He is the “founding document lived”, according to Father Kentenich who already in the year after Joseph Engling’s death, in 1919, began to publish his letters and the notes from his diary in the Schoenstatt magazine “MTA”.
Joseph Engling, member of the founder generation of Schoenstatt, from a remote village in Eastern Prussia (then Germany, now Poland), was a student at the Pallottine’s School in Schoenstatt. He was not present on the 18th of October 1914, when Schoenstatt was founded through the Covenant of Love of Father Kentenich, and a group of students, with the Blessed Mother in the chapel that now is known as “Original Shrine”.
But he opened his heart without reserve and made Schoenstatt his life; his diary notes and letters are a pure and profound reflection of the impulses given by Father Kentenich. Joseph offered his physical limitations, successes and vast experiences of unsuccessful apostolic commitment, his self-education, and the hardships of his life as a soldier on the battlefields of World War I for the growth and spread of Schoenstatt. On May 31, 1918, he offered his life for this intention. He died on October 4, 1918, near Cambrai, France.
Bibliography:
- Fr. Jonathan Niehaus: Joseph Engling
- Joseph Engling, Letters and Diary Entries
