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[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…