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The Italian mystic Caterina di Benincasa was born in humble circumstances in Siena, Italy, in 1347. Early in life, visionary experiences led her to take a vow of virginity. Around 1364/65 she became a Dominican tertiary. She received a spiritual education and became the center of a circle comprising both religious and laity. Highly cultured Tuscan men and women supported Catherine, who was unskilled in writing and who, in 1370, began expressing her “political” thinking. In light of her experiences, she offered insightful criticism of the monastic life. After an invitation to see th…

Blaise Pascal (1623–62), a French mathematician, physicist, and lay theologian, was from a well-to-do family in Auvergne and spent most of his life in Paris. At the age of 16 he completed a well-respected treatise on conic sections, and in 1642 he invented a digital calculator. His father introduced him to the so-called Académie Mersenne, the circle around the Cartesian abbot Martin Mersenne. Pascal first came into contact with Jansenists in Rouen between 1639 and 1647, and in 1647 he met René D…

[English Version] Pfennigsdorf, Emil Ludwig Friedrich (10.6.1868 Plötzkau bei Bernburg – 7.4.1952 Bonn), Religionspädagoge und Praktischer Theologe. Nach dem Studium der ev. Theol. in Leipzig, Tübingen, Berlin und Halle wirkte P. zunächst als Pfarrer in Harzgerode, Dessau und Düsseldorf. 1913 wurde er als Prof. für Praktische Theol. nach Bonn berufen. Konzentrierte sich P. in seinen praktisch-theol. Arbeiten primär auf Fragen christl. Apologetik, so thematisiert sein religionspäd. Hauptwerk »Wie le…

[English Version] Otto, Berthold (6.8.1859 Bienowitz bei Guhrau, Schlesien – 29.6.1933 Berlin), Berliner Reformpädagoge (Reformpädagogik). O., Sohn eines schlesischen Gutsbesitzers, studierte in Kiel und Berlin Altphilol., Philos., Psychologie, Staatsrecht und – u.a. bei Friedrich Paulsen – Päd. Von 1883 an arbeitete er als Privatlehrer, freier Publizist und Lexikonredakteur in Westfalen, Berlin, Hamburg und Leipzig. Nachdem er durch seine schulkrit. Schriften die öfftl. Aufmerksamkeit auf sich gez…

[German Version] (Apr 9, 1848, Oldenburg – May 13, 1930, Berlin) was a prominent personality in the middle-class women's movement (see also G. Bäumer). Orphaned at an early age, Lange was raised in a Württemberg vicarage. She moved to Berlin in 1871, trained as a teacher, and was appointed director of a teachers' seminary for women in 1876. She initiated the academ-¶ ization of the higher girls' education by introducing curricula for secondary schools (1889) and grammar schools (1893). Her commitment, which led to the founding of the Allgemeiner Deutscher …

[German Version] (Jun 10, 1868, Plötzkau near Bernburg – Apr 7, 1952, Bonn), religious educationalist and practical theologian. After studying Protestant theology in Leipzig, Tübingen, Berlin, and Halle, Pfennigsdorf first worked as a pastor in Harzgerode, Dessau, and Düsseldorf. In 1913 he was appointed professor of practical theology in Bonn. Although Pfennigsdorf concentrated primarily on questions of Christian apologetics in his works in practical theology, the focus of his main work on religious education, Wie lehren wir Evangelium? [How do we teach the gospel?], is…

[German Version] (Aug 6, 1859, Bienowitz near Guhrau, Silesia – Jun 29, 1933, Berlin), Berlin educational reformer (Educational reform). Otto, son of a Silesian landowner, studied classics, philosophy, psychology, constitutional law, and (under Friedrich Paulsen and others) educational method in Kiel and Berlin. From 1883 he worked as a private tutor, freelance writer, and lexicographer in Westphalia, Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipzig. In 1902, after his writings criticizing schools had brought him to …

[German Version] (Oct 19, 1863, Barlt – Apr 11, 1945, Barlt), a northern German poet, was from a family of craftsmen. From 1890 Frenssen was a Lutheran pastor in Dithmarschen, and in 1896 he joined the Nationalsozialer Verein founded by F. Naumann. The publishing success of his socially critical novels that religiously elevated home and nature, Jörn Uhl (1901; ET: 1905) and Hilligenlei (1905; ET: Holy Land, 2007) provided his living as a freelance author. In the 1920s, on lecture tours in the USA, Scandinavia and Austria, he promoted the Weimar Republic. In th…

[German Version] (Jun 1, 1865, Hoya/Weser – Aug 1, 1946, Einbeck), D.theol. h.c., promoter of the Protestant women's movement, and conservative politician. Born to a wealthy family, she grew up in Hannover. In 1899 she and her sympathizers founded the Deutsch-Evangelischer Frauenbund (DEF), of which she served as president from 1901 and 1934. Realizing that women were primarily responsible for the life of the church and the life of towns and cities, in 1903 she ¶ began demanding that women have the right to vote on ecclesiastical and municipal decisions, but opposed uni…

[German Version] (Nov 22, 1869, Paris – Feb 21, 1951, Paris), French poet and Nobel prize winner for literature (1947), who, as the son of the law professor Paul Gide, who was born in Uzès in the south of France, and the Rouenaise industrialist's daughter Juliette Rondeaux, had financial means that permitted him an independent literary career. In 1909, together with other literati, who later partially turned to the Renouveau catholique (P. Claudel), he founded the literarily influential Nouvelle Revue Française. Gide's entire corpus was placed on the Index librorum prohibitorum …

[German Version] [Evangelisch-kirchlicher Hilfsverein; Protestant church aid association]. Founded on May 28, 1888, this charity, under the protection of the future empress Augusta Victoria, procured financial means with which to counteract the increasing neglect of the population by the Church in Germany's major cities and industrial regions. The Evangelisch-kirchlicher Hilfsver…