Albert Joseph Conlin

Albert Joseph Conlin (born March 8, 1669 in Meersburg on Lake Constance; † January 20, 1753 in Kutzenhausen ; pseudonym: Loncin von Gominn ) was a Catholic priest and writer. He is considered to be the most important imitator of Abraham a Santa Clara .

Life

Albert Joseph Conlin was born the first of eight children to the Conlin family. Conlin attended the Jesuit high school, which had existed in Ellwangen since 1658 .

In 1690, at the age of 21, Conlin matriculated at the University of Dillingen to become a secular priest . On March 16, 1692 he received the so-called minor orders . He received the subdiaconate , the first of the major ordinations, in the autumn of 1692, the diaconate followed in the winter of 1692, the presbyterate on Holy Saturday 1693. He held his first primacy on July 14, 1693. On August 15, 1693 Conlin took his first pastor's position in Munningen near Oettingen im Ries. He is described as a clever man who, however, is not so strict about morals. It is reported that he often goes on trips to the city of Oettingen, where he gets drunk. He is also said to dress badly and to be angry. Here he begins his writing activity in 1705. Until 1711 he wrote his seven-volume world of fools .

In 1722 Conlin moved to Kutzenhausen in the Augsburg region, where he was also the pastor. In 1725 he wrote one last book in Kutzenhausen; no other material has been preserved from his life in Kutzenhausen. He dies as a pastor in Kutzenhausen. The death register calls him a “vir jovialis”, famous and learned.

Complete works

During his time in Munningen, Conlin created his main work, the seven-volume fools world . With moralizing and entertaining intentions, human behavior is caricatured and illustrated by "over 200 funny and ridiculous incidents", "which not only the pastors on the Cantzel / but also any private person / in honest societies can use to their advantage". At the end of the series, in 1709 and 1711, the two volumes on fools with the title The Christian World-Wise Weeped The Folly of Those 25 Fools described in this book came out. The Happy Fool's Cure was published in 1725 , when Conlin was already living in Kutzenhausen. Structure and content are very similar to the earlier works, but the work is more carelessly designed, as no copperplate engravings have been added and gross errors have been made in the composition. The planned second part has also not appeared again.

History of the works

The development process of the fool's books shows one thing above all: Without Abraham a Santa Clara, the famous Augustinian priest and court preacher in Vienna, the books of Conlin would be inconceivable. Apparently, for financial reasons, Conlin had taken on a contract originally intended for Abraham a Santa Clara from the Augsburg publishers Quirinus Heyl and Heinrich Strötter. Instead of writing the books himself, however, Conlin mainly used the works of Abraham as models such as The Fool's Nest , Judas the Arch Rascal and The Winged Mercury , which after completion of the second volume led to a dispute with the same and in 1707 to a procedure at the Vicariate General in Augsburg led.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cf. Volker von Volckamer: Albert Joseph Conlin. In: Albert Schlagbauer (Ed.): Rieser Biographien. Nördlingen: Verlag des Verein Rieser Kulturtage 1993, p. 64.
2. ↑ Cf. Episcopal Ordinariate Diocese Rottenburg-Stuttgart: Baptismal records of the parish Ellwangen St. Vitus: The parents are recorded in the baptismal records from 1678 to 1681 by the birth of three daughters.
3. ↑ Cf. O. Kienberg: Notes on local history in Munningen, (handwritten, unpag.).
4. ↑ See Munningen parish register, entry from May 1, 1699.
5. ↑ See ibid.

literature

• Hofmann, Veronika: Pious enemy image woman. The Idea of ​​the Fool in Albert Joseph Conlin . A study on Germanistic and folkloric research into narrative (dissertation in print, Munich 2009).
• Horber, Ambros: Questions of authenticity with Abraham a Sancta Clara. Weimar: Duncker 1929. (= research on recent literary history, ed. By Dr. Walther Brecht). (At the same time Phil. Diss. Munich 1929).
• Schulz, Hans: Studies on Abraham a St. Clara . Freiburg i. Br. (At the same time Phil. Habil.-Schr. Freiburg 1910).
• Volckamer, Volker from: Albert Joseph Conlin. In: Albert Schlagbauer (Ed.): Rieser Biographien. Nördlingen: Publishing house of the Rieser Kulturtage association 1993.