The Peasant Who Stood Up to Hitler

Justine Nicholas

Lew Rockwell.com


Thursday, December 7, 2006 - When a leader allows himself to break the rules of humanity, it is
the duty of every citizen to break the leader's rules.

So wrote Franz Jagerstatter.

Chances are that you haven’t heard of him. If you’ve seen
or heard his name, it more than likely wasn’t in a textbook or
classroom. I learned of his courage and integrity in a seemingly unlikely
place: the introduction to an anthology of poetry.

That book, Forty Poems on Recent American History, was the very first
volume of poetry I purchased for myself. Poet Robert Bly, in his pre-Iron
John days, edited it and recounted Jagerstatter’s tale in its
opening pages.

During my teen years, that slender volume led me to a lifelong love
of some of the poets, such as Pablo Neruda and Hart Crane, whose works
were included in it. Their poems have been translated and are read in
scores of languages around the world. On the other hand, I’ve
yet to run into anyone who’s heard of Franz Jagerstatter.

So I set to learning more about a man who so eloquently articulated
the most basic principle of ethical rebellion against governmental tyranny.

He was not an artist, scholar, statesman or even a Ghandian activist
who devoted his life to ending violence and injustice. Nor was he a
member of a pacifistic religious group like the Jehovah’s Witness
or Society of Friends.

Rather, he was an Austrian peasant who was the sexton in his local
Catholic church. Like most people of his time, place and social class,
he didn’t continue his formal education beyond grammar school.
He lived far removed from the creative energy and political ferment
of Vienna, Berlin and Paris. His contact with that world came but once
a week, when he visited the library of a nearby village.