Notker Wolf had been to Italy once again. Actually it was just a short trip for someone who had traveled so often into the big world, who loved Asia and also knew Africa well. He studied in Italy and later became a professor at the Pontifical College of Sant’ Anselmo in Rome, where he gave lectures in Latin. Now the Benedictine monk and former abbot primate died unexpectedly on the return journey from Italy to his home monastery of St. Ottilien.
From 1977 to 2000 Notker Wolf was Archabbot in St. Ottilien and from 2000 to 2016 Abbot Primate of the Missionary Benedictines. As such, he was the highest representative of the order with its more than 800 monasteries and abbeys worldwide. Notker Wolf wanted to become a missionary himself. This dream once brought him to the monastery. As a 14-year-old he had read about a religious who was doing his work in the South Seas. Living and working in a distant country is what he wanted for himself. But Notker Wolf’s professional calling did not lie in missionary work, although he always had a sense for foreign cultures and tirelessly visited the Benedictine branches during his term of office.
He was moved by people’s needs; he wanted to understand and connect. In a newspaper interview on his 80th birthday, he said: He had led monasteries for 39 years and he knew what it meant to hold a large group together. Wherever he could, Notker Wolf worked for the well-being of others. With his order, he built a hospital in China and initiated the construction of another in isolated North Korea. Creating something new was something that occupied the churchman throughout his life.
He, whose real name was Werner, was born as the son of a tailor in 1940 in Bad Grönenbach, Swabia. He attended high school in St. Ottilien, where he graduated from high school in 1961. He went to Rome, studied philosophy, and later theology and inorganic chemistry, zoology and psychology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. He was ordained a priest in 1968. Two years later he became a professor of natural philosophy and philosophy of science in the Eternal City.
Notker Wolf wanted to be heard. For a while he was a welcome guest on talk shows on German television. However, he was cautious about the cases of abuse in the Catholic Church; according to the website katholisch.de, he criticized the reporting and the “poking” of the media. What happened was of course bad, but one should not forget all the good things in the church.
He lived out his joy of making music as a “rocking abbot”. Notker Wolf learned to play the violin and flute in his youth, and later picked up the guitar. As a bassist in religious robes, he stood with his colleagues Feedback on stage until the band, which was previously founded by students, broke up shortly before the Corona period. Songs of the Rolling Stones and AC/DC they had played. Notker Wolf couldn’t rock enough. The Beatles He wasn’t that interested in them, he told an SZ journalist in 2018, their songs were like pop music. “I’m free”, this song title Stoneswas a kind of life motto for him.
He wanted to give life support with his books. He published eight of them with Herder-Verlag, including titles such as “The Seven Pillars of Happiness” and “Give yourself time. It’s your life”. Herder managing director Simon Biallowons said of the abbot’s death: “Notker Wolf was one of the defining faces of Christianity in Germany for decades. We will miss his energy, his humor and his unconventionality. Especially in times like these, he was a symbol for us all for how much strength and courage faith can give.” Notker Wolf was 83 years old.
The requiem and funeral will take place on Saturday, April 6, at 10:30 a.m. in St. Ottilien, the monastery said.