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Three New Schleiermacher Letters Relating to His Würzburg Appointment of 1804

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Albert L. Blackwell
Albert L. Blackwell
Affiliation:
Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina 29613
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Extract

In a letter written on his thirty-fifth birthday, November 21, 1803, Schleiermacher called the year just past the unhappiest of his life. This troubled year provides the background for three letters Schleiermacher wrote to the Würzburg theologian Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus in January, February, and May, 1804, which are published for the first time below. The first letter is Schleiermacher's reply to an invitation, transmitted by Paulus, for Schleiermacher to join the theological faculty of the University of Würzburg. The second relates to Schleiermacher's acceptance of this Bavarian appointment and to his plans to move there. The third explains the necessity Schleiermacher subsequently faced of breaking his Würzburg contract in order to obey King Friedrich Wilhelm III's command to remain in his Prussian fatherland.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 68 , Issue 3-4 , October 1975 , pp. 333 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1975

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References

* I wish to express my gratitude to Hans Engler of Erskine College and to Use Engler and Lore Johnson of Furman University for their invaluable assistance in the work of deciphering Schleiermacher's handscript.

1 Meisner, Heinrich, ed., Schleiermacher als Mensch. Sein Werden. Familienund Freundesbriefe 1783 bis 1804(Stuttgart/Gotha: Friedrich Andraes Perthes, 1922) 321. Hereafter cited as Mensch.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 296–98, 306. None of Eleonore's letters to Schleiermacher has ever come to light. We know of this one only from Schleiermacher's account of it.

3 Meisner, Heinrich, ed., Briefe Friedrich Schleiermachers an Ehrenfried und Henriette von Willich geb. von Mühlenfels, 1801–1806 (Berlin: Literaturarchiv-Gesellschaft, 1914) 66.Google Scholar

4 Boenigk, O. F. von, ed., Schleiermacher und seine Lieben. Nach Originalbriefen der Henriette Herz (Magdeburg: In der Creutz'schen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1910) 61–62.Google Scholar

5 Mensch, 325. Schleiermacher's emphases. All translations from the German are the author's.

6 See for example Mensch, 262 and 290.

7 Mensch. 332.

8 Ibid., 332–33.

9 Jonas, Ludwig and Dilthey, Wilhelm, eds., Aus Schleiermachers Leben in Briefen (4 vols.; Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1858–1863) 3. 277. Hereafter cited as Briefe.Google Scholar

10 Mensch, 325.

11 Briefe, 3. 401.

12 Ibid., 376.

13 Friedrich Schlege's former sister-in-law Caroline had divorced A. W. Schlegel only a few months before and come to Würzburg as Schelling's wife.

14 Mensch, 334.

15 Ibid., 320.

16 Süskind, Hermann, Der Einfluss Schellings auf die Entwicklung von Schleiermachers System (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1909), esp. 58–63Google Scholar. See also Fuchs, Emil, “Wandlungen in Schleiermachers Denken zwischen der ersten und zweiten Ausgabe der Reden,” Theologische Studien und Kritiken 76 (1903) 88–93Google Scholar, and Grossmann, Walter, “Schelling's Copy of Schleiermacher's Über die Religion,” Harvard Library Bulletin 13 (Winter, 1959) 47–50.Google Scholar

17 Mensch, 335.

18 Briefe, 3. 315. Schlegel's emphases.

19 Mensch, 334. Three months after Schleiermacher's first letter to Paulus we find A. W. Schlegel urging Schleiermacher to demand a firm contract in view of the shaky condition of Bavarian finances. See Dilthey, Wilhelm, Leben Schleiermachers, third edition, edited by Redeker, Martin (2 half-vols.; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970) 2. 87n.Google Scholar

20 Briefe, 3. 387.

21 Ibid., 387–88.

22 Mensch, 341.

23 Ibid.

24 Item No. 751/752 of the Schleiermacher Nachlass in the Literatur-Archiv der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Emphasis added.

25 Leben Schleiermachers, 2. 212–13.

26 Briefe. 3. 390.

27 Ibid., 393.

28 Ibid., 390n.

29 Mensch, 342.

30 Briefe, 3. 406.

31 See the account of the final separation of Schleiermacher and Eleonore Grunow in Schleiermacher's letter of November 16, 1805, in Fr. Schleiermacher's Briefwechselmit J. Chr. Gass (Berlin: GeorgReimer, 1852) 38–39.Google Scholar

32 Used by permission of the Harvard College Library. According to Raack, Richard C., “Schleiermacher's Political Thought and Activity, 1806–1813,” Church History 28 (December, 1959)Google Scholar note 16, these letters are listed, with “extracts,” in Heinrici, Karl Ernst, Autographen Katalog, Versteigerung LXIII (Berlin: 1920)Google Scholar. So far as I have been able to determine, the Heinrici volume is not available in this country. I have found no reference to these letters elsewhere in the Schleiermacher literature.

33 Mensch. 318.

34 August Hermann Niemeier (1754–1828).

35 Upon leaving Berlin for Stolp in 1802, Schleiermacher had written of his ministerial friends in Berlin, “they hope, more than I, to see me here in a few years as Court Preacher.” Briefe, 1. 299.

36 The Würzburg offer Schleiermacher finally accepted stipulated a fixed salary of 150 Carolinen. Leben Schleiermachers, 2. 213–15.

37 Freundin (feminine): probably Dorothea Mendelssohn Veiti whom Schlegel was to marry in April, 1804.

38 Apparently Paulus had written that his wife was eager to be of help to Schleiermacher but was not sure how much she would be able to do being a woman — to which Schleiermacher is here protesting.

39 A Minister of the Bavarian government.

40 Paulus, Schleiermacher, and Karl Heinrich Fuchs, members of Würzburg's theological faculty.

41 Without Eleonore Grunow as his wife, presumably.

42 Schleiermacher's half sister Anna Maria Louise, or “Nanny,” who in 1817 was to marry Ernst Moritz Arndt. She was born in 1786, after Schleiermacher had left home for his schooling.

43 Possibly a letter that has not survived, though this may be a reference to Schleiermacher's discussion of salary in the first letter above, that of January 11.