Felix Anton Blau

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Felix Anton Blau , also Felix Anton Blaue (born February 15, 1754 in Walldürn in the Odenwald; † December 23, 1798 in Mainz ) was a German Catholic priest, theologian, politician ( Jacobin ) and one of the most radical enlighteners in German Catholicism of the leading figures of the short-lived Mainz Republic after the French Revolution . He lived for a long time in Paris and Mainz.

Professional career

Blau was ordained a priest in May 1779 , after which he became chaplain in the parish church of St. Agatha in Aschaffenburg . In 1782 he became professor of philosophy in Mainz. In 1784 he received his doctorate in theology and became professor of dogmatics with a chair at the Episcopal University of Mainz and canon . At times he was also the sub-rain of the seminary . Despite his predominantly reactionary working environment here, he was fully committed in the spirit of the Kantian Age of Enlightenment against orthodoxy and for greater politicization or democratization as well as for republicanism and allowed his fellow students to read critical writings, whereby he expressed himself with the goals of the revolution the peaceful radicalization of European politics, solidarized. This made him an early proponent of the ideas of the French Revolution.

Felix Blau belonged to the Mainz circle of the Order of Illuminati and, on recommendation , met Friedrich Münter in Mainz in the summer of 1791 , with whom he became friends and had an extensive correspondence that was only interrupted by the French occupation of Mainz. On November 7, 1792, Blau also joined the Mainz Jacobin Club (Mainz clubists).

When Mainz was taken by the French on October 21, 1792, through the recommendation of his old friend Anton Joseph Dorsch , who had emigrated to France a year earlier, he received a position in the administration , which was provisional in Mainz for the archbishopric and the dioceses of Worms and Speyer had been established. In 1793 he, like Georg Forster - who said a lot of good things about Blau after their frequent meetings - took part in March as a deputy of the Rhenish National Convention. Initially still moderate, he was captured by German troops near Guntersblum and in Prussian fortress custody for twenty-two months ( Königstein Fortress) when Dorsch sent government emissaries back to France during the conquest of Mainz, and Blau was on a journey from Mainz to Landau ) taken. As a supporter of the Mainz Republic, he was ostracized by compatriots, denounced and condemned as a "traitor" (letter by F. Blaus from Paris to Fr. Münter in Copenhagen). He left the church. Through the exchange of prisoners, which was carried out by the Mainz authorities, he regained freedom in the peace treaty of Basel in 1795 and emigrated to Paris , or he was sent there as a condition of the Mainz authorities for his release. Here he was employed by the Commission de l'instruction publique for six months and in the following year, after the commission was abolished, until the summer of 1797, together with Georg Wilhelm Böhmer and his long-term closest friend Dorsch, he published the German magazine Der Pariser Brille, whose articles differed for the reclamation of the left bank of the Rhine, i.e. the unification of the Rhineland with France . With Böhmer he was also a justice of the peace in Bitburg around 1797 .

He criticized the revelation belief of his time and worked with Dorsch for a comprehensive religious reform. Important goals of Blau were the separation of church and state and the "salvation truth" of Catholicism to interpret rationalistically (compare also: Theological Rationalism ). In Paris, for example, Blau also socialized with the Franconian lawyer and publicist Georg Friedrich Rebmann or the Kiel professor Carl Friedrich Cramer , who, like him, were refugees or persecuted. After ceding the left bank of the Rhine , he found a new job in the Paris Ministry of Justice and in 1798 became a criminal judge in the new French department of Donnersberg and librarian at the Mainz Central and Special School, the University of Mainz, which was dissolved in the same year.

He died at the age of 44 from pneumonia on the 3rd Nivôse of the 7th year of the republic in Mainz. He was buried in the former seminar courtyard , now part of the Mainz retirement home.

In his honor, a bust was ceremoniously unveiled there in May 1799, but it is now considered lost. Many decades later, a street was named after him in his home town of Walldürn .

Works

  • De regula fidei catholicae. 1780.
  • Contributions to the improvement of external worship in the Catholic Church. Published anonymously with the liberation theologian Andreas Joseph Dorsch in 1789.
  • Critical History of Church Infallibility for Promoting a Free Examination of Catholicism. Frankfurt 1791 (anonymous).
  • Theses selectae de sacramentis. 1791.
  • Programma de vera notione libertatis humanae. Moguntiae. Crass. 1784.
  • Adoration of the pictures with regard to the new Algesheim miracle picture. Mainz 1788 ( digitized version )
  • About human moral education. 1795.
  • Criticism of the religious ordinances made in France since the revolution. Strasbourg 1797.

Literature, media

  • Helmut Mathy : Felix Anton Blau (1754–1798). A picture of life in Mainz from the time of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. At the same time a contribution to the radical Enlightenment theology on the Middle Rhine. In: Mainz magazine. Middle Rhine Yearbook for Archeology, Art and History 67/68 (1972/1973), pp. 1–29.
  • Jörg Schweigard: The love of freedom calls us to the Rhine. Enlightenment, reform and revolution in Mainz. Katz Casimir Verlag, Gernsbach 2005, ISBN 3-925825-89-4 , p. 90 ff., 132 ff .
  • Jörg Schweigard: Felix Anton Blau: early democrat, theologian, philanthropist . 1st edition. Logo-Verlag, Obernburg am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-939462-05-7 .
  • NN: Burial of the citizen Felix Blau, librarian of the University of Mainz on Viten Nivose VII year of the Fraenkische Republic. Mainz 1798.
  • Anne Cottebrune: Myth et réalité du “jacobinisme allemand” . Atelier National de Reproduction des Thèses, Lille 2005, ISBN 978-2-284-04884-8 (reviewed by Susanne Lachenicht , Historical Seminar, University of Hamburg: PDF; 64 kB ).
  • Emanuel Reader:  Blue, Felix Anton . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 699 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Arno Schilson: Blue, Felix Anton. In: Hans Dieter Betz: Religion in the past and present . Mohr Siebeck Verlag, Tübingen 1998-2005, Volume 1. ISBN 3-16-146941-0 , p. 1319: FAB
  2. ^ W. Daniel Wilson (ed.): Goethe's Weimar and the French Revolution. Böhlau Verlag, Weimar 2004, a: … Mainz p. 716, b: … found p. 571.
  3. ^ A b Hermann Schüttler: Members of the Illuminati Order. ars una Verlag, Munich 1991, p. 25.
  4. ↑ Edith Rosenstrauch-Königsberg: Freemasons, Illuminat, world citizens. Friedrich Münter's travels and letters in their European context. reimar hobbing verlag, Essen 1987, a: ... became p. 125, b: ... was there (p. 125), c: ... employed p. 126.
  5. ↑ Edith Rosenstrauch-Königsberg: Freemasons, Illuminat, world citizens. Friedrich Münter's travels and letters in their European context. Reimar Hobbing Verlag, Essen 1987, p. 125.
  6. ↑ Compare: Øjvind Andreasen, Helmuth Mathy (Ed.): Frederik Münters Reise nach Mainz (1791). In: Mainzer Zeitschrift , 62. 1967, pp. 56–80.
  7. ^ W. Daniel Wilson (ed.): Goethe's Weimar and the French Revolution. Böhlau Verlag, Weimar 2004, b p. 571.
  8. ↑ Edith Rosenstrauch-Königsberg: Freemasons, Illuminat, world citizens. Friedrich Münter's travels and letters in their European context. Reimar Hobbing Verlag, Essen 1987, p. 126.
personal data
SURNAME Blue, Felix Anton
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Blues, Felix Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Catholic priest, theologian, politician and enlightener in German Catholicism
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1754
PLACE OF BIRTH Walldürn in the Odenwald
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1798
Place of death Mainz