Augustin Schubert: the Augustinian who ended up in Dachau, one of the extermination camps of World War II.

The name of the Augustinian Agustin Schubert (1902-1942) has been gaining increasing recognition in recent years, not only due to his beatification process — he is a servant of God — but also because of the interest his biography has sparked among the entire Czech nation. One of the main sources for knowing who this Augustinian priest was is the doctoral thesis that historian František Futera defended in 2008 at Charles University in Prague. It is perhaps the most complete biography of Schubert, the result of consulting dozens of official archives and the testimony of numerous people. In the parish of St. Thomas, in the Prague district of Malá Strana, there is a plaque commemorating this priest. Malá Strana is an iconic place; it is home to the Kafka Museum, the John Lennon Wall, and the Infant Jesus of Prague, and it also lends its name to one of Jan Neruda's story collections, whose surname was used as a pseudonym by the most famous Chilean poet. On the other hand, Schubert is one of the modern protagonists of a prolonged historical Augustinian presence in the Czech Republic, which, after decades of Czechoslovak communist governments, has been able to resume in the 21st century.

Schubert was born in the Žižkov district (Prague) in May 1902, and his first name was František. His mother was Czech, and his father a railway worker of German origin. At the age of six, he attended a German-speaking school, and later went to the St. Stephen's Institute, where he stood out for his dedication to his studies, but also for the passion he felt for sports, especially football. It seems that he played near where the Viktoria Žižkov facilities are located today, the third Czech football team, after Sparta Prague and Slavia Prague, clubs that shared almost all the interwar Czechoslovak league championships. When he was about to start his last year of high school, the Czechoslovak national football team played in the Olympic final, but was disqualified because they decided to withdraw from the match, dissatisfied with the performance of the referees. Fourteen years later, the national team lost to Mussolini's Italy in the 1934 World Cup. One of the golden ages of Czech football. Precisely during the first half of the 1920s, Schubert studied Philosophy at Charles University in Prague and became involved with groups of German-speaking Catholic youth. These types of groups led him to participate in various activities and to get to know the choir of the Saint Thomas parish, which had a rich tradition of Gregorian chant.

During these years, Schubert feels captivated by university life, sports, music—from Gregorian chant to the guitar—liturgy, and Eucharistic devotion. And he forges lifelong friendships. In the summer of 1925, he concludes his time in the classrooms, earning his doctorate, and a professor intends for Schubert to join the academic faculty. However, he has chosen another path: to join the Order of Saint Augustine. Something he does precisely on the feast day of Saint Augustine, August 28, 1925, which requires him to change his first name, František (Francis), to Augustin. At the same time, he decides to begin studies to be ordained as a priest. From then on, he will always be distinguishable by his Augustinian habit, even when riding a motorcycle. During his novitiate year, Father Kopp commented: "His ability to solve problematic issues that often overwhelmed us was not only due to his intense dedication to study but also to his extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of his dialogue partner." Which should not be interpreted as Schubert being someone grave and serious; those who interacted with him during those years and until his arrest in 1940 assure that he was very fun, with a direct, friendly, and timely sense of humor.

“Can you imagine that a man who plays football, smokes, goes to the theater, dances, and has many friends could be a saint?"

In 1929, he was ordained to the priesthood and divided his time between the parish, the school where he taught, the Augustinian community, and youth associations, especially the Orel ("Eagle") association, an alternative entity to the "Sokol" ("Falcons"), which were nationalist and anti-Catholic in nature. With the Orel, he organized festivals, sports competitions, and pilgrimages. And, above all, it sought to maintain an attitude of Catholic identity and physical, personal, and spiritual improvement through gymnastics. It was an association for boys and girls, and sometimes, sports were followed by spiritual exercises. In 1933, Schubert encouraged the youth to undertake the effort of going to Rome for a pilgrimage where, in addition to meeting Pope Pius XI, they could assert the spiritual power of the Church and the Reign of Christ against Mussolini's claim to make the Eternal City a new center of power away from God. After this pilgrimage, he gave several lectures on the role of faith in everyday life. He said: "Can you imagine that a man who plays football, smokes, goes to the theater, dances, and has many friends could be a saint?".

The rise of the Third Reich marked the final years of his life. The Nazis coveted Czechoslovakia; first, the predominantly German region of the Sudetenland, then Bohemia, and finally the entire country. Between September 1938 and the spring of 1939, the invasion and dismemberment of a republic where Czechs and Slovaks lived, which emerged after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, took place. A country that was born after World War I was going to mark the beginning of World War II. Schubert understood that Nazism, apart from being a political current hostile to public freedoms, the Czechoslovak nation, and world peace, was, first and foremost, a doctrine irreconcilable with Christian convictions. Faced with the Hitlerian threat, Schubert published an article encouraging prayer to God to strengthen the faith of the Catholic community and to ward off the looming dire danger. At another moment, during a pilgrimage, he said: "The nation that does not cease to believe will not perish." "Safeguard the legacy of our fathers, Lord!" His activity, which did not wane in intensity, did not go unnoticed by the new authorities. In August 1940, during another Marian pilgrimage, he wrote: "We know how to distinguish human thoughts from the thoughts of God, and we place our trust in God, as our faith dictates to us." All our commitment as Catholics is centered on sacrifice and prayer … We must seek the kingdom of God and His justice … we must work for our spiritual bread with the same sincerity with which we are compelled to work for earthly bread." A couple of weeks later, he was arrested by the Gestapo.

After these events, he was always thought of as a martyr.

Schubert was now a captive of the Nazis, although he was able to stay in his convent for a few days. The immediate reasons that led to his arrest can be various; it is even speculated that he was denounced by a German priest. In any case, in addition to his pastoral activity, the fact that Schubert was a German speaker meant, for the Nazis, a racial betrayal. Whenever he could, he wrote to his Augustinian brothers and to his family and friends. In the letters, he expressed, as best he could despite the authorities' controls, the complexity of his situation, while also stating that he surrendered himself to the hands of God. After passing through several dungeons and fortresses, he was interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp (Germany) in April 1941, and after five months, he was transferred to Dachau, where he arrived after a ten-day journey. The conditions in these camps were, in general, very harsh. He shared suffering there with hundreds of Catholic priests: Polish, German, Czechoslovak. If they could, they celebrated mass in secret. According to Futera, there was once, in late March 1942, when Schubert and other priests were hiding consecrated hosts in a box wrapped in handkerchiefs, and the guards conducted a search. Terrified, Schubert found that the box was empty; he began to search among the handkerchiefs and discovered the intact hosts. That seemed like a miracle to him: "The Lord Jesus has saved himself!" was the opinion he shared with another priest.

The deprivations and forced labor took a toll on his health: he weighed over 100 kilos when the Gestapo arrested him, and in just under two years, he had lost half his weight. The hard labor in the concentration camp also caused him a very severe hernia and tuberculosis that invaded three-quarters of his lungs. When the infirmary of the Dachau camp took care of him, it was already too late, and they decided to give him up for lost; they transferred him to the barracks for the incurable and dying, and there he passed away. It was July 28, 1942, and František Agustin Schubert was forty years old.

After these events, he was always thought of as a martyr. Because of this, on April 19, 2023, the General Postulation of the Order initiated the cause for beatification or declaration of martyrdom. The process is in the final phase of the diocesan investigation, in which evidence of life and martyrdom is being gathered. Once the diocesan phase is completed, the evidence will be sent to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints for study.