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The View from the Province. A Dilemma for Protestants in Germany, 1648–1918

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Extract

Uber dem Berg gibst auch Leute. This ultramontane remark made in 1742 by Christoph Matthäus Pfaff, professor of theology and chancellor of Tübingen University between 1720 and 1756, was intended to shake students out of their cosy, provincial and exclusive Lutheran theology. It was time, so Pfaff argued, they opened windows, put aside their arrogant hair-splitting about correct Lutheran doctrine, and looked at the wider Protestant world beyond Württemberg. Knowledge of the sources of the Christian Church, and of the customs and legal shape of Protestantism in Germany as it had developed since the Reformation, provided the only sure defence of the Protestant Church in an age when autocratic behaviour was fashionable with princes, and the temporal authority of Popes Clement xi and Clement XII was still an inescapable fact.

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 Pfaff, C. M., Academische Reden über das so wohl allgemeine als auch Teutsche Protestantische Kirchen-Recht, Tübingen 1742, 34.Google Scholar

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4 Ibid. i. 75 and ii. 132. Bühler, A., Kirche und Staat bei Rudolph Sohm, Winterthur 1965, 50, 117.Google Scholar For survival of the ‘college’ idea in the Weimar constitution see Schlaich, K., Kollegialtheorie: Kirche, Recht und Staat in der Aufklärung, Munich 1969, 27Google Scholar; Vermeil, E., La Constitution de Weimar, Strasburg 1923, 186.Google Scholar

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21 Rieker, K., Die rechtliche Stellung der evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung bis zur Gegenwart, Leipzig 1893, 246–7.Google Scholar Thomasius' religion of the heart can be seen in the preface to his Recht evangelischer Fürsten, namely ‘Die christliche Religion ist eine zärtliche Sache und will mit gelinden Händen traktieret sein, am meisten aber ist ihr der Zwang zuwider’. Seeberg, R., Studien zur Geschichte des Begriffs der Kirche, Erlangen 1885, i. 154.Google Scholar

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25 Herder, J. G., Werke, Müller, J. G. et al. (eds), Stuttgart-Tübingen 1827-1830, xxii. 204–5.Google Scholar Also ibid. xxi. 232.

26 Müller, J. G., Aus dem Herder'sehen Hause, Aufzeichnungen (1780–1782), Berlin 1881, 31–2.Google Scholar

27 The obligation to pay fees to the parish vicar for baptism, marriage and burial by those of different denominations living in the parish was gradually abolished in the German states between 1818 and 1904, Freisen, J., Die katholische und protestantische Pfarrzwang und seine Aufhebung in Osterreich und den deutschen Bundesstaaten, Paderborn 1906.Google Scholar

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32 Zeeden, E. W., ‘Die katholische Kirche in der Sicht des deutschen Protestantismus im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Spörl, J. (ed.), Zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik, Festschrift für Georg Schreiber, Munich-Freiburg 1953, 433–56.Google Scholar

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35 The Balthasar family made a name in eighteenth-century Swedish Pomerania as senior clergy and jurists who patronised local history. Balthasar, J. H. (1690—1763) published Erste (und zweite Sammlung) Einiger zur Pommerischen Kirchen-Historie gehörigen Schriften, 2 vols, Greifswald 1723-1725Google Scholar; his younger brother, Augustin Balthasar (1701–86), wrote on Pomeranian ecclesiastical law in the manner of the new Jus, namely Jus ecclesiasticum pastorale, oder vollständige Anleitung wie sich Prediger, Kirchen- und Schulbediente, in Lehre, Leben, Wandel und Amt den Kirchengeselzen gemäβ zu verhallen, 2 vols, Rostock-Greifswald 1760–3. See n. 22 for Böhmer's similar work. There is a charming sketch of Augustin by Pyl, T., Dr. j.u. Augustin Balthasars Leben und Schriften nach dessen Selbstbiographie etc., Greifswald 1875.Google Scholar D. G. Strube (1694–1776), a star pupil of Thomasius and Böhmer, and a close friend of Münchhausen, was noted for his writing on local history, especially his vindication of the rights of the Protestant estates and peasantry in the Catholic prince-bishopric of Hildesheim. Much of this is collected in what he called, with tongue in cheek, Nebenstunden, 6 vols, Hildesheim-Hanover 1742–68.

36 Landsberg, , Rechtswissenschaft, 308.Google Scholar

37 ‘It is obvious that the text-books of the Seventeenth century can no longer serve the same purpose as they did then, but now in large measure belong merely to the realm of historical presentation’: The Christian Faith, Mackintosh, H. R. and Stewart, J. S. (eds), Edinburgh 1928, 89Google Scholar, para. 19. 2. Also cited by Senft, C., Wahrhaftigkeit und Wahrheit. Die Theologie des ig. Jahrhunderts zwischen Orthodoxie und Aufklärung, Tübingen 1956, 3, 40.Google ScholarValjavec, F., ‘Des Woellnersche Religionsedikt und seine geschichtliche Bedeutung’, in Festschrift Schreiber, 386400.Google Scholar

38 Pieper, P., Kirchliche Statistik Deutschlands, Tübingen 1899, 3.Google Scholar

39 Stäudlin, , Kirchliche Geographie und Statistik, i. 32, 112.Google Scholar

40 Rieker, , Rechtliche Stellung, 248Google Scholar, cites in particular Eichhorn, , Grundsätze des Kirchenrechts (1831), i. 455Google Scholar (see n. 45). Continuity can be seen in Richter's edition of Böhmer's, J. H. two-volume Corpus juris canonici (1747).Google Scholar He published this in two volumes between 1836 and 1839. Schrader, , Universität zu Halle, i. 147.Google ScholarDove, R. W., ‘Aemilius Ludwig Richter und seine Zeit’, ZfK vii (1867), 274Google Scholar, 27g.

41 Dove's comment in ibid. 277.

42 On the development of these ideas before 1918 see Smend, R., ‘Evangelische Kirchenrechtswissenschaft’, in Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3rd edn, Tübingen 1959, iii. 1515–19Google Scholar; NDB ix. 190–1, ‘Hinschius’.

43 NDB v. 443–4. Friedberg was also influential as co-editor with Dove, R. W. of the Zeitschrift βir Kirchenrecht, 1st ser. 1861-1889Google Scholar (22 vols), and 2nd ser. with E. Sehling, 1891–1916 (25 vols).

44 NDB xi. 21–2, ‘Kahl’. Kahl's views in 1918 are analysed by Vermeil, , Weimar, 186Google Scholar, 317.

45 Eichhorn, K. F., Grundsätze des Kirchenrechls der katholischen und evangelischen Religionsparlei in Deutschland, 2 vols, Tübingen 1831Google Scholar; Richter, A. L., Lehrbuch des katholischen und evangelischen Kirchenrechts, Leipzig 1842Google Scholar; idem, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts, Urkunden und Register zur Geschichte des Rechts und der Verfassung der evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland, 2 vols, Weimar 1846. Critical commentary by Rieker, Rechtliche Stellung, preface, and Sehling, Kirchenordnungen i. xii. Protestant ecclesiastical law as such came into its own with Eichhorn and Richter. But the comparison of this law with Catholic canon law only began to work in the 1880s. This is apparent in the 4th edn of von Schulte's, J. F.Lehrbuch des katholischen und evangelischen Kirchenrechts nach dem gemeinen Rechte der deutschen Länder und Österreichs, Giessen 1886.Google Scholar

46 Dove, , ‘Richter’, viii. 363Google Scholar, 365.

47 Ibid. 303, 336, 356–7.

48 Ramm, T., Familienrecht: Recht der Ehe, Munich 1984, i. 68.Google Scholar See also Conrad, H., ‘Der parliamentarische Kampf um die Zivilehe bei Einführung des Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuches für das Deutsche Reich’, in Festschrift Schreiber, 474–93.Google Scholar

49 Lowrie, W., The Church and its Organization in Primitive and Catholic Times, London 1904, 156.Google Scholar For criticism of Kahl's views on Christian religious custom, ibid. 171.

50 von Böhmer, Erich, Genealogie der von Justus Henning Böhmer abstammenden Familien Böhmer und von Böhmer, Munich 1892.Google ScholarADB liii. 340–3, ‘Richter’.

51 Ibid. 342.