Anthony Kohlmann

Anthony Kohlmann, S.J. (13 July 1771 – 11 April 1836), was an Alsatian Jesuit priest. He is known for his part in the establishment of confessional privilege in United States law. He spent nearly a quarter of a century in that nation as an educator.

Kohlmann was born at Kaysersberg, then in the ancient province of Alsace, in the Kingdom of France. He had joined the Capuchins but was compelled by the troubles of the French Revolution to go to Switzerland, where at the seminary of Fribourg he completed his theological studies and was ordained a priest in 1796. Soon after he joined the Congregation of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart, founded by Tourneley and de Broglia in Vienna. With them he spent some time in Austria, where he distinguished himself by his tireless efforts during a plague at Hagenbrunn. He then served as a military chaplain at a hospital in Pavia. In 1801 he was sent from Italy to Dillingen in Bavaria, as director of a seminary, then to Berlin, and next to Amsterdam, to direct a college established by the Fathers of the Faith of Jesus, with whom the Congregation of the Sacred Heart had united (11 April 1799).

The Jesuits in Russia, still functioned as a religious community after the suppression of the Society of Jesus in Catholic Europe, and were recognized in 1801 by Pope Pius VII. Kohlmann applied for admission to the Society, and while waiting for a response spent time at Kensington College in London. He went to Russia and entered the Jesuit novitiate on 21 June 1803. In response to a call for additional workers in the United States, he was sent to Georgetown, D.C., arriving in Baltimore on November 4, 1806. Here he was made assistant to the Master of novices, and would undertake preaching tours to German-speaking congregations in Pennsylvania and Maryland. His missionary travels to the largely German Catholic community took him to Alexandria, Philadelphia, Lancaster, Colman's Furnace, and Baltimore.

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