Who is Jagerstatter? A heroic figure. Here’s a post about him. The book the author mentions – "In Solitary Witness – is one of the dryest books I’ve ever read. BUT it’s redeemed by having Jagerstatter’s surviving correspondence in an appendix at the back.
The full article is long; you need to print it out.
FIRST THINGS: On the Square » Blog Archive » Franz Jägerstätter: Martyr and Model
Executed in 1943 for refusing to serve in Hitler’s army, Jägerstätter was once known only to his relatives and neighbors—many of whom considered him mad. Born out of wedlock in 1907 in the tiny village of St. Radegund, his natural father was killed in the Great War. His mother eventually married a farmer named Jägerstätter, who adopted him. A Catholic from birth, Franz didn’t always follow church teaching. Rumor has it that he lived something of a wild life—possibly even fathering an illegitimate child—before reclaiming his faith and marrying.
In 1956, the American sociologist Gordon Zahn, then researching a book in Germany on another subject, came across Jägerstätter’s story. Transfixed, he thought it worthy of a serious biography and visited Austria to write it. After recovering Jägerstätter’s papers and interviewing surviving relatives and friends—including two priests who served as his spiritual counselors—Zahn published In Solitary Witness: The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter
(1964).
The book has since been translated into various languages, and it had a significant impact on the Church’s support for conscientious objectors. As the biography reveals, Franz Jägerstätter was the unlikeliest of heroes. He was “a relatively untutored man from a remote and isolated rural village,” writes Zahn. Moreover, he was “a married man with a wife and children for whom he was responsible and whose future welfare he was morally bound to consider.”
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