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In die Sprachen der modernen Kulturwissenschaften hat der seit dem 18. Jh. nachweisbare Begriff der E. v. a. durch Max Weber Eingang gefunden. Im berühmten Aufsatz Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus sprach der Heidelberger Gelehrte 1904/05 vom »großen religionsgeschichtlichen Prozeß der E. der Welt«, der in der altjüd. Prophetie eingesetzt und in der harten innerweltlichen Askese des Puritanismus kulminiert habe. Alle magischen Mittel der Heilssuche seien hier als Aberglaube und Frevel verworfen worden [1]; [3].Den typologischen Kontrast von Askes…

1. Problemanzeige 1.1. BegriffDer Begriff S. (»Verweltlichung«, von lat. saeculum, »Zeit«, »Zeitalter«; kirchenlat. »Welt«) ist jünger und weniger eindeutig als der kirchen- und der staatsrechtliche Begriff der Säkularisation. Seit seinem Auftauchen in der dt. aufklärungskritischen Publizistik des frühen 19. Jh.s (Gegenaufklärung), d. h. im Streit um die Deutung der relig.-kulturellen Gesamtlage nach der Französischen Revolution, handelt es sich stets um eine »Interpretationskategorie« [53]; [43]; [8], um einen strittigen »ideenpolit. Begriff« [30]. Sein Verstän…

Der dt. Begriff der D. entstand im späten 18. Jh. im Kontext religionspolitischer Debatten über die Französische Revolution. Dort wurde déchristianisation als Kampfbegriff zur Bezeichnung zunächst spontaner gewalttätiger Aktionen kleinbürgerlicher Gruppen gegen die Römisch-katholische Kirche und ihren Klerus, für den Raub von Kirchengut sowie die Verwüstung von Kirchen, anderen kirchlichen Gebäuden und Kunstschätzen verwendet (Ikonoklasmus). Anhänger der Revolution gebrauchten den Begriff außerdem sowohl zur Beschreibung des Bruchs mit kirchlicher Tr…

Der Begriff E. wurde spätestens im frühen 19. Jh. geprägt. Im Kontext eines breiten Diskurses über die religionspraktischen Folgen der Aufklärung, der radikalen Katholizismus- und Kirchenkritik der Französischen Revolution sowie der Formierung einer neuen bürgerlichen Öffentlichkeit stritten europ. Gelehrte um 1800 intensiv über die Frage, ob der alte Kirchenglaube in der erhofften »neuen Welt« von bürgerlicher Freiheit, Brüderlichkeit und Gleichheit des Rechts noch Bestand haben könne. Eine zentrale Rolle nahmen dabei die Auseinandersetzungen um das 1788 für Preußen er…

1. Mittelalter und Frühe NeuzeitSchon im MA und in der Frühen Nz. lässt sich sowohl bei den gebildeten Ständen als auch in den diversen Sozialgruppen des »gemeinen Volkes« harte Kritik an den Klerikern beobachten (Geistliche). Aus religiösen Gründen, um des wahren Glaubens willen, warf man den »Mönchen« und »Pfaffen« Doppelmoral, Herrschsucht, Habgier und Wollust vor. Der Reichtum zahlreicher Klöster, das von Nahrungssorge unberührte, nicht steuerpflichtige, daher vergleichsweise bequeme und nicht selten luxuriöse Leben vieler…

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. 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…

One consequence of the general secularization underway in the late 18th and 19th centuries was a process that in German came to be known around 1800 as  Entkirchlichung (approx. “dechurching”), and that may be characterized as a secularization of and within the churches themselves.Around the year 1800, European scholars were engaged in intensive debate, as part of a broad discourse on the practical religious consequences of the Enlightenment, the radical anti-Catholicism and anti-clericalism of the French Revolution (1789), and the for…

The term déchristianisation (German  Dechristianisierung) emerged in the late 18th century in the context of religious and political debates on the French Revolution (1789). It came into use there as a slogan denoting the initially spontaneous violence of groups of petite bourgeoisie against the Roman Catholic Church and its clergy, the sacking of church property, and the pillaging of churches, other ecclesiastical buildings, and art treasures (Iconoclasm). Supporters of the Revolution also used th…

The term disenchantment, documented from the 18th century, came into the languages of the modern science of culture through Max Weber in particular. In the famous essay, “Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus” (“The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”) the Heidelberg scholar spoke in 1904/05 of the “great religio-historical process of disenchantment of the world,” which had begun in ancient Jewish prophecy and had culminated in the hard, this-worldly asceticism of P…

The debates on essence are classified as the discussions held at the beginning of the 20th century, both on the Christian and the Jewish sides, concerning the fundamental questions of the "essence" of each confession. Triggered by lectures of the theologian Adolf von Harnack on  Das Wesen des Christentums  (“The Essence of Christianity”), the critique published in 1905 by the liberal rabbi Leo Baeck, Das Wesen des Judentums ("The Essence of Judaism", 1936), ranked as one of the most important contributions to the debate on essence. In the disputes on the politi…

Als Wesensdebatte gelten die zu Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts sowohl auf christlicher als auch auf jüdischer Seite geführten Diskussionen um grundsätzliche Fragen des »Wesens« der jeweiligen Konfession. Ausgelöst durch die Vorlesungen des Theologen Adolf von Harnack über Das Wesen des Christentums, zählte die 1905 veröffentlichte Kritik Das Wesen des Judentums des liberalen Rabbiners Leo Baeck zu den gewichtigsten Beiträgen der Wesensdebatte. In den ideenpolitischen Auseinandersetzungen über die Bedeutung der christlichen und der jüdischen Trad…

[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] (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. 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] (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] (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] (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] (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] (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] 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…