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[German Version] ( Jan 16, 1802, Munich – Aug 10, 1861, Brückenau), Protestant jurisprudent and politician. Stahl (orig. Jolson) was of Jewish parentage; in 1819 he converted to Lutheranism and took the name Stahl when he was baptized. In 1832 he was appointed associate professor at Erlangen and in the same year full professor at Würzburg; in 1834 he was ¶ appointed full professor at Erlangen. As representative of the university in the Bavarian Landtag, he was reprimanded on account of a conflict with the government; in 1840 he therefore accepted an appointment in Be…

[German Version] (Feb 25, 1916, Chemnitz – Mar 29, 1967, Munich) was a Protestant lawyer who studied from 1936 to 1939, received his doctorate in 1940, and, following almost a decade of military service and imprisonment in Russia, became a lawyer serving the church. He gained his Habilitation in 1956 (Munich), became professor of state and church law in Marburg in 1958/59, and professor of church and state law in Munich in 1959. Grundmann's life work was devoted especially to Protestant canon law …

[German Version] The “standard year” of the Peace of Westphalia established in 1624 as normative for religious observance. It drastically restricted the right of princes to determine the confessional allegiance ( Ius reformandi ) of their lands guaranteed in the Peace of Augsburg by ensuring that the religion practiced legally – publicly or privately – at any time during the year 1624 could continue in that form in the future ( Instrumentum pacis osnabrugense art. V, §§32ff.). Church property was to remain in the hands of whoever held it on the “standard day” ( dies normalis; art. V, §2),…

[German Version] (“it pleases”; also placetum regium, exequatur regium) is the formula expressing assent by the local prince to ecclesiastical legislation, especially papal legislation. It was both a requirement before the law could take effect in the ruler’s territory and authorization to promulgate it (Publication). First put into practice in England and in French Gallicanism, it was introduced after the 17th century in many countries of western and southern Europe. In the German Empire, initially onl…

[German Version] (Reinkingk, since 1650: v. Reinking; Mar 10, 1590, Windau, Courland [today Ventspils, Latvia] – Dec 15, 1664, Glückstadt), outstanding Lutheran politician and scholar of constitutional law. After occupying a chair at Giessen, from 1618 he held high offices of state in Hesse-Darmstadt, Mecklenburg, archepiscopal Bremen (representing the archdiocese at the 1648 peace negotiations in Osnabrück), and Denmark. His most important academic work, Tractatus de regimine seculari et ecclesiastico (1619, 71717), characterizes the Empire as a monarchy of the em…

[German Version] In the Holy Roman Empire, reserved rights were the epitome of the (historically varying) rights enjoyed by the emperor without any requirement of approval by electors and the Reichstag. Borrowing from this usage, in the 19th century Reservatsrechte were those rights of church governance, rooted in the summepiscopate of the territorial prince, that he had reserved to be exercised personally (i.e. not by church officials acting in his name). The most important were: approbation of ecclesiastical legislation passed by synods, in ¶ some cases including the right to…

[German Version] I. From the very beginning, the church has always existed on the basis of communication. All human lives spent within it are realized in the communicative justification of human community. In all periods, therefore, it has placed every available means of communication in the service of its mission. The modern transition to an information-based society, however, represents a particular challenge. In many episcopal and papal statements going back as far as…

[German Version] (Huig de Groot; Apr 10, 1583, Delft, The Netherlands – Aug 28, 1645, Rostock), an impor-¶ tant jurist and theologian. From a patrician Delft family, Grotius attended the University of Leiden already as an eleven-year-old. After studying classical philology, history, theology, and law, he received the Dr.iur. in Orléans on an ambassadorial journey in 1598 and became a lawyer in 1599. An expert's opinion in the conflict of the sea-trade interests of Holland and Portugal contained the pioneering chapter De mare libero (1604; ET: The Free Sea, 2004), in which Grotius j…

[German Version] I As one type of relationship between church and state, a state church is a church incorporated into the state in such a way that it appears to be a state institution. As a result, the state not only has the right to intervene in the internal governance of the church (staffing, deciding doctrinal conflicts, disposition of church property, etc.; Church polity) but also may use the church for state purposes. 1 The history of state churches began when Theodosius I made the Christian church the only recognized church of the Roman Empire ( Reichskirche). In East Rome, a sacral …

[German Version] At the request of the liberal Bavarian minister of culture Johannes v. Lutz (1826–1890), §130a, the Kanzelparagraph, was included in the German criminal code by a law of Dec 10, 1871, part of the legislation enacted during the Kulturkampf. It threatened the clergy, with other official religious leaders, with up to two years imprisonment if they discussed state matters in public or in their preaching and threatened the public order. A law of Feb 28, 1872, extended the statutory offense to include dissemination of similar ideas in writing. During the Kirchenkampf (Nation…

[German Version] (Apr 23, 1827, Winterberg, Westphalia – Dec 19, 1914, Obermais, near Meran), Catholic canonist and legal historian. He was appointed associate professor in Prague in 1854, full professor in 1855; from 1873 to 1906, he taught as a professor in Bonn. Although originally closely tied to the Catholic Church, in 1870 he became one of the most prominent critics of the dogma of papal infallibility and – with J. v. Döllinger – a leading organizer of the Old Catholic movement (Old Catholic…

[German Version] denotes the equal status in law of religious communities in the state; it therefore presupposes the dissolution of confessional homogeneity within the state. Parity had been practiced earlier, but in Germany it first gained legal form through the (still limited) equality granted to the Catholic and Protestant parties, particularly in the Peace of Augsburg. It gained an explicit basis in constitutional law in the Peace of Westphalia as aequalitas exacta mutuaque (“complete and mutual equality”). At the same time, the previously excluded Reformed beli…

[German Version] I. In international law, neutrality is the legal status of a state that is not participating in a war involving other states. This status carries various rights (e.g. territorial integrity, armed resistance to violations of neutrality) and duties (esp. no military, financial, or other support of any belligerent, sufficient military potential to defend against attacks in peacetime, willingness to allow ships on the high seas to be searched by belligerents, and equal treatment of the…

[German Version] The term Constantinian Era is a headword known more in the context of “the end of the Constantinian Era” (Constantine the Great) than as a period delimited by precise historical criteria and is supposed to characterize the symbiosis of church and secular authority that began with the “Constantinian change” (312) and lasted into the modern era, indeed into recent history. It is meant to refer to an alliance in which each side uses the services of the other to reach its ¶ goals: the church uses the state for recourse to secular force and privileges; the st…

[German Version] (May 27, 1818, Zellerfeld – Dec 25, 1893, Hanover), Protestant teacher of constitutional and church law. After studying law in Göttingen, Berlin and Jena, Mejer obtained his doctorate in 1841 in Göttingen; he became a lecturer there in 1842, and a full professor at Königsberg in 1847, Greifswald in 1850, Rostock in 1851, and finally Göttingen from 1874 to 1885, after which he was president of the Hanover Evangelical Lutheran regional consistory until his death. As a pupil of A.L. …

[German Version] (Dec 20, 1837, Konitz, Western Prussia – Sep 7, 1910, Leipzig), (Protestant) jurist who became associate professor at the University of Halle in 1865, followed by Freiburg in 1868; from 1869, he was full professor at Leipzig. Deeply committed to the Hegelian idea of the state (G.W.F. Hegel), Friedberg belonged to the most prominent “state canonists” who sided with the state in the Kulturkampf . Although Friedberg sought to legitimate his position from a scientific-historical standpoint, his evaluation of the medieval conflic…

[German Version] (Mar 27, 1857, Urach – Nov 28, 1927, Erlangen), Protestant jurist. After studying theology and philosophy, Rieker first worked for the church. He then studied law in Leipzig, where he gained a doctorate and Habilitation in 1891. In 1893 he was appointed assistant professor, and from 1903 full professor of public law and history of law, in Erlangen. In his main work on the legal position of the Protestant Church in Germany, Rieker essentially seeks to prove that the synodal and presbyterial principles have no basis…

[German Version] I. Protestantism – II. Catholicism I. Protestantism In the 16th and 17th century (before territorialism and collegialism), episcopalism and the theory of the episcopal system developed by its proponents represented the earliest justification of the ecclesiastical authority wielded by Protestant princes in their realms. 1. While the Reformers regarded these local rulers as mere fellow Christians, albeit as praecipuum membrum ecclesiae, and wished to invest them with this authority only as long as seemed necessa…

[German Version] (May 16, 1867, Königsberg [Kaliningrad] – Sep 21, 1941, Göttingen), Protestant jurisprudent. He was appointed associate professor at Jena in 1896 and a full professor in 1900; in the same year he was appointed to a full professorship in Göttingen. Besides numerous works on public law, he wrote a major two-volume Das evangelische Kirchenrecht in Preußen (1903–1910, repr. 1967), discussing church law in Prussia without reference to its theological dimension or ecclesiastical politics, developing instead its parallelism with state and co…

[German Version] (Feb 15, 1808, Stolpen – May 8, 1864, Berlin), Protestant teacher of church law. In 1835 Richter became assistant professor in Leipzig, in 1838 full professor in Marburg, and from 1846 in Berlin; he was a member of the Protestant High Consistory between 1850 and 1859, and thereafter senior privy councilor in the Prussian ministry of culture. Together with K.F. Eichhorn, Richter is regarded as one of the founders of the church law branch of the history of law school. When he was only 31, he published a new critical edition of the Corpus iuris canonici. Alongside numerous oth…

[German Version] (Aug 31, 1798, Cadolzburg – Jan 8, 1846, Berlin), Protestant jurisprudent. Puchta studied law at Erlangen, receiving his degree in 1820; after gaining his habilitation in Roman law in 1823, he became an associate professor. In 1825 he was appointed full professor at Munich; in 1835 he moved to Marburg and in 1837 to Leipzig. In 1842, when F.C. v. Savigny was appointed high chancellor, Puchta succeeded to his chair at Berlin, then the most prominent in Germany. In 1842 he was also …

[German Version] Following episcopalism (I) and territorialism, collegialism was the latest of the three 17th- and 18th century theories on the origin and legitimation of vesting ecclesiastical authority of prince in the Protestant territories of the German Empire. The early collegialists (C.M. Pfaff, L. v. Mosheim) were concerned to limit the comprehensive claim to the prince's authority over religious matters as an aspect of public order asserted …

[German Version] (Jan 7, 1811, Nuremberg – Jan 24, 1893, Nuremberg), Lutheran legal historian and canonist. He was appointed associate professor at Erlangen in 1840 and full professor in 1845. Besides Roman law and matrimonial law, his major interest was canon law (IV, 2.b), whose institutions he explained in the spirit of the historical school of law. In confessional disputes, he emphatically took the side of Lutheranism, while at the same time supporting greater independence of the church from the state. Christoph Link Bibliography C.A. Stumpf, Kirchenrecht als Bekenntnisrecht.…

[German Version] (Aug 21, 1860, Vienna – Sep 10, 1932, Prague), Catholic professor of canon law. After his habilitation in law in Vienna (1889), he was appointed associate professor (1891) and full professor (1894) in Chernivtsi. In 1896 he was appointed to a professorship in the faculty of law at Innsbruck. Wahrmund, who had been noted for his studies on legal history, became really famous in the “Wahrmund affair.” He aggressively asserted the incompatibility of the “Catholic worldview” with mode…

[German Version] (May 8, 1832, Gedern – Dec 30, 1895, Darmstadt), Protestant theologian and authority on ecclesiastical law. After studying at Gießen and seminary training, he served initially as a private tutor and Gymnasium teacher. In 1863 he was appointed professor of catechetics and ecclesiastical law at the seminary in Friedberg; in 1882 he was appointed chief consistorial councilor in Darmstadt and superintendent for Rheinhessen. Köhler considered ecclesiastical law a necessary function of …

[German Version] 1. Johannes (Nov 24, 1889, Kammerstein, Middle Franconia – Dec 15, 1965, Tübingen), Protestant teacher of constitutional and church law. After service in the church in Munich and later in Berlin, he became a private lecturer in 1923, and supernumerary professor in Berlin in 1926; in 1928, he was a full professor of public law and church law in Bonn, and in Munich from 1934 (with an interruption), until his retirement in 1957. After his initial labors in the history of church law as …

[German Version] I. Practical Theology – II. Law I. Practical Theology Basing themselves on the Christian conception of the human being, church schools attempt to dispense and configurate school education in such a way that the power of the gospel as well as the significance of Christian faith and its understanding of life can become experienceable in the pedagogical interaction of a shared conduct of life. Their legitimation is thus both theological and pedagogical. In their …

[German Version] I. Practical Theology The term school prayers refers primarily to prayers at the beginning or end of the school day or during breaks, along with prayers during religious education classes. In German public schools today – unlike the period of the denominational primary schools (into the 1960s) and also unlike in England, for example – such prayers are a marginal phenomenon. Scattered attempts to reintroduced school prayers like that of the Bavarian government in 1987 (Kaufmann, 32–38) e…

[German Version] I. Law In contrast with its imprecise meaning in general usage, which also includes social disparities, in law the term “privilege” has a more clearly defined meaning, which became increasingly precise in the course of history. It denotes a special right granted to an individual or majority group by sovereign act of a responsible authority. As a legal term it has its origin in Roman law; in the Middle Ages it was developed essentially by the church, but used also by the emperor. In…

[German Version] I. Law 1. “Broadcasting” has a wider, meaning in law than in everyday language. State broadcasting agreements typically define broadcasting as “the organization and distribution of presentations of any kind in word, sound, and image by the use of electrical oscillations . . .” (Ger. State Broadcasting Agreement, §2, para. 1 [June 7, 2002 ed.]). This covers not only radio and television (including Pay-TV), but also sound and moving picture services, screen texts etc. (the inclusion of…

[German Version] I. German Law Along with artistic freedom, Basic Law art. 5 § 3 guarantees freedom of “scholarship, research, and teaching.” The association of freedom of teaching with scholarship and research shows that the guarantee of the Basic Law applies only to scholarly teaching, i.e. teaching that presents the findings of one’s own research (and examines critically the findings of others). Freedom of teaching thus relates (albeit not exclusively) to teaching in public and private universitie…

[German Version] 1. Julius (May 10, 1857, Lengerich, Westphalia – Jun 7, 1930, Münster), together with F. Spitta, a leader of the “Older Liturgical Movement.” After studying theology at Bonn, Halle, and Göttingen, he succeeded Spitta as assistant preacher in Bonn. He received his license to teach in 1884 and was appointed pastor in Seelscheid. In 1891 he was appointed professor in the seminary at Friedberg and in 1893 professor of practical theology at Straßburg (Strasbourg). In 1914 he became the f…

[German Version] I. History Ever since classical antiquity, the theory of resistance and the right of resistance have been linked inseparably to the understanding of sovereignty and its limits in both civil society and the church. 1. In the Germanic tribal kingdom of Western, Central, and Northern Europe, three overlapping legal concepts legitimated a right of resistance: (1) the conviction that the ruler is not above the law but subject to the law (grounded in the tradition of the administration of justice by the community of all …

[German Version] I. Catholic – II. Orthodox – III. Protestantism – IV. Judaism I. Catholic Excommunication must be defined as a privative term from communicatio and κοινωνíα/ koinōnía (cf. 1 Cor 10:16: sharing and participating in the body and blood of Jesus ¶ Christ; cf. 2 Cor 13:13: communion in the Holy Spirit). The word excommunication does not occur in the New Testament. The competence of the church to excommunicate is traced back to Matt 16:18f.…

[German Version] I. History Religious education (RE) in schools, in modern usage of the term (for RE in a broader sense see Christian doctrine classes, Confirmation classes), is the result of the general differentiation process that led to the promotion of religious learning beyond the contexts of family and worship. The schools of the European cultural sphere arose largely in the area of the church (School and church, Church schools, Monastery schools); for a long time, schooling was essentially based on religious texts. Since each country established its own particular forms…

[German Version] I. Philosophy Natural law is the essence of the legal norms that claim to be binding on all human beings, independent of positive laws and conventions. The term goes back to the distinction between nature( phýsis) and law ( nómos; Law/Natural law), put forward by the Sophists of the 5th century bce in order to challenge the traditional positive laws. According to Antiphon, the precepts of such laws are arbitrary, whereas the precepts of nature, which articulate individual benefit, are necessary (DK, frgm. B 44). Plato presents a v…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies The term substitution, originating in the language of law, is used primarily in Christian theology, but it is well suited for use in religious studies as well, even though so far there has been no detailed systematic treatment of it. In the most general sense, we speak of substitution when the true subject affected or acting (God, an individual like the king, or a collective) is represented by another ¶ entity (a person or group, an animal, or an object) as a substitute involved (actively or passively) in the action, acting for the…

[German Version] I. Dogmatics – II. Ethics – III. Philisophy – V. History – VI. Mission I. Dogmatics Freedom of religion, as generally understood, combines freedom of belief, of conscience, and creed, as well as freedom to practice one's religion (cf. German Basic Law, art. 4, §§1, 2), in one fundamental right. Dogmatics needs to clarify the relationship between religious certainty and freedom. A statement consonant with Reformation belief would run as follows: If Christian certainty, as certainty about the …