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The Christ Myth Debate: Radical Theology and German Public Life, 1909–1913

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2017

George S. Williamson
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Abstract

In 1909, the philosopher Arthur Drews unleashed a brief but furious debate when he published Die Christusmythe, in which he denied the historicity of Jesus Christ. This article seeks to understand the origin and significance of the “Christ Myth” controversy, focusing not simply on its scholarly content, but also on the historical contexts in which it unfolded, in particular the increasingly public and popular nature of theological debate in late Wilhelmine Germany. The article examines Drews's long-standing commitment to a monist religious philosophy inspired by his mentor Eduard von Hartmann, as well as his decision to intervene in the increasingly contentious debate around Protestant liberal theology's view of the “historical Jesus.” It also describes Drews's campaign to spread his views to a broader public through a series of lectures and debates, many of which were organized and promoted by the German Monist League. Although the actual theses of Die Christusmythe were not particularly original or well argued, the ensuing controversy placed Protestant liberal theology in a difficult position, which opponents were quick to exploit. While a wide range of Protestant theologians attempted to refute Drews, others moved away from a reliance on the historical Jesus. This shift was in part a response to intellectual difficulties in liberal theology that Drews helped expose, but it can also be seen as a reaction to the unseemly spectacle of university professors defending themselves against autodidacts and dilettantes, a situation that led some theologians to ground their positions on intellectual terrain less susceptible to such attacks.

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Church History , Volume 86 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 728 - 764
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Copyright © American Society of Church History 2017 

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References

1 “Jesus Never Lived, Asserts Prof. Drews,” New York Times, 6 February 1910.

2 A more reliable description can be found in the published account of the proceedings: Hat Jesus gelebt? Reden gehalten auf dem Berliner Religionsgespräch des Deutschen Monistenbundes am 31. Januar und 1. Februar 1910 im Zoologischen Garten über ‘Die Christusmythe’ von Prof. Dr. Arthur Drews, ed. Monistenbund, Deutscher (Berlin: Deutschen Monistenbundes, 1910)Google Scholar.

3 Schweitzer, Albert, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (Tübingen: Mohr, 1913)Google Scholar. All future references to this work are from the English translation of the second edition, published as The Quest for the Historical Jesus: The First Complete Edition, ed. Bowden, John (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001)Google Scholar [hereafter cited as Quest]. The first edition was published under the title Von Reimarus zu Wrede: Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (Tübingen: Mohr, 1906)Google Scholar, and has been translated into English as The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, trans. Montgomery, William (New York: MacMillan, 1986)Google Scholar.

4 Drews, Arthur, Die Christusmythe (Jena: Diederichs, 1909)Google Scholar. For the Drews controversy as evidence of a religious crisis, see Schneidewin, Max, “Arthur Drews's Christusmythe: und die religiöse Krisis überhaupt,” Preussische Jahrbücher 39, no. 3 (1910): 393–453 Google Scholar; and [Friedrich Karl] Feigel, “ Christusmythe und Religionsunterricht,” in Zeitschrift für den evangelischen Religionsunterricht an höheren Lehranstalten 22 (1910/1911): 8Google Scholar.

5 On the Strauss controversy and its impact, see Marilyn Chapin Massey, Christ Unmasked: The Meaning of The Life of Jesus in German Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983)Google Scholar; also Breckman, Warren, Marx, the Young Hegelians, and the Origins of Radical Social Theory: Dethroning the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, which emphasizes the centrality of the concept of “personality” in these debates.

6 Bruno Bauer had already argued, albeit without great effect, against the historicity of Jesus in Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs, 2 vols. (Berlin: Hempel, 1851–1852)Google Scholar. On Bauer, see Quest, 124–142.

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8 Important exceptions are Gerrish, B. A., “Jesus, Myth, and History: Troeltsch's Stand in the ‘Christ-Myth’ Debate,” The Journal of Religion 55, no. 1 (January 1975): 13–35 Google Scholar; Peter de Mey, “The Influence of Metaphysical and Epistemological Presuppositions on Jesus Research Then and Now: Reconsidering the Christ-Myth Debate” (paper presented at the conference “Sourcing the Quests: The Roots and Branches of the Quest for the Historical Jesus,” Leuven, 28 April 2004), http://www.kuleuven.be/theometh/peter/; and Weaver, Walter, The Historical Jesus in the Twentieth Century (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity, 1999), 45–71 Google Scholar. See also Rupp, George, Culture Protestantism: German Liberal Theology at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars, 1977), 25–32 Google Scholar. Foundational in all respects is Schweitzer's discussion of the controversy in Quest, 355–436.

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10 These contextual elements are largely absent from Schweitzer's account, the studies by Gerrish and De Mey, and the discussion in Weaver (though of these studies Weaver's is most concerned to provide some historical background).

11 On the importance of habitus for scholarly careers, Bourdieu, Pierre, Homo Academicus, trans. Collier, Peter (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

12 The best source on Drews's early life is his own autobiography, which appears in Schmidt, Raymund, ed., Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1924)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Selbstdarstellung), 67–128.

13 Ibid., 73.

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15 The relationship is documented in Mutter, Rudolf and Pilick, Eckhart, eds., Arthur Drews/Edward von Hartmann: Philosophischer Briefwechsel, 1888–1906 (Rohrbach: Peter Guhl, 1995)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as PB).

16 Despite Hartmann's significance, the critical literature on him remains limited. See especially Huber, Max, Eduard von Hartmanns Metaphysik und Religionsphilosophie (Winterthur: Keller, 1954)Google Scholar; Wolf, Jean-Claude, Eduard von Hartmann: Ein Philosoph der Gründerzeit (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2006)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Philosoph der Gründerzeit); Wolf, Jean-Claude, ed., Eduard von Hartmann. Zeitgenosse und Gegenspieler Nietzsches (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2006)Google Scholar; and Gardner, Sebastian, “Eduard von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious ,” in Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought, ed. Nicholls, Angus and Liebscher, Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 173–199 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 On this point, see Wolf, Philosoph der Gründerzeit, 21–39.

18 See, for example, “Der Kampf zwischen Kirche und Staat” [1872] and “Die Gegner und die Stützen des Reichs” [1881], reprinted in von Hartmann, Eduard, Zwei Jahrzehnte deutscher Politik und die gegenwärtige Weltlage (Leipzig: Wilhelm Friedrich, 1889), 62–75 Google Scholar, 97–105, esp. 99–100.

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21 Wolf, Philosoph der Gründerzeit, 193, 200; and cf. Hartmann, Religion des Geistes, 96.

22 For a quick summary of relevant objections to Hartmann's scheme, see Gardner, “Eduard von Hartmann's Philosophy of the Unconscious,” 173–199.

23 A commentator friendly to Drews compared the status of philosophy at Karlsruhe with that of “the fifth wheel of a wagon”: Schneidewin, Max, “Arthur Drews,” Preussische Jahrbücher 145, no. 3 (1911): 411Google Scholar.

24 Drews to Hartmann, 28 April 1892, in PB, 57–58.

25 Hartmann to Drew, 29 April 1892, in PB, 60. This last sentence was evidently a reference to Adolph Stoecker who, while Court Preacher to Wilhelm I, founded the anti-Semitic Christian Social Workers Party.

26 See Hartmann to Drews, 27 January 1895, in PB, 131, where he warns Drews: “Someone who becomes acquainted with you only as a scholarly opponent can all too easily take for brusqueness of character or personal arrogance what is actually enthusiasm for the truth and relentless defense of it.”

27 See, for example, Drews's intemperate letters to his former student Leopold Ziegler, which resulted in the end of their relationship: Drews to Ziegler, 24 June 1905 and 25 June 1905, in Leopold Ziegler Nachlass, K3053a, “17 Briefe im Zeitraum 1905–1925,” Badische Landesbibliothek, Karlsruhe.

28 See, for example, Drews to Hartmann, 11 April 1904, in PB, 413. Hartmann was deeply anti-Semitic, too, but he preferred to couch his views in the rhetoric of “helpful advice.” For astute comments on Hartmann's anti-Semitism, see Wolf, Philosoph der Gründerzeit, 203–214.

29 Drews to Hartmann, 11 April 1904, in PB, 399. Though wrong with regard to Natorp, Drews was not alone in seeing the Marburg school, led by Hermann Cohen, as oriented toward Judaism.

30 Drews to Hartmann, 8 March 1903, in PB, 361.

31 Drews, Arthur, “Die Persönlichkeit Gottes,” Preussische Jahrbücher 116, no. 1 (April 1904): 1–27 Google Scholar.

32 Hartman to Drews, 16 April 1904, in PB, 400.

33 A Harnack, dolf, Das Wesen des Christentums: Sechzehn Vorlesungen vor Studierenden aller Fakultäten im Wintersemetser 1899/1900 an der Universität Berlin gehalten, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1900)Google Scholar; the English edition is What is Christianity?, trans. Saunders, Thomas Bailey (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986)Google Scholar.

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35 Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums, 33; What is Christianity?, 51.

36 Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums, 36; What is Christianity?, 56.

37 Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums, 1–2; What is Christianity?, 2–3.

38 Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums, 31; What is Christianity?, 48.

39 Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums, 36; What is Christianity?, 56.

40 Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm, “Rettung der Persönlichkeit: Protestantische Theologie als Kulturwissenschaft des Christentums,” in Kultur und Kulturwissenschaften um 1900, ed. Bruch, Rüdiger Vom, Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Hübinger, Gangolf, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1989–1997), 1:103–131Google Scholar.

41 Theissen, Gerd and Winter, Dagmar, The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria, trans. Boring, M. Eugene (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), 44–65 Google Scholar, provides an excellent account of the ways Christian theologians used accounts of Jesus's personality to distinguish him from his Jewish context, but they tend to fold “heroism,” “genius,” and “personality” together, overlooking the specific resonances (with psychology and idealist philosophy) of the personality concept.

42 Platzhoff-Lejeune, Eduard, Werk und Persönlichkeit: Zu einer Theorie der Biographie (Minden in Westfalen: Bruns, 1903), 1Google Scholar.

43 Heidegger, Martin, “Per Mortem ad Vitam: Thoughts on Johannes Jörgensen's Lies of Life and Truth of Life (1910),” reprinted in Supplements: From the Earliest Essays to Being and Time and Beyond, ed. van Buren, John (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 35Google Scholar. I have modified the translation.

44 Platzhoff-Lejeune, Werk und Persönlichkeit, 1.

45 In The Magic Mountain (1924), Thomas Mann satirized this notion in his portrayal of the “personality” Mynheer Peeperkorn, a mysterious Dutchman who communicates in gestures more than words. His sufferings are compared to those of Christ and he inspires a discipleship among the patients of the Davos asylum. See Mann, , The Magic Mountain, trans. Woods, John E. (New York: Vintage, 1995), 538–616 Google Scholar.

46 For overviews of the “History of Religion School,” see Chapman, Mark David, Ernst Troeltsch and Liberal Theology: Religion and Cultural Synthesis in Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) 13–44 Google Scholar; and Marchand, Suzanne L., German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 259–270 Google Scholar.

47 Janssen, Nittert, Theologie fürs Volk: Der Einfluß der Religionsgeschichtliche Schule auf die Popularisierung der theologischen Forschung vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1999)Google Scholar.

48 Bousset, Wilhelm, Jesus (Halle: Gebauer-Schwetschke, 1904), 71Google Scholar.

49 Ibid., 69, 95–97, 102.

50 On Kalthoff, see Auswärter, Thomas, “Albert Kalthoff: Ein Bremer Pastor im Übergangsfeld von linkem Reform-Protestantismus und freigeistiger Bewegung,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 62, no. 1 (2010): 28–51 Google Scholar.

51 This quotation is from a 1905 petition of the Bremen Teachers Association, cited in Freybe, Gerhard, “Religionsunterricht oder nicht: Denkschrift der bremischen Lehrerschaft,” Zeitschrift für den evangelischen Religionsunterricht 17 (1905/1906): 287Google Scholar. On the radical religious environment in Bremen, see Hübinger, Gangolf, Kulturprotestantismus und Politik: Zum Verhältnis von Liberalismus und Protestantismus im wilhelminischen Deutschland (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1994), 113–129 Google Scholar.

52 Kalthoff, Albert, Das Christus-Problem: Grundlinien zu einer Sozialtheologie (Jena: Diederichs, 1902), 33–34 Google Scholar.

53 On Hackel and Monism, see Gangolf Hübinger, “Die monistische Bewegung: Sozialingenieure und Kulturprediger,” in Kultur und Kulturwissenschaften um 1900, 2:246–259; Richards, Robert J., The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008)Google Scholar; see also Daum, Andreas W., Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Bürgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Öffentlichkeit, 1848–1914 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1984)Google Scholar.

54 See Weir, Todd H., Secularism and Religion in Nineteenth-Century Germany: The Rise of the Fourth Confession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Weir's PhD dissertation carries the narrative into the Weimar Republic, see Weir, “The Fourth Confession: Atheism, Monism, and Politics in the Freigeistig Movement in Berlin, 1859–1924” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2005).

55 Drews to Hartmann, 17 July 1904, in PB, 406.

56 von Schnehen, Wilhelm, Der moderne Jesuskultus, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Neuer Frankfurter, 1907), 5Google Scholar.

57 Ibid., 12.

58 Ibid., 36n: Schnehen praised Loisy's book as the “work of a Catholic, who with his impartial presentation of the teaching of Jesus infinitely shames the Protestant, historian, and ‘critical’ theologian Adolf Harnack.” On Loisy in this context, see Roessell, Jean-Michel, “Les mystères païens et le mystère chrétien d'Alfred Loisy (1857–1940) et sa place dans les débats sur les origines du christianisme au début du XXe siècle,” Mythos: Revista di Storia delle Religione, n.s., 7 (2013): 73–95 Google Scholar.

59 Schnehen, Moderne Jesuskultus, 18.

60 Schweitzer alluded to Schnehen's approach in Quest, 362, grouping him among the students of Eduard von Hartmann who “try to prove that from an objective viewpoint the historical personality of Jesus was by no means the moral and religious ideal he has been made out to be in the history of theology.”

61 Schnehen, Moderne Jesuskultus, 24, 32–36.

62 Naumann, Friedrich, Briefe über Religion (Berlin: Die Hilfe, 1903)Google Scholar. On the development of Naumann's religious thinking in these years, see Fehlberg, Frank, Protestantismus und Nationaler Sozialismus: Liberale Theologie und politisches Denken um Friedrich Naumann (Bonn: Dietz, 2012), 354–360 Google Scholar, as well as the literature cited there. On Naumann's role in the formulation of an anti-political reform discourse in Germany, see Repp, Kevin, Reformers, Critics, and the Paths of German Modernity: Anti-Politics and the Search for Alternatives, 1890–1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 51–66 Google Scholar.

63 von Schnehen, Wilhelm, Friedrich Naumann vor dem Bankrott des Christentums (Leipzig: Thüringsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1907)Google Scholar. Schnehen was particularly critical of Naumann's image of Jesus in Jesus als Volksmann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1894)Google Scholar, which he dismissed as “an imaginary figure of religion, like all those Christ ideals of past centuries”: Friedrich Naumann vor dem Bankrott, 25.

64 Drews to Hartmann, 8 March 1903, in PB, 361.

65 Drews to Hartmann, 8 September 1903, in PB, 382.

66 Drews to Hartmann, 1 November 1903, in PB, 388. On Diederichs's interest in religious controversy and religious regeneration, see Werner, Meike, Moderne in der Provinz: Kulturelle Experimente im Fin de Siècle Jena (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2003), 130–156 Google Scholar; see also Hübinger, Gangof, “Kulturkritik und Kulturpolitk des Eugen-Diederichs-Verlags im Wilhelminismus. Auswege aus der Krise der Moderne,” in Umstrittene Moderne: Die Zukunft der Neuzeit im Urteile der Epoche Ernst Troeltschs, ed. Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm and Renz, Horst (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1987), 92–114 Google Scholar.

67 Drews, Arthur, Die Religion als Selbst-Bewusstsein Gottes: Eine philosophische Untersuchung über das Wesen der Religion (Jena: Diederichs, 1906)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Religion), vi.

68 Ibid., xi.

69 On the secularist rhetoric of “anti-confessionalism,” see Weir, Todd H., “The Specter of ‘Godless Jewry’: Secularism and the ‘Jewish Question’ in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Central European History 46, no. 4 (December 2013): 815–849 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Drews, Religion, 108n.

71 Ibid., 132–133.

72 Ibid., 133.

73 Ibid., 133.

74 Ibid., 202.

75 See also Drews, , “Die Persönlichkeit Gottes,” Preussische Jahrbücher 116, no. 1 (April 1904): 5–8 Google Scholar.

76 Drews, “Die Persönlichkeit Gottes,” 21.

77 Drews, Religion, 243–248.

78 The theory of a Semitic proclivity for monotheism and an Aryan proclivity for polytheism dated back to Ernst Renan's writings of the 1850s and had since been taken up and debated in German Völkerpsychologie. On these debates, see Oldender, Maurice, The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; see also my The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture from Romanticism to Nietzsche (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 211–233 Google Scholar.

79 Drews, Religion, 362.

80 Hartmann to Drews, 30 December 1905, in PB, 445.

81 Hartmann to Drews, 30 December 1905, in PB, 446.

82 Hartmann to Drews, 2 February 1904, in PB, 393.

83 Drews, Religion, 201.

84 Arthur Drews, Die Christusmythe, 1st ed. (Jena: Diederichs, 1909). Drews would publish three more editions of Die Christusmythe. In addition to the first edition, this article cites the fourth edition, Die Christusmythe, 4th ed., 2 vols. (Jena: Diederichs, 1910–1911)Google Scholar. The third edition of Die Christusmythe provided the basis for the English translation, The Christ Myth, trans. Burns, C. Delisle (London: Unwin, 1910)Google Scholar. Because Drews steadily reworked and revised his arguments between the appearance of the first edition (in May 1909) and the appearance of volume two of the fourth edition (in February 1911), anyone trying to characterize his views is aiming at a moving target.

85 Robertson, John, Christianity and Mythology (London: Watts, 1900)Google Scholar; and Robertson, , Pagan Christs: Studies in Comparative Hierology (London: Watts, 1903)Google Scholar.

86 Smith, William Benjamin, Der vorchristliche Jesus, nebst weiteren Vorstudien zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Urchristentums (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1906)Google Scholar. On Smith and Robertson, see the accounts in Schweitzer, Quest, 373–381; and Weaver, Historical Jesus in the Twentieth Century, 54–62.

87 Drews, Christusmythe, 1st ed., vii.

88 Ibid., ix.

89 Schweitzer, Albert, Von Reimarus zu Wrede: Eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesus-Forschung (Tübingen: Mohr, 1906), 249Google Scholar.

90 Drews, Christusmythe, 1st ed., x.

91 Drews, Christusmythe, 4th ed., 1:xiii–xiv.

92 Drews, Christusmythe, 1st. ed., 23.

93 Frazer, James, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 2nd ed. (London: MacMillan, 1900), 3:157–159Google Scholar. Some of the passages in Die Christusmythe linking Judaism and human sacrifice that, on first reading, one might be inclined to attribute to Drews's anti-Semitism, can in fact be traced back to Frazer.

94 Frazer, Golden Bough, 3:187–195.

95 Drews, Christusmythe, 1st ed., 25–39.

96 Ibid., 94–95.

97 Drews, Christusmythe, 1st ed., 163. Sensing perhaps that he had not driven this point home, Drews would add a second volume in the fourth edition especially dedicated to debunking the “evidences for the historicity of Jesus”: Drews, Christusmythe, 4th ed., vol. 2, Die Zeugnisse für die Geschichtlichkeit Jesu: Eine Antwort an die Schriftgelehrten mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der theologischen Methode (Jena: Diederichs, 1911)Google Scholar.

98 Drews, Christusmythe, 1st ed., 120.

99 Ibid., 179–180.

100 Ibid., 186.

101 Ibid., 189.

102 Ibid., 190.

103 Gunkel, Hermann, “Erwiderung,” Preussische Jahrbücher 140, no. 3 (June 1910): 521Google Scholar. On this episode, see Hamann, Konrad, Hermann Gunkel: Eine Biographie (Tübingen: Mohr and Siebeck, 2014), 152Google Scholar.

104 “Haeckel Kills the Soul,” New York Times, 8 May 1905, reprinted from the London Telegraph. For further context on these speeches, see Richards, Tragic Sense of Life, 359–360.

105 For the complete list, see Hübinger, Kulturprotestantismus und Politik, 124–125.

106 “Eingesandt,” Jenaische Zeitung, 25 January 1910.

107 On this point, see the announcement of Drews's appearance in Jena: “Ist Jesus eine historische Persönlichkeit?,” Jenaer Volksblatt, 23 January 1910.

108 Maurenbrecher, Max, Von Nazareth nach Golgotha: Untersuchungen über die weltgeschichtlichen Zusammenhänge des Urchristentums (Berlin: Die Hilfe, 1909)Google Scholar. See Schweitzer, Quest, 442–446.

109 Hat Jesus gelebt?, 43.

110 Ibid., 83.

111 Ibid., 95.

112 “Theologenzänk,” Vorwärts: Berliner Volksblatt, 3 February 1910.

113 “Ein theologisches Schau-Gefecht: Von einem Laien,” Staatsbürger-Zeitung, 3 February 1910.

114 “Ein Religionsgespräch über Jesus,” Berliner Volkszeitung, 3 February 1910.

115 F. W., “Ein Zeichen des Widerspruchs,” Germania: Zeitung für das Deutsche Volk, 4 February 1910.

116 For a detailed account, see “Jesus lebt,” Berliner Blatt, 22 February 1910.

117 Jesus lebt! Ansprachen, gehalten bei den großen öffentlichen Versammlungen am Sonntag dem 20. Februar 1910 im Zirkus Busch und im Dom zu Berlin. Veranstaltet von der Positiven Kirchlichen Vereinigung zur Pflege des evangelischen Lebens in Berlin (Berlin: Positive Union, 1910), 11Google Scholar.

118 See, for example, the comments of Pastor D. Philips, Jesus lebt, 14.

119 One Berlin newspaper reported that the number of withdrawals from the Prussian State Church had grown from 1,600 in 1903 to 15,000 in 1908, an almost tenfold increase, with most of the withdrawals coming from Berlin: “Die Austritte aus der Landeskirche,” Deutsche Zeitung, 12 September 1909, 1/733, “Kirchenaustrittsbewegung 03.1909–12.1912,” no. 13, Evangelisches Zentralarchiv, Berlin.

120 On the conflicts between liberal Protestantism and liberal Judaism in these years, see especially Wiese, Christian, Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany, trans. Harshav, Barbara and Wiese, Christian (Leiden: Brill, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

121 Vogelstein, [Heinemann], “Die Zukunft des Judentums,” Liberales Judentum: Monatsschrift für die religiösen Interessen des Judentums 2, no. 6–7 (June and July 1910): 127Google Scholar.

122 Baeck, Leo, “Unsere Stellung zu den Religionsgesprächen,” Liberales Judentum 2:6–7 (June and July 1910): 124Google Scholar.

123 Baeck, Leo, “Zur Frage der Christusmythe,” Liberales Judentum 2, no. 4 (April 1910): 94Google Scholar.

124 On Baeck's notion of a Christian rapprochement with Judaism, see Wiese, Challenging Colonial Discourse, 307–314.

125 Schweitzer provides an extensive bibliography in Quest, 391–393, but he focuses on Protestant theologians and their secularist opponents, overlooking the reactions of other groups, notably Germany's Jews.

126 Adolf Harnack, “Hat Jesus gelebt?,” Neue freie Presse, 15 May 1909, quoted in Harnack, Aus Wissenschaft und Leben (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1911), 2:167–168.

127 Harnack, “Hat Jesus gelebt?,” 169.

128 Ibid., 170.

129 Ibid., 175.

130 Ibid., 173.

131 Hege, Brent A. R., “Jesus Christ as Poetic Symbol: Wilhelm Bousset's Contribution to the Faith-History Debate,” Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte/Journal for the History of Modern Theology 16, no. 2 (December 2009): 197–216 Google Scholar.

132 Wilhelm Bousset, “Die Bedeutung der Person Jesu für den Glauben,” in Fünfter Weltkongress für freies Christentum und religiösen Fortschritt. Berlin 5. bis 10. August 1910  (Berlin: Verlag des Protestantischen Schriftenvertriebs, 1910).

133 On Schweitzer's second edition as a response to the Drews controversy, see especially Paget, James Carleton, “Albert Schweitzer's Second Edition of The Quest of the Historical Jesus ,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 88, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 3–39 Google Scholar.

134 On the later history of the Schweitzer-Harnack relationship, see Paget, James Carleton, “Albert Schweitzer and Adolf von Harnack—an Unlikely Alliance,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 122, no. 2–3 (2011): 257–287 Google Scholar.

135 Schweitzer, Quest, 397.

136 Ibid., 397.

137 Ibid., 403; on this point, see also Carleton Paget, “Albert Schweitzer's Second Edition,” 26–30.

138 I am grateful to James Carleton Paget for drawing my attention to this correspondence.

139 Moyn, Samuel, Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005), 121–124 Google Scholar.

140 Rosenzweig, Franz, “Atheistic Theology” (1911) in Philosophical and Theological Writings, trans. and ed. Franks, Paul W. and Morgan, Michael L. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000)Google Scholar, as cited in Moyn, Origins of the Other, 121.

141 On this, see Moyn, Origins of the Other, 119; also Rosenzweig, “Atheistic Theology,” 14–19, where he compares the role of “personality” in modern Protestant lives of Jesus with the role of “nation” in modern Jewish interpretations of the “chosen people,” noting  that in both cases the concept “myth” is used to conceive the divine as emerging from out of the human.

142 Repp, Reformers, Critics, and the Paths of German Modernity; Weir, Secularism and Religion; and Dickinson, Edward Ross, Sex, Freedom, and Power in Imperial Germany, 1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014)Google Scholar.

143 See especially Drews, Arthur, Das “Wort Gottes”: Zur religiösen Lage der Gegenwart (Mainz: Freie Religion, 1933)Google Scholar, which calls for a philosophically purified Christianity, a “Johannine religion” fully in the spirit of Lutheranism and German idealism.

144 A draft copy of the letter can be found in the Leopold Ziegler Nachlass: Gottlieb Graef to Leopold Ziegler, December 1936, Leopold Ziegler Nachlass, K3053a, “17 Briefe im Zeitraum 1905–1925,” Badische Landesbibliothek, Karlsruhe. It is unclear based on the draft which of the proposed signees did in fact sign the letter.