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1. Term The term “liberal theology” is widely used in modern Protestantism and Judaism, but only marginally in 19th- and early 20th-century Roman Catholicism. It shares the imprecision of the concept of liberalism in politics and culture. Three aspects of its usage call for consideration: in modern Judaism and Christianity, as a doctrine of faith, and as a polemical concept. 1.1. In Modern Judaism and Christianity In modern Judaism and Christianity theologians are called liberal who view the Enlightenment and modern culture as legitimate expressions of the Jud…

Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923) was a Protestant theologian, philosopher of culture, and politician. His theological/philosophical works, although many-faceted, were characterized by one theme: given the historicist insight that all historical reality is relative, with the resulting loss of normative validity (Relativism), he sought to identify new, binding values in historically given cultural contexts. Troeltsch, born on February 17, 1865, in (Augsburg-) Haunstetten, was the eldest son of the medical doctor Ernst Troeltsch. His family belonged to t…

[German Version] The origins of the concept of transfert de sacralité are obscure. The earliest known occurrence is in the works of the historian Mona Ozouf, who since 1976 has studied the symbolic worlds, rituals, and “implicit theologies” (Assmann) in the festivals celebrated by the French Revolution. Syncretistic combination of pagan, Christian, and Masonic symbols and ceremonies, she believes, created a post-Christian politico-religious cult in which the revolutionary nation staged and constituted its…

[German Version] (Sep 1, 1839, Stetten im Remstal – Jul 18, 1908, Groß Lichterfelde near Berlin). As the last ¶ representative of F.C. Baur’s Tübingen school, Pfleiderer developed models of the history of primitive Christianity which stressed Jesus’ Jewish identity, and declared Paul the decisive founder of the Christian religion, thanks to his critique of the “orientalisms” in Jesus’ preaching, and his determined “Hellenization.” Using the historical methods of the comparative study of religion, Pfleiderer set out…

[German Version] I The origins and the formation of the composite term “history of ideas” have hardly been investigated. Early attestations point to the late 18th century. In the centers of the Enlightenment, scholars wrote “history of ideas,” employing teleological interpretation models, in order to legitimize the emergence of the new middle-class consciousness as a progress in the awareness of freedom. The literary history of classic reflection disciplines such as philosophy and theology became c…

[German Version] (Jun 22, 1770, Radis – Jan 12, 1842, Leipzig), Protestant philosopher and successor to I. Kant at Königsberg University. Strongly influenced by Kant's philosophy as a student of theology and philosophy in Wittenberg, Jena, and Göttingen, Krug became philosophy lecturer in Wittenberg and associate of the philosophical faculty in 1794; then associate professor in Frankfurt an der Oder in 1801, full professor in Königsberg in 1805, and in Leipzig in 1809. He argued in favor of a so-c…

[German Version] (Feb 25, 1939, Vienna – Nov 18, 1998, Vienna) was brought up in a middle-class family. After studying Protestant theology, primarily with H.W. Wolff and Wolfhart Pannenberg, and philosophy, especially with T.W. Adorno and Wolfgang Cramer, he quickly became active in the biblicistic, socially conservative Heliand scouting association. In 1969 he received his Dr.theol. at Munich with a thesis entitled Der Gedanke der Persönlichkeit Gottes bei Fichte und Hegel. His habilitation followed in the winter semester of 1971/1972 with a critical interpretati…

[German Version] ( Jan 27, 1808, Ludwigsburg –Feb 8, 1874, Ludwigsburg), Protestant theologian and writer. The son of a struggling merchant, Strauß attended the Latin school in Ludwigsburg and in 1821 entered the minor seminary in Blaubeuren. There he met F.C. Baur, whose teaching left a deep impression on him. With his friends C. Märklin, F.T. Vischer, and Wilhelm Zimmerman (later a prominent liberal historian of the German Peasants’ War), he began his theological studies in 1825 at the Tübingen …

[German Version] (Jan 30, 1810, Friedewald, Hessia – Jun 2, 1872, Bonn). Although as a student of theology Hundeshagen was expelled from the university in Giessen in 1828 for participating in certain fraternity activities, he was still able to attain his Habilitation there in 1831, after which he became a professor of theology specializing in exegesis and church history. In 1834 he received an appointment in Bern (becoming a full professor in 1845), then in 1847 in Heidelberg, and in 1867 in Bonn, also serving as the editor of the ThSt…

[German Version] (Feb 17, 1865, Haunstetten near Augsburg – Feb 1, 1923, Berlin-Charlottenburg) is considered one of the leading theological diagnosticians of crises in the German classical modernity of the period around 1900. The author of a wide-ranging oeuvre, he pushed back the boundaries of systematic theology and transformed it into a cultural science (Cultural studies) of Christianity that was to demonstrate the compatibility of Christian faith with the modern standards of scientific ration…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Church History – III. Systematic Theology I. Philosophy The concept of historicism came into currency in the 19th century and soon assumed critical and even polemical significance. Indeed, also G.W.F. Hegel's concept of reason freely actualized in history could be called historicism (J. Braniss, Die wissenschaftliche Aufgabe der ¶ Gegenwart als leitende Idee im akademischen Studium [The scientific task of the present as a leading idea in academic studies], 1848); but the understanding of historicism as a mode of tho…

[German Version] (Nov 16, 1837, St. Petersburg – Jun 26, 1905, Basel), son of a German Protestant merchant and a Roman Catholic mother from a French family, after his initial schooling Overbeck studied in St. Petersburg, Paris, and Dresden; beginning in 1856, he studied Protestant theology at Leipzig, Göttingen, and Berlin, receiving his habilitation at Jena in 1864. In 1870 he accepted a call to Basel as associate professor of New Testament and early church history. The multilingual intellectual …

[German Version] The term patriotism first appeared in the 16th century, as a borrowing from Neo-Latin (derived from patria) and French ( patriotisme); in the classic discussions of political virtues, it stands for the close moral bond uniting the citizens with their homeland, to which they owe devotion, selflessness, loyalty, and love. The popularity of the term in the 18th century, especially in the moral weeklies, was closely connected with the invocation of public spirit, civic virtue, and national morality: beyo…

[German Version] (May 17, 1844, Hameln – Jan 7, 1918, Göttingen), the son of a conservative Lutheran pastor, studied Protestant theology at Göttingen, where he was strongly influenced by H. Ewald, who taught him Syriac and Arabic as well as biblical exegesis. In 1870 he received his Göttingen licentiate and habilitation in Old Testament; in 1872 he was appointed full professor at Greifswald. On the grounds that the “ecclesiastical and academic viewpoints” are fundamentally different and a professo…

[German Version] In the wake of the initiatives set in motion by the Boston Unitarian Charles William Wendte, the international organization of religious liberals was founded on May 25, 1900 as the International Council of Unitarian and other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers on the occasion of the celebrations accompanying the 75th anniversary of the American Unitarian Association and the British and Foreign Unitarian Association. From 1910 to 1937, the Council or, from 1932, the “Internatio…

[German Version] I. General – II. Church History – III. Systematics – IV. Practical Theology – V. Missiology I. General The expression liberal theology became prevalent in the “Saddle Period” (Reinhart Koselleck) of Neo-Protestantism between 1780 and 1820; it denotes a type of “modern theology” that combines strong demands for individual freedom through criticism of religious tradition, differentiation of subjective faith from ecclesiastically defined confessions of faith, an individualistic understanding of reli…

[German Version] I. The exposition of Christian theological knowledge in lexicons, encyclopedias, and similar reference works has not yet been the subject of scholarly study by academic theology. Nevertheless, by focussing on this literary genre, which has been central to the theologies of all denominations since 1770, profound transformations of the academic e…

[German Version] (Oct 20, 1802, Fröndenberg near Unna – May 28, 1869, Berlin), Protestant theologian and church politician. After intensive private tutoring from his father, a Reformed pastor, Hengstenberg studied oriental and classical philology in Bonn. Thanks to his mildly rationalist upbringing, he became enthusiastic about fraternities. He experienced an awakening in 1823/1824 in the neo-Pietist circles of the Basel Mission. Hengstenberg obtained his Habilitation in oriental studies in Berlin in 1824, but because of his close contacts with leading propo…

[German Version] I. Sociology and Social History First attested in the writings of R. Pannwitz ( Die Krisis der europäischen Kultur, 1917), the concept of postmodernism spans a wide spectrum of heterogeneous meanings, the extremes of which are marked, on the one hand, by the notion of a new age that is meant to follow upon the end of modernity, and on the other hand by conceptions of a reflexive radicalization of modern experiences of plurality. The rapid adoption of the concept since the 1970s began in North Amer…

[German Version] 1. Reinhold (Apr 5, 1859, Pööravere, Livonia – Oct 23, 1935, Ahrenshoop). After receiving his master’s degree, habilitation, and paid lectureship at Dorpat (Tartu), Seeberg was considered the great hope of theological conservatives. In 1889 he was appointed to a full profes-¶ sorship of theology, New Testament history, and patristics at Erlangen. After the death of F.H.R. Frank in 1894, he also lectured in systematic theology. As a late aftereffect of the Apostolicum controversy, Seeberg, who had written a massive Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (2 vols., 1895/18…

[German Version] (May 25, 1821, Hamburg – Feb 2, 1899, Alsterdorf, Hamburg). Sengelmann, brought up in an atmosphere of evangelistic Pietism, was a student and friend of F.A.G. Tholuck. As pastor in Moorfleet since 1846, in 1850 he opened a Christian Arbeitsschule (“activity school”) in his parsonage to help young people who had received no education because school attendance was not compulsory, ¶ preparing them for a vocation through instruction and practical training. The great demand led to the expansion of the school to Sankt Nikolai in Hamburg in 1853.…

[German Version] I. Politics and Culture On Nov 9, 1918 the foundation of a parliamentary and democratic form of government was laid for the first German republic. On Jan 19, 1919, still in the radicalizing phase of the revolution, the National Assembly was elected to draw up a constitution. It included the “Weimar Coalition,” in which Majority Social Democracy, the German Democratic Party and the Center Party formed a majority. On Aug 11, 1919 the Weimar Constitution came into force. It had been larg…

[German Version] (Jul 11, 1899, Schreibendorf, Silesia [Pisary, Poland] – May 2, 1960, Bonn), systematic theologian and politically involved churchman. After studying theology at Breslau and Halle, he was appointed superintendent of studies at the Lutherheim in Königsberg. He received his doctorate in 1924 and gained his Habilitation in 1927. In 1934 he became instructor in New Testament at the Herder Institute in Riga. Deprived of his venia legendi for membership in the Confessing Church, he served from 1935 to 1937 as director of illegal seminaries in Bloestau…

[German Version] (Aug 12, 1808, Flensburg – Feb 3, 1884, Copenhagen), Danish theologian and churchman. Influenced by the works of N.F.S. Grundtvig as ¶ a young student, he later turned to German Idealism. During a study tour in 1834, he made contact with such figures as P.K. Marheineke, F.W.J. Schelling, F.X. v. Baader, and N. Lenau. After receiving his doctorate in 1836, in 1840 he was appointed professor of systematic theology int Copenhagen. The politically divisive clergyman was appointed court chaplain in 1845 and…

[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 …

[German Version] I. History – II. Philosophy – III. Social Sciences and Ethics – IV. Religion I. History 1. General Since the 18th century, European liberalism has fought for a civil society, demanding three kinds of civil rights: (1) equality before the law, guaranteed by the rule of law; (2) equal opportunity for political participation, made possible by the right to vote and free access to the public arena; (3) provision of basic social opportunities. Legal equality was the first of these demands put forward…

[German Version] (June 10, 1892, Rothenfluh, Switzerland – Nov 6, 1970, Basel), Reformed theologian. Lieb, who was fascinated by the religious socialism of H. Kutter and L. Ragaz, studied Assyriology and then (1915) theology. After joining the Swiss Social Democratic Party, he was involved in demonstrations against the war and clashes in Basel during the general strike of 1919. In 1920, impressed by the October Revolution, the Slavophile joined the Communist Party and collected books and liturgical objects of Russian Orthodoxy. Lieb, also a friend of K. Barth, received his Habilitati…

[German Version] 1. Ludwig Friedrich Leopold von (Oct 17, 1790, Berlin – Jan 10, 1861, Potsdam). In 1806, after graduating from ¶ the Prussian military academy, Gerlach fought against Napoleon. Following the Prussian defeat, he studied law (in particular with F.K. v. Savigny and Gustav Hugo), joining the Christlich-deutsche Tischgesellschaft and the Maikäferei group that grew out of it. Promoted to officer status in the Wars of Liberation, he remained in the military; in 1826 he was appointed personal adjutant to the…

[German Version] This expression was coined in 1896 by the liberal Protestant clergyman Arthur Bonus, who combined old antithetical notions of “Romanism” and “Germanism” with P.A. de Lagarde's call for a new “national religion” in a program designed to “modernize” the traditional elements of Christianity on the basis of German national culture. His modern neo-Germanic concept of Christianity was intended to infuse a uniform ethos into the disintegrating society of imperial Germany. Especially among the culturally critical haute-bourgeoisie, a feeling of distress in the f…

[German Version] I. The Term – II. Italian Fascism – III. Fascism and Christianity – IV. Fascism and the German Public I. The Term Fascism, the term for a very significant aspect of 20th-century politics, has a wide range of meanings. It was initially used for Benito Mussolini's system of authoritarian-corporatist rule in Italy from 1922 to 1943/45. Even in the 1920s, nationalist protest movements (Nationalism) in other European countries were taking up the concept of fascism in order to legitimize their struggle a…

[German Version] I. Concept, Historical and Legal Foundations The concept of the party has always been polyvalent in the political semantics of European modernity, while the historical configurations of parties have been subject to extreme variations. As intermediary, organizationally cemented groups representing shared views and positioned between the general population and the government, and legitimized by the respective national electoral law, parties have helped promote the parliamentarization and …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies The term personality cult probably became popular in February of 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev’s famous “secret speech” at the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union admitted numerous excesses during the Stalin period and ascribed them to the “cult of personality” (Russ. kul’ t lichnosti) surrounding J. Stalin . Since that time, personality cult has been a political watchword denoting exaggerated importance attached to the role of personality in politics, society, or history. Because of its polit…

[German Version] (Dec 2, 1777, Soest – Aug 18, 1837, Nuremberg), theologian. As a student in Halle an der Saale and Jena, Lehmus was enthused by Rationalism, I. Kant's criticism, and J.G. Fichte's idealism. A deacon from 1807 in Dinkelsbühl and Ansbach, he initially espoused, with F. Schelling and G. Hegel, a speculative theology in order to prove the internal rationality of the symbols of faith. After his appointment in 1814 as associate professor of theology and preacher at the university church…

[German Version] (Jul 30, 1888, Lobberich – Oct 19, 1961, Boston), a classical philologist, studied philosophy and ancient philology beginning in 1907 in Marburg and Berlin, became an instructor in Berlin in 1914, and was professor in Basel (1914), Kiel (1915), and Berlin (1921). He was dismissed from the Prussian civil service in 1936 at his own request for political and family reasons and emigrated to the United States, where he was professor in Chicago (1937) and Harvard (from 1939). After defi…

[German Version] (Jul 6, 1888, Berlin – Feb 23, 1973, Norwich, VT), jurisprudent, cultural philosopher, and sociologist. Rosenstock-Huessy, from a Jewish banking family, was a highly creative religious intellectual. He combined studies in diverse fields of cultural studies with a search for meaning, moral education, and center-left social reform. In 1905, at the age of 17, he converted to Protestantism. After studying law, history, and philosophy in Zürich, Berlin, and Heidelberg, he received his …

[German Version] (Jun 22, 1900, Berlin – Aug 7, 1992, Hamburg) grew up in the “nationalistic German tradition of the Protestant parsonage” ( Wege, 18); in 1913 he joined the Wandervogel (Jugendbewegung) and in 1919 the Wingolf. In 1921 he was a co-founder of the Jungnationaler Bund. Beginning in 1919, he studied theology in Berlin and Heidelberg. In 1924 ¶ he received his doctorate under Willy Lüttge with a dissertation on A.E. Biedermann; in 1929 he received his habilitation under M. Dibelius with a thesis on the eschatology of the kingdom of God in the…

[German Version] (Jul 25, 1773, Wiesbaden – Sep 26, 1858, Wiesbaden). During his studies at Erlangen, Heydenreich became strongly critical of theological rationalism and the Kantian critical method. His Romantic supranaturalism was influenced by F.D.E. Schleiermacher and the revival movement. After a series of pastorates, in 1818 he received a call to the Protestant seminary in Herborn. An advocate of a united Lutheran/Reformed church, he rejected historical-critical exegesis in three volumes of studies entitled Ueber die Unzulässigkeit der mythischen Auffassung des H…

[German Version] (Oct 16, 1813, Bischofswalde, Silesia – Oct 26, 1887, Döbling near Vienna), the most influential representative of German Catholicism. He came from a farming family with strict church convictions. While studying theology and philosophy in Breslau from 1836 to 1839, Ronge belonged to a student fraternity and was an enthusiastic supporter of the cultural ideals of the Enlightenment and German Idealism, and also of the early liberals’ demands for emancipation. From 1841 he was chapla…

[German Version] (Apr 21, 1864, Erfurt – Jun 14, 1920, Munich) I. Life and Work From his childhood, Karl Emil Maximilian Weber was deeply influenced by the cultural ideals of the educated German Protestant bourgeoisie. His father Max Weber Sr. (1836–1897), a lawyer, represented the National Liberal Party as a deputy in the Landtag and Reichstag. His mother Helene Weber née Fallenstein, who was descended from a family of Huguenots, was a deeply religious and morally sensitive woman with a strong commitment to charitable social work. His sister Henriette w…

[German Version] (Feb 27, 1823, Tréguier, Brittany– Oct 2, 1892, Paris). Ernest Renan, French historian of religion and scholar of ancient New Eastern studies, began by studying Roman Catholic theology, philosophy, and philology at the ecclesiastical Grand Séminaire of St. Sulpice in Paris. Full of enthusiasm, he absorbed the works of German Idealist philosophy and of F.C. Baur’s Tübingen School, especially D.F. Strauß’s Leben Jesu. His youthful desire for freedom and knowledge caused him to leave the seminary in 1845, shortly before his ordination as subdea…

[German Version] I. Dogmatics – II. Ethics I. Dogmatics Since the 18th century, terms such as fatherland, love for the fatherland and patriotism have played a central role in the proclamation of all Christian churches and in the discourse of academic theologians, and have also influenced debates on Jewish self-understanding at least since M. Mendelssohn. In view of the striking methodical reticence of scholarship in church history and the history of theology, there is a deficit of historical terminolog…

[German Version] (Aug 13, Königsberg [Kaliningrad] – Jul 11, 1884, Königsberg). After studying philosophy and Protestant theology, Rupp went on to the seminary in Wittenberg. From 1832 to 1845 he taught at the Altstädisches Gymnasium in Königsberg, and from 1832 to 1851 he was a lecturer in the Königsberg faculty of theology. In 1842 he was appointed Divisionspfarrer and was ordained on Apr 22. Five days later he was also chosen as pastor of the Reformed congregation. Rupp, a religious rationalist and political liberal, criticized the renewed confessi…

[German Version] (Mar 20, 1765, Kassel – Nov 22, 1836, Heidelberg). From a poor background, Daub began his studies of philology, philosophy, history, and theology in Marburg in 1786. He passed the theological exam in Marburg in 1789, became Stipendiatenmajor (tutor for scholarship students), and Privatdozent in 1790. In 1794, he became professor of philosophy in the Hohe Landesschule Hanau. On Nov 13, 1795, he was appointed second professor – of dogmatics a…

[German Version] (Dec 15, 1858, Berlin – Feb 3, 1926, Merano), Protestant clergyman, after 1896 head of the humanitarian Armenian relief organization. Lepsius was the son of the famous Egyptologist Carl Richard Lepsius. His mother Elisabeth, a neo-Pietist supporter of J.H. Wichern's Inland Mission, played a decisive role in his religious development. He studied philosophy (doctorate in 1880) and theology with A. Cremer, as advised by F. Fabri. He served as curate and teacher with the German Protes…

[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] (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] I. Old Testament – II. New Testament – III. Early Judaism – IV. Church History – V. Philosophy – VI. Philosophy of Religion – VII. Dogmatics – VIII. Ethics – IX. Sociology, Politics, and Law I. Old Testament 1. The concept of political freedom, which originated in the Greek polis (City cult), first appeared in Hellenistic Jewish historiography. The Stoics' concept of freedom, which contrasts inner freedom and outward constraint, has no counterpart in the OT. The OT is rooted in an internal mythological cultur…

[German Version] (Jun 19, 1884, Gießen – May 22, 1950, Berlin), daughter of A. v. Harnack; journalist and campaigner for women’s rights. After teacher training and earning her Dr.phil. (1912), from 1914 to 1918 she tested a career in social planning concretely in the civil service. After joining the German Democratic Party in 1919, she earned a reputation as a high-profile, culturally sensitive internationally-minded organizer of the bourgeois women’s movement; from 1931 to 1933 she chaired the Fe…

[German Version] The term cultural studies (Ger. Kulturwissenschaft) appeared as early as the late 18th century. It gained programmatic content, however, only around 1900 in the controversies concerning the independence of the humanities in relation to the natural sciences and concerning the normative integration of modern capitalist mass societies shaped by multiple crises. Since the “linguistic turn” and the “culturalist turn” in the 1980s, it has served the trans-d…

[German Version] I. General – II. Judaism I. General Exile (Lat. exilium or exul) refers to the state-organized and politically, religiously, or ethnically motivated expulsion of people from their homeland or their forced resettlement in a land that they often would not have freely chosen as a place of refuge. The politically powerful have forced people into exile in all periods of history. The t…

[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] (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] 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…

1. Middle Ages and early modern period In the Middle Ages and the early modern period, we already find harsh criticism of the clergy among both the educated classes and the various social groups of the “common people.” On religious grounds, for the sake of the true faith, the “monks” and “priests” were accused of a double moral standard, high-handedness, greed, and concupiscence. The wealth of many monasteries, the relatively comfortable and often luxurious lifestyles of many occupants of benefices , w…

1. The problem 1.1. TerminologyThe verb “secularize” is first attested in English in the early 17th century in the sense of “put [church property] to profane use,” the derivative noun  secularization in 1706. This sense, which derives from canon law ( saecularisatio, from saecularis, “of this age”, “worldly,” “pagan”), predates a broader sense of “dissociation from religious concerns,” the shades of which are captured in a larger lexical field in German.The first distinction in German is between  Säkularisation, which in the canon-law and constitutional tradition denote…

1. Terminology The word atheism (from Greek átheos, “without  God”, “godless”) denotes both a complex variety of interpretations of the world and life-designs shaped by conscious rejection of the existence of one or more gods, transcendent beings, or powers (positive atheism) and a conscious denial of the earthly influence of such gods or powers, while simultaneously recognizing the theoretical possibility of their existence (negative atheism). Terms such as “God,” “creator,” “absolute,” “supreme being…