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[German Version] (Nov 21, 1860, Geislingen, Württemberg – Feb 24, 1945, Stuttgart), pastor in Stuttgart, president of the Evangelische Arbeitervereine of Württemberg, from 1913 Landtag deputy and from 1919 a delegate to the Landeskirchenversammlung (meeting of regional churches) drafting a constitution for the regional church. In the 1920s, Lamparter became active in the Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus. In 1928 a collection of his essays was published under the title Evangelische Kirche und Judentum. He demanded legal and social equality for Jews, emphasized the…

[German Version] (Jul 11, 1888, Plettenburg – Apr 7, 1985, Plettenburg), Roman Catholic jurisprudent and political theorist. Firmly rooted in the traditional Catholic milieu, Schmitt must be considered one of the most brilliant German intellectuals of the 20th century. Despite his partisan advocacy of the “German revolution” of the National Socialists – in part emotional and positional, in part opportunistic, Schmitt, a radical anti-Semite, exercised a strong influence even after his dismissal in …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies People and nationhood are functional political terms that serve to define a collective entity and to incorporate it into a specific context (see III below). Only since the 18th century has it been possible to speak of a German nation as the active subject of its own history. The rupture of the church at the Reformation and the subsequent wars of religion in the 16th and 17th century long prevented the development of an inclusive political or religious identity. It …

[German Version] (Sep 1, 1761, Leonberg – Aug 10, 1851, Heidelberg). After the early death of Paulus’s mother, his father was the major influence on his religious education. In 1771 the father was dismissed from his position as deacon by the Stuttgart Consistory on account of his mystical separatism. While still a seminary student in Tübingen, from 1781 Paulus developed basic elements of a critical rational exegesis, rejecting the supranaturalism (Rationalism) of his teacher G.C. Storr. He was hig…

[German Version] (Nov 29, 1891, Lichte, Thuringia – Feb 13, 1982, Princeton, USA). Piper’s mother, descended from French Huguenots, provided contacts with France that helped to shape his life. A forerunner of the youth movement, he expressed that generation’s typical criticism of capitalism and individualism. He was severely traumatized by voluntary service at the front, and in 1920, having gained his doctorate in Göttingen, he became a socialist advocate of pacifism and ecumenism ¶ (Ecumene). He rejected the identification of faith and politics made by Religious Soci…

[German Version] (Oct 18, 1834, Unna – Oct 4, 1903, Greifswald), Protestant theologian. A graduate of the Gütersloh Protestant Gymnasium, from simple origins and shaped by the revival movement (Revival/Revival movements), he studied in Halle from 1853 with F.A.G. Tholuck and Julius Müller and in Tübingen from 1856 with J.T. Beck. Here he established a close friendship with M. Kähler. After a brief stay at the Wittenberg Seminary for Preachers, Cremer received the Lic.Theol. on the basis of his Die eschatologische Rede Jesu Christi Matthäi 24.25 (“The Eschatological Discou…

[German Version] (Aug 1, 1773, Langensalza – Dec 30, 1831, Leipzig). Tittmann’s father, Karl Christian Tittmann, later became chief consistorial councilor in Dresden. Tittmann studied philosophy and Protestant theology at Wittenberg and Leipzig, where in 1796 he was appointed associate professor, initially in the faculty of philosophy, then (1800) in the faculty of theology; in 1805 he was appointed full professor of theology. He was appointed to a number of church offices (a capitulary of Meißen …

[German Version] (Jan 13, 1837, Karlsruhe – Aug 2, 1909, Heidelberg), a Protestant church historian. The son of a prominent pastor from Baden, Hausrath studied Protestant theology and history from 1856 onward in liberal Jena, where K.A. v. Hase became his teacher and close friend. Following study visits to Göttingen, Berlin, and Heidelberg, Hausrath earned his Lic.theol. in Berlin with a study entitled Der Ketzermeister Konrad von Marburg (1861). After completing his curacy, he gained his Habilitation in Heidelberg in 1862 and was employed as an assessor in the…

[German Version] (Jan 5, 1846, Aurich – Sep 15, 1926, Jena), a fashionable philosopher of cultural Protestantism, studied classical philology and philosophy at Göttingen with R.H. Lotze and Gustav Teichmüller (1832–1888) from 1863 to 1867. While writing his dissertation on Aristotle's language, he corresponded with F.A. Trendelenburg. From 1871 to 1874 he …

[German Version] The Latin word natio (from nasci, “be born”) denotes the place of origin of a person or thing. Natio was the goddess of birth. The Latin word also meant a tribe or people. Since the Middle Ages, nation (or natio) has had a wide range of heterogeneous meanings. The medieval nationes of universities, councils, merchants, clerics, and nobility were not precursors of modern ideas of a nation, although clerics and landed nobility in the late Middle Ages developed notions of a German national consciousness or sense of a German Reich. Formulas using the word natio and references …

[German Version] (Jun 29, 1862, Bremen – Mar 13, 1940, Gießen), Protestant church historian. He studied in history, philosophy, and theology in Heidelberg, Jena, Gießen, and Göttingen. He was awarded a Dr.theol. in Jena (1884) and a Lic.theol. in Gießen (1886), where he became associate professor for church history in 1889 and full professor in 1891. Deeply rooted in the education-oriented cultural Protestantism of the prewar period, the “social aristocrat” Krüger edited the Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte für Studierende (1909–1912, 21923–1932), and the Theologischer Jahresbe…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies In the 1960s, religious studies began to discuss the continuing decline of religious commitment in Europe intensively. In particular the writings of Bryan Wilson ( Religion in a Secular Society, 1966) and Peter L. Berger ( The Sacred Canopy, 1967), drawing on the ideas of M. Weber, É. Durkheim, and others led to formulation of a so-called theory of secularization, where secularization denotes a natural aspect of the process of modernization, in which the traditional religious legitimation of the world has increasingly lost…

[German Version] (Oct 28, 1942, Leipzig – Dec 31, 2001, Leipzig). Nowak gained his Abitur in 1961; he refused military service, and after working in the Leipzig city theater, and then with the Leipzig theater company, began to study theology in 1964. With a church history dissertation on “Euthanasia and Sterilization in the Third Reich,” a German studies dissertation under Claus Träger on Schleiermacher (1984), and a further dissertation on “The Protestant Church and the WeimarRepublic,” he gained a high repu…

[German Version] Despite intensive historical research, the origins of the term cultural Protestantism have been identified only in broad outline. Originally it was not a self-designation but a polemical term used by others, reflecting the florescence of cultural semantics (Culture: II) in the late 19th and early 20th century. In all European societies, the widespread sense of a crisis of modernity, the cultural pessimism rife among the bourgeoisie, and the relat…

[German Version] I. Concept The term revolution (from Lat. revolvere, “turn over”) denotes a sudden qualitative change of existing circumstances and processes, a change that does not just affect individual elements – like the replacement of government personnel in a coup – but brings change of the overall system. The term was used originally in astronomy for the orbit of a heavenly body. Since the early modern era, has been used to refer to changes that overturn the political system, but this definition …

[German Version] 1. Franz Martin Leopold (Aug 1, 1860, Gütergotz near Potsdam – Mar 17, 1937, Leipzig-Schleußig). After serving as a pastor in Westerland, Eisenach, and Preetz, Rendtorff directed the Preetz Predigerseminar from 1896 onward. He became a Privatdozent in practical theology in Kiel in 1902, honorary professor in 1906, and full professor for practical theology and New Testament in Leipzig in 1910, where he also became director of the Predigerkolleg in 1912 and rector of the university in 1924. He postulated a Liturgisches Erbrecht (1913, repr. 1969 [Liturgical law o…

[German Version] (Dec 22, 1814, Greiz, Vogtland – Jun 20, 1888, Leipzig). Kahnis became associate professor in Breslau (Warcław) in 1844 and professor of dogmatics in Leipzig in 1850. He emerged as a proponent of a moderate Lutheran confessionalism which is evident from his major work Die lutherische Dogmatik historisch-genetisch dargestellt [Lutheran dogmatics presented historically and genetically] (3 vols., 1861–1868; 2 vols., 21874/1875). His theology emphasizes Scripture and confession. In opposition to K.I. Nitzsch, he was critical of union (Unions, …

[German Version] was originally an imperial legal term for the forced or desired emigration of Christian citizens to another jurisdiction primarily for religious reasons. In 1555, the Peace of Augsburg guaranteed Catholic subjects of Protestant rulers the right to depart with no tax obligation or departure fee ( emigrationis census). The degree to which a ruler could force citizens of other Christian confessions to emigrate remained contested. Detailed regulations for the ius emigrandi for adherents of the religious parties privileged under …

[German Version] (Oct 31, 1903, Nürnberg – Apr 24, 1995, Göttingen). From 1922 to 1926, Trillhaas studied philosophy and Protestant theology in Munich, Erlangen, and Göttingen. His Lutheranism was strongly influenced by P. Althaus, W. Elert, E. Hirsch, and the phenomenologist Alexander Pfänder. In 1931 he wrote a dissertation in philosophy on F. Nietzsche. In 1932 he received his Lic. theol. and in 1933 his habilitation with a thesis entitled Schleiermachers Predigt und das homiletische Problem; republished in 1975, it contributed to the renaissance of F.D.E. Schleierm…

[German Version] (to 1854: P.A. Bötticher; Nov 2, 1827, Berlin – Dec 22, 1891, Göttingen), Near ¶ Eastern scholar and cultural philosopher. Lagarde may be considered a classic representative of modern intellectual religiosity (Religiousness among intellectuals); thanks to his great sensitivity to the antagonism between social modernization and purposive-rational conduct of life, he sought through religio-historical research to instigate a national religious renewal of German culture. An unhappy childhood resulted in a labile psychological constitution and a pr…

[German Version] (Aug 31, 1817, Hildesheim – Sep 17, 1889, Kreiensen). In 1837 Reuter began studying Protestant theology in Göttingen; in 1838 he moved to Berlin, where he combined theology with history and philosophy. Close friendly exchange of ideas with Rudolf v. Ihering (later a renowned jurist) and attentiveness to the political historicism of the universal historians confirmed him in a “historical method” that admitted no difference between so-called secular historians and church historians.…

[German Version] The origin of the term is disputed. Some point to L. Uhland's Auswanderung in die Ver-¶ gangenheit [Emigration into the past] (1848), some to the author Frank Thiess (1890–1977), who claimed the term, which quickly became prominent after 1933, as his own. Inner emigration and its synonyms such as “emigration inward” or “spiritual exile” refer to the non-political habitus of artists and authors such as J. Klepper, R. Schneider, and W. Bergengruen under the conditions of the National Socialist dict…

[German Version] (May 1, 1780, Hildesheim – May 31, 1846, Berlin), theologian and church historian. After studying Protestant theology and philosophy in Göttingen with G.J. Planck, C.F. v. Ammon, K.F. Stäudlin, and J.G. Eichhorn, Marheineke received his Dr.Phil. in 1803 from Erlangen. In 1804 he was appointed lecturer on the Protestant faculty at Erlangen and in 1805 associate professor of church history and university preacher. From 1807 to 1811 he was professor of New Testament, practical theolo…

[German Version] (von) (Mar 25, 1827, Altenburg – Feb 7, 1894, Erlangen). From a rationalist pastor's family, Frank studied philosophy and Protestant theology (the latter primarily with G.C.A.v. Harleß) in Leipzig in 1845–51. After earning a double doctorate in 1850/51 and after an experience of religious revival, he taught secondary school (Gymnasium) and began researching the theology of the Formula of Concord ( Die Theologie der Concordienformel, 4 vols., 1858–65), offering a critique of “modern theology” in Lutheran terms. After his appointment in Erlangen…

[German Version] I. Philosophy The term first appears in controversies about Italian Fascism, but in theoretical discussions it is also applied to Bolshevism (Communism) (see II below). When the National Socialists (National Socialism) seized power it became a central theme of political theory. The term became popular because the traditional categories of tyranny and despotism were inadequate to define the rising political deformations of the 20th century. Whereas political science attempted to defi…

[German Version] are more or less regularly organized international conferences attended by theologians, leaders, officials, and believers from different religions. The prototype of all religion conferences is the World’s Parliament of Religions hosted in 1893 in conjunction with the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. At this conference, university theologians and church leaders from all Christian denominations, as well as Reform Jewish (Reform Judaism) rabbis, theosophists (Theosophy), Hind…

[German Version] I. History The term Vormärz is usually employed in reference to the period of German history spanning the years 1830 to 1848. Unlike the competing designations Biedermeier and Restoration, it evokes the atmosphere of change in German society that finally erupted in revolutionary uprisings against the political authorities in March 1848 – events that hastened the pace of social reforms, although the possibilities of political participation remained extremely limited. The constitutional crisis of the 1840s, i.e. the Vormärz in the strict sense, manifested it…

[German Version] I. The neologism “civilization,” probably coined around 1700 by French legal scholars with the Latin semantic field of civis (citizen), civilitas, and civiliter in mind, originally referred to the transformation of a criminal procedure into a civil procedure. Initially in French, English, and Spanish, but later also in other European languages including German, “civilization” soon acquired broad meaning in the history of philosophy. Civilization now stood both for the lifest…

[German Version] (Feb 3, 1816, London – Aug 15, 1853, Brighton), Anglican theologian and social reformer. Robertson is considered one of the great, epoch-making preachers of the 19th century. After being ordained priest in Oxford, the stark confrontation with the catastrophic consequences of rapid capitalist industrialization in the poverty-stricken areas of Winchester and Cheltenham made such an impression on his sensibility that he suffered several nervous breakdowns. He was a Germanophile trans…

[German Version] I. Religio-Cultural Journals – II. Journals of Religious Studies – III. Christianity – IV. Judaism – V. Islam I. Religio-Cultural Journals During the second half of the 19th century, the publication of German-language journals experienced a tremendous upsurge. While the year 1890 saw the publication of 3,203 individual titles, the number had grown to 5,231 by the year 1900 and to 6,689 by 1914. Journals became the preferred medium in academia and culture. In the field of theology, the proportion …

[German Version] (Friends of Light). Lichtfreunde was the name given to the “Protestantische Freunde,” an association of rationalistic early liberal Protestant clergy and laity in Saxony and Prussia organized in 1841. The term, borrowed from Freemasonry, was originally used for adherents of the Enlightenment in general; by the time journals bearing this name were established in Saxony (1831) and Frankfurt am Main (1836), it was serving as a programmatic label for consistent support of the Enlightenme…

[German Version] While studying the ecumenical movements of the 20th century, the sociologist Peter L. Berger developed “A Market Model for the Analysis of Ecumenicity” (1963). His theory stated that a termination of confessional culture clashes and processes of ecumenical cooperation between traditionally rivaling confessional churches followed goal-oriented and pragmatic partisan calculations, among others. Inspired by the Neoliberal Chicago School of Economics, religious economists such as Roge…

[German Version] The expression “social radicalism” is used in everyday language, in the technical terminology of various academic disciplines, and in political discourse. In German political terminology it is first attested in the ideological debates of the Vormärz (I) and the closely related religious party conflicts. At that time, 18th-century British and French discourse had a decisive influence. In Britain, from c. 1740 all political programs were described as radical that wished to make far-…

[German Version] (ennobled in 1870; Jun 30, 1807, Ludwigsburg – Sep 14, 1887, Gmunden), the son of a clergyman, a student of F.C. Baur, and ¶ a youthful friend and intermittent supporter of D.F. Strauß, studied Protestant theology, philosophy, and philology at Tübingen (Dr.theol. 1832; lecturer at the Tübingen Stift 1833). In 1836 he gained his habilitation there in aesthetics and German literature. As a professor of literary history (1844 Tübingen, suspended for two years on suspicion of “pantheism”; 1855 Zürich, 1866 S…

[German Version] The expression völkische Theologie(“national theology”) emerged in Germany around 1880 at the latest; its genesis and intellectual contexts have scarcely been explored. Nor are there studies of possible equivalents in other European languages. In terms of the sociology of knowledge, national theology can be interpreted as a specifically modern ideology of emancipation or as a liberation theology. relating to a people or nation (People and nationhood) acting collectively. Notwithstand…

[German Version] I. History and Church History 1. Historical and political context. National Socialism as a political movement was born in Munich in 1919 with the founding of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party) appealing to a nationalistic and anti-Semitic lower middle class. Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, it soon gained a following among almost all social strata in Germany. It became a political force to be reckoned with in 1930, when the worldwide economic crisis of 1929 furth…

[German Version] I. Church History – II. Philosophy – III. Practical Theology I. Church History 1. The German term Neuzeit, which first appeared in church historiography around 1870, and which corresponds to the English term “modern times,” encompasses a broad spectrum of heterogeneous meanings. Terms such as tempus novum, historia nova, or neue Zeit (“new times”) – in contrast to the Middle Ages (I) – were coined in the 17th century to express experiences, both fascinating and frightening, of accelerated change in many areas of life along with…

[German Version] 1. Friedrich Adolf (Jul 13, 1767, Tecklenburg – Apr 4, 1845, Bremen), Reformed theologian. After working as a schoolteacher in Westphalia, Krummacher became professor of rhetoric in Duisburg in 1800, pastor in Kettwig an der Ruhr in 1807, general superintendent of Anhalt-Bernburg in 1812, and pastor in Bremen in 1824. Close to the revival movement (Revival/Revival movements), and a supporter of the union of churches (Unions, Church: I), Krummacher was active above all as a religious author ( Parabeln, 81848). Peter Maser Bibliography A.W. Möller, Friedrich Adolf K…

[German Version] The origins of the expression political religion, analogous to political theology, are obscure. Probably it was a neologism born in the “saddle period” of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. K.G. Bretschneider used the concept to analyze the system of mediations between religious or denominational fractioning and the formation of political parties. In his Wörterbuch der Sittenlehre (1834), Johann Christian Karl Herbig stated: “A political religion is a religion whose ultimate purpose is associated with the state; it is therefore alw…

[German Version] (Jun 23, 1807, Maulbronn – Oct 18, 1849, Heilbronn). Beginning in 1821, Märklin, the scion of an old family of Württemberg theologians, went through the Württemberg institutions of theological education in the company of such figures as D.F. Strauß, F.T. Vischer, and Wilhelm Zimmermann (known in Ger. as the Geniepromotion, or “genius doctorates”). At the Protestant seminary in Blaubeuren and later at the Protestant house of studies in Tübingen, F.C. Baur inspired in Märklin an enthusiasm for the theology of F.D.E. Schleiermacher…

[German Version] (Ger. Sattelzeit) has become a central concept in the exploration of conceptual history by German historians. It was coined spontaneously by Reinhard Koselleck in the planning stage of a lexicon sponsored by the Arbeitskreis für moderne Sozialgeschichte, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland(8 vols. in 9, 1972–1997). It is possible that echoes of the concept of so-called axial or pivotal ages, developed by H. Freyer and C. Schmitt (among others), played a role. Kosel…

[German Version] (Jan 28, 1799, Posen [Poznań – Aug 20, 1867, Heidelberg), only son of a high-ranking Prussian official. Rothe began his theological studies in Heidelberg in 1817 and moved to Berlin in 1819; his teachers included C. Daub, G.W.F. Hegel, and J.W.A. Neander. In Neander’s home, he forged a friendship with F.A.G. Tholuck, who filled both with enthusiasm for the revival movement (Revival/Revival movements). In the fall of 1820, at the age of 21, he passed his first theological examinati…

[German Version] The expression kirchlich-sozial (“church-social”) first appeared in 1848 in the writings of J. Wichern. At that time, Wichern did not yet distinguish between “Church-social,” “Christian-social,” and “Protestant-social.” With the establishment of the Evangelisch-Sozialer Kongreß (Protestant Social Congress) in 1890, however, these adjectives denoted increasingly different positions with regard to Protestant social reform. The term “Protestant-social” was now claimed by the bourgeois …

[German Version] I. The Concept Nationalism may be described as an integrative ideology that claims that loyalty to the inclusive body of the ¶ nation has absolute priority over all other commitments. Such competing loyalties include loyalty to a particular estate or social class, a dynasty, a local state, a region, a tribe, a denomination, or a religion. While the concept of a nation played a role in political debates in medieval Europe, its reference was not to the totality of the people but to the ruling class (the nationes of the nobility and the clergy). Modern nationalism emer…

[German Version] The term, propagated as Konfessionskunde by F. Kattenbusch in 1892, denotes a theological discipline that examines comparatively the differences between the various Christian denominations with a view to their confessions (of faith) or ¶ official doctrines, constructions of dogmatic identity, specific forms of ethos, liturgical practices, and religious lifestyles. Precursors of the new discipline – a discipline meant to integrate t…

[German Version] (Oct 14, 1796, Mußbach in the Rhine­land Palatinate – Dec 14, 1862, Munich) began studying philosophy and theology at Heidelberg in 1815, receiving his Dr.Phil. in 1820. Thanks to friendly contacts with G.W.F. Hegel, the pastor of Ungstein wrote Philosophie und Christenthum, oder Wissen und Glauben (1825, 21833), using the tools of speculative rationalism to resolve the positional pluralism of rationalism, mediation theology (his term), and restorative confessional theology. While pastor of the French ¶ Reformed congregation in Erlangen, he was able to e…

[German Version] After the end of the old Reich and the associated dissolution of the Corpus evangelicorum the regional churches ( Landeskirchen) of the German Protestant church no longer had a joint representative body. Following controversies in the ¶ media about a new all-Protestant body and negotiations moderated by M.A. v. Bethmann Hollweg which took place after 1846 in Berlin between representatives of the regional churches, in 1850 a number of church …

[German Version] (Jan 17, 1804, Thalheim, near Tuttlingen – Jun 3, 1848, Bern), elder brother of the writer Max Schneckenburger, author of the 1840 “Die Wacht am Rhein” (“The Watch on the Rhine”), the most important German patriotic anthem during the 1870/1871 Franco-Prussian War. Matthias rapidly completed all the stages of theological education in Württemberg. In Berlin in 1826 he attended the lectures of F.D.E. Schleiermacher, P.K. Marheineke, J.W.A. Neander, and G.W.F. Hegel. As a lecturer at the Tübingen Stift at the age of 23, he belonged to the Geniepromotion class that inclu…

[German Version] (Mar 27, 1792, Großosterhausen – May 13, 1863, Wrocław [Ger. Breslau], Poland), Protestant theologian. At the age of eight, Hahn lost his father, a cantor. His pietistic mother shaped his religion. In rationalist Leipzig, he studied Protestant theology and oriental philology. After three years as tutor, Carl Ludwig Nitzsch, Johann Friedrich Schleusner and Heinrich Leonhard Heubner in the Wittenberg seminary brought him back to revivalist piety and supranaturalism in 1817. In 1819,…

[German Version] I. History of the Concept – II. Concept in Cultural Studies I. History of the Concept Dechristianization can be identified since c. 1820 as a translation for déchristianisation, which was coined in the struggles over religious policy in the French Revolution. Déchristianiser initially referred to the spontaneous acts of violence by lower-class groups against the church, that is, the theft of church property, the destruction of churches, and the execution …