English Translation

130 Betr.: Building procurement for the Catholic-theological faculty of the German University in Prague and for a convict of their theology students. After the first plan of the "Reichsverband für das katholischen Deutschtum im Ausland", the purchase of the former monastery "Saere coeur", failed and this building was left to the archbishopric consistory as a replacement for the rooms needed by the German police in Prague XIX, this association once again in a letter made a request to support its further efforts to acquire another suitable building complex. The Reichskirchenministerium also asked for the support of the plans of the RKA. It was then considered the purchase of the former monastery of St. Gabriel in Prague-Smichow. This monastery was in old Austria a branch of the Benedictine Order. After the construction of the former ČSR, the inmates were expelled and a post office was opened in this building, which was there until the new building was built on Wenceslas Square. For the acquisition of the St.Gabriel Monastery by the RKA for Catholic theological study purposes, the applicant cites, in addition to the reference to the current inadequate premises of the convict in Prague-Veitsberg, the following highly politically coloured reasons: 1. Prague has always been the main centre of a Sudeten German Catholicism and as such it has decisively determined the national face of Sudete-Germanism, 2. Prague should also become a study centre for the ethnic German theological offspring from the southeast and a focal point for a German-Catholic diaspora work in the German ethnic groups of Slovakia, Hungary, South Slavia and Romania. 3. Finally, in Prague, for the entire territory of the empire, the school-centre of Catholic clerics was to be used in colonies and overseas.