Joseph Ratzinger Sr.

Joseph Ratzinger, Sr. (March 6, 1877 – August 25, 1959) was a German civil servant, policeman, and the father of Pope Benedict XVI (birth name Joseph Alois Ratzinger), and Georg Ratzinger; he was also a nephew of the German politician Georg Ratzinger.

Joseph Ratzinger and his wife Maria had three children in all (the second being Maria Ratzinger), of whom Joseph A. Ratzinger was the youngest.

Service record

Joseph Ratzinger, Sr., served in the Bavarian Landespolizei for several years as a rural policeman.

Various sources state that the Ratzingers' views towards the National Socialist German Workers Party caused the family some hardship, including the family having to move several times in the 1930s. There is no evidence, however, that Joseph Ratzinger, Sr., was ever arrested for anti-Nazi tendencies. He continued to serve in the police even after such events as the Night of the Long Knives and the passing of the Nuremberg Laws.

In 1936, Joseph Ratzinger, Sr., became a member of the Ordnungspolizei after all the police forces of Nazi Germany were absorbed into the SS.

Retirement

In 1937, Ratzinger retired from the police at an early age of 60 years old, and went to live in Traunstein, a small Bavarian district town.

From this point Ratzinger apparently had no further substantial problems with the Nazi Party. Nevertheless, even late into World War II, most sources agree that Joseph Ratzinger, Sr. remained sternly anti-Nazi, refusing to allow his children to join the Hitler Youth, until threats from political officers made him succumb.

Joseph Ratzinger, Sr. lived the rest of his life in rural Bavaria. He lived to see his sons become priests in the 1950s, but died at the age of 82, decades before the election of his son and namesake Joseph as His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.