The Arms of Another Abbot

Today, still at Göttweig Abbey in Austria, we get to see another coat of arms of an Abbot, this time impaling the arms of the Abbey.

Here we see the arms of Göttweig Abbey impaled by those of the Abbot Wilhelm Zedinek. We have seen the arms of the Abbey in our most recent two posts. The arms of the Abbot, seen here without tinctures, are A broken sword reversed/inverted (point down, hilt up). The scroll above the arms gives us more specific information: "Wilhelm Felix Zedinek Abt." The lower scroll has the motto Da robur fer auxilium, flanked by the dates 1949 and 1971 (the years that he was Abbot of the monastery).

Da robur, fer auxilium translates to "Give strength, bring aid" or "Supply strength, bear aid". It is a famous line from the 13th-century Latin Eucharistic hymn O Salutaris Hostia written by St. Thomas Aquinas, serving as a plea for divine support against spiritual struggles.

Abbot Zedinek has his own entry on Wikipedia (in German) where you can learn more about his life:  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Zedinek

During the Second World War, the monks were expelled from the monastery, which had been confiscated by the Nazi regime, and the house was used as a “Napola” (national political educational institution) and also as a resettlement camp.

At the end of the war, in 1945, 3,000 Russian soldiers were quartered in the monastery building for several weeks before the expelled priests were able to return to Göttweig on August 15. However, the reconstruction work seemed to exceed human strength. When Abbot Hartmann Strohsacker died in 1946, the chances of a new beginning and Göttweig's right to exist were also doubted by the church.

But Abbot Zedinek,  with his predecessor Edmund Vasicek (1947-1949) and successor Benedikt Ramoser (1971-1973), restored the independent economic viability of the severely damaged monastery, and today, in addition to being a working Benedictine monastery, it is a tourist destination.