it must have been for our dear Savior when, through his sufferings and death, he had to prepare such a great sorrow for his mother—and they bore all this out of love for us sinners. I thank our dear Jesus, too, that I am privileged to suffer and even die for him … May God accept my life in atonement not only for my sins but for the sins of others as well."

He was executed at 4 pm on August 9. Not knowing the day nor the hour, Fani felt "an intense personal communion" with Franz at that moment.

Franz's martyrdom would be for Fani a white martyrdom. She would live on for decades without the man she loved, raising the children alone, caring for Franz's elderly mother, running the farm, deprived of a widow's pension, disgraced before her fellow townspeople.

Icon of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter

She accepted this cross with no knowledge that in time people would come to recognize Franz for the prophet and hero he was. In 2007, at the age of 94, Fani and the four daughters attended his beatification Mass in Linz, Austria. Five thousand people broke out into spontaneous applause when the family entered.

But both Franz and Franziska never sought the approval of their fellow men. It was God himself they desired. Their love, their heroic sacramental love, prepared them for this ultimate union. To Fani that moment would finally come at the age of 100.

For more of Franz and Fani, see this highly acclaimed film about their life together.

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