Adolf Theodor Julius Ludwig

Adolf Theodor Julius Ludwig (born February 19, 1808 in Płock on the Vistula , † 1876 in Warsaw ) was a Lutheran theologian and, as superintendent general, leading clergyman of the Evangelical Augsburg Church in Poland .

Life

Born the son of a Jewish tailor, Adolf Theodor Julius Ludwig attended the voivodship school in his hometown and then studied theology at the universities of Warsaw and Berlin . In Warsaw he met the Polish philosopher and mystic Bronislaw Ferdynand Trentowski , and in Berlin Friedrich Schleiermacher and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel were his university teachers.

After the vicariate, Ludwig worked as a pastor in Włocławek from 1829 to 1834 and then worked as a pastor in Warsaw, where he stayed until 1876. In 1836 he was appointed a member of the consistory , and from 1838 he was also superintendent of the Diocese of Warsaw .

In 1849 Ludwig was finally appointed general superintendent and thus leading clergyman of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Poland, at the same time as vice-president of the consistory.

When he was almost blind, Ludwig was released from the duties of general superintendent on November 13, 1874, but remained a pastor in the Warsaw congregation until 1875. His death at the age of 68 came as a surprise. He found his final resting place in the Augsburg cemetery in Warsaw. He was succeeded by Paul Woldemar von Everth .

Ludwig was married, the marriage remained childless. The couple adopted the illegitimate son of a pastor who had died by suicide and who later became a Russian general and president of the Warsaw Evangelical-Augsburg College.

Act

Adolf Theodor Julius Ludwig was an ardent supporter of rationalism . After taking office as general superintendent, he immediately tried to introduce the Bromberg Catechism and the German hymnbook, which he had revised , in all parishes . With such theological-rationalistic assumption of influence, Ludwig encountered strong resistance from within the church.

This made itself even more noticeable when Ludwig turned against the Moravian Brethren and made it his duty to "destroy the Herrnhut cause in Poland". Herrnhuter were not allowed to be church leaders during his tenure, let alone hold a public office in the church. The rift in the then Polish Evangelical-Augsburg Church could only be resolved again by Ludwig's successor in office, Paul Woldemar von Everth.

In his theological-rationalistic view, Ludwig found his sharpest opponent in the Jewish Christian Johann Jakob Benni. In his parishes in Petrikau and Tomaszów Mazowiecki, he gathered a group of preachers who were faithful to the Bible, who set themselves the task of counteracting rationalism in the church through pure preaching of the word and Bible-based instruction and pastoral care. The arguments were verbose and vehement.

Ludwig's participation in the creation of the very important Church Law of 1849, which was confirmed by the Russian Tsar Nicholas I and provided for a consistorial constitution for all Evangelical Lutheran communities in the Kingdom of Poland, was positively perceived . Ludwig also campaigned for the establishment of new congregations, the construction of churches and prayer houses and the teachers' college in Warsaw in 1866. The Tsarist government awarded him the Order of St. Vladimir 3rd Class, St. Stanislaus 1st Class and St. Anna 1st Class for his loyalty.

literature

• Eduard Kneifel : The pastors of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Poland. A biographical pastor's book ; Eging i. Lower Bavaria: self-published, 1967
• Eduard Kneifel: The development and growth of the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Poland 1517-1939 ; Vierkirchen: E. Kneifel (self-published), [1988?]