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The year 1937 is a landmark in the history of the small Catholic congregation of Panatulnou (Neupanat), County of Arad. In this year, the parish celebrates its 150 years’ existence. On the occasion of this jubilee, it is surely fitting to refer to the formation first of all, to include a short view into the past of this congregation in order to learn from it to form effective resolutions, to find the paths which will lead our young people and all the inhabitants of the community toward a happy future and to stride them resolutely. A look back at the honorable role of our ancestors is all the more justified when the same will serve to show both the present as well as the future generations how our brave forefathers worked, struggled, quarreled and sacrificed in order both to bring about the material construction of the congregation but also to erect everlasting spiritual temples of God in the hearts and souls of the successors. May this brief history of the small German Catholic congregation of Panatulnou (Neupanat) show the outstanding merits which our ancestors have earned because of the development of the community and the almost unprecedented upswing of the Catholic Church in the same. May these commemorative pages be a pleasant memory for the old people, many of whom as it were have partly experienced the same at first hand, but show the younger generation how their grandparents and parents were concerned about the preservation of our holy religion and of the German nationality, how they worked, exerted themselves and what great sacrifices they made in the way of money, work and time to erect and maintain church and school so that the precious inheritance which they brought along from the old homeland, the holy faith, remains preserved to their children. Not for the great world therefore, but exclusively to the Neupanaters should these commemorative pages matter as a grateful reminder of the ancestors who already rest in the cemetery. If the younger generation takes the work of the true Catholic German ancestors as an example and will cherish and propagate the precious heritage of those ancestors, then the purpose of this piece of work is fulfilled. The following short history of our parish may be regarded as authentic in that it is based on “Historia domus,”[1] therefore on that parish history which was written by the former pastor Joachim Valentin Fliegszeder in the year 1835; furthermore on the so-called “Visitatio canonica”[2] from the year 1835 and on documents and records of the religious community discovered. If, nevertheless, defects and deficiencies appear this can be attributed to the fact that in many instances the necessary documents were not available. With good intentions to draw a picture as faithful as possible of the beginning and growth of this community, the writer of these lines did not fail. |