16 Oct Alfred Delp SJ

During Alfred Delp’s first few weeks in Tegel Prison, Marianne Hapig was able to sweet-talk the prison staff to allow hosts and a small bottle of wine (“Such a small bottle–see?” she said to the head guard) into Delp’s cell.  The guard grumbled but relented.

Delp said his first Mass in his cell on October 1, 1944.

The container for the sacred host carried by Delp while he was in prison. It is now on display at the entrance to the chapel of Karmel Regina Martyrun in Berlin.

This became a consolation not only for him, but also for the inmates on either side of him.  Every day he knocked on his wall on either side when Mass was beginning, and the others in turn knocked on their walls.

He kept a consecrated host with him at all times in a specially made cloth holder a round linen disk held the host and then was placed inside a white linen pouch, sewn with fine gold stitching, small and thin enough to be kept in an inner pocket.

The prison chaplain, Harald Poelchau, during Delp’s months in Tegel Prison. He also belonged to the Kreisau group but his activity was never discovered.

For Delp and other imprisoned Catholic priests, the holder had been blessed by Bishop von Preysing, the bishop of Berlin, and given to the prison chaplain.