Benedict Maria von Werkmeister

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Benedikt Maria Werkmeister

Benedikt Maria Werkmeister , from 1817 by Werkmeister , (born October 22, 1745 in Füssen , † July 16, 1823 in Stuttgart ) was a German Roman Catholic theologian and church reformer of the Enlightenment.

Life

The son of the master butcher Balthasar Werkmeister and his wife Maria Regina (née Mayr) were given the baptismal name Leonhard Werkmeister. A lively spirit stirred in him early on, combined with excellent natural features. He laid the foundation for his scientific education in his place of birth, where he attended the local school until he was ten. In the years 1753 to 1757 he received lessons in the Latin language and at the same time in music at the school in Schongau. His uncle, Pastor Mayer in Schwabbruck, supported him until he started as a novice . Through the mediation of a relative from the clergy, he came to Neresheim Abbey in 1757 .

There he began his studies. In 1764 he was a novice and in 1765 a religious professor . In 1767 he came to the Benediktbeuern monastery for further studies . From that time until 1769 he dealt mainly with theology, especially with canon law, biblical exegesis and the oriental languages. In 1769 he was ordained a priest in Augsburg and was the novice master in the Neresheim Abbey the next year. The philosophical lectures he gave there he continued for two years at the Prince-Bishop's Lyceum in Freising . From 1774 to 1777 he was appointed librarian and archivist in his monastery in Neresheim. In 1778 he was professor of philosophy in Freising, entered the Illuminati order at that time and in 1780 became librarian, professor of canon law and director of higher studies in Neresheim.

In 1784 Duke Carl Eugen von Württemberg appointed him to Stuttgart as court preacher. There, Werkmeister made sure that the religious cult and the liturgy were arranged more appropriately by means of a new hymn book that he had written. How excellent his talent as a pulpit speaker was, shows the clarity of spirit, strength and abundance of his sermons at the time, which appeared in 1815 in three volumes. However, conditions arose which again removed him from that sphere of activity corresponding to his inclinations. A persistent haemorrhoid condition, accompanied by dizziness and severe headache, forced him to suspend his lectures and made any literary work difficult for him. He tried in vain to find recovery on a vacation trip undertaken in 1790 that took him to Heidelberg, Darmstadt, Aschaffenburg, Hanau, Wetzlar, Giessen, Frankfurt, Mainz, Mannheim and Karlsruhe.

While he was still struggling with the ailments of a broken health, his previous circumstances were threatened with an unpleasant change for him when the in several ways valued but somewhat bigoted Duke Ludwig Eugen von Württemberg took over the government. With the approval of the imperial prelate of Neresheim Benedikt Maria Angehrn , to whose monastery community he still belonged at the time, foreman was secularized in 1790 and unsuccessfully asked Emperor Leopold II for a canonical in Speyer. The Duke's aversion to foremen was clearly evident when he received his dismissal in 1794 with a low pension of 300  florins. He wanted to face the Duke and defend himself, but on the advice of his friends, he failed to do so. However, patrons were found who helped overcome his temporary predicament.

Regardless of his secularization, which at that time was still regarded as half an apostasy , the abbot in Neresheim offered him a place of refuge in his monastery. Under the protection of that man, surrounded by benevolent clergymen, he lived there from May 1794, quietly and contentedly, in a happy independence. The fresh mountain air, combined with the help of a skilled doctor, strengthened his ailing health and soon he felt strong enough to use the monastery library. His inclination particularly attracted him to the Roman poets, orators and philosophers, whose writings he had grown fond of in his early youth. In August 1794 he was able to preach again. Every feeling of fear and doubt that had previously accompanied him to the pulpit seemed to be gone.

He did not fall in favor with the abbot, despite the repeated attempts by his opponents to accuse him of heresy . After Werkmeister had worked at the court orchestra in Stuttgart for another year in 1795, his patrons found him a pastor in Steinbach (Neckar) in 1796. The income from this position was very meager, but the country life had had a positive effect on his health. During that time he was particularly involved in community life and showed a great interest in the local schools and health care. In 1802, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, he achieved the liturgical abolition of the images of the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost. In 1804 he removed the usual equestrian processions and in 1806 the holy grave. But he also made changes at the festivals .

His health was shaken again by the warfare and especially by the sacking of his village and house during a foray by French troops. A larger sphere of activity opened up to him in 1807. At that time, while retaining his pastor's position, he was appointed clerical councilor to Stuttgart. From then on, Werkmeister was particularly interested in the development of the school system and he promoted the training of the teachers required for this. He was elected to a supervisory body, which had to take care of the tasks of the newly founded Catholic State University in Ellwangen, for which he received an honorary theological doctorate from this institution in 1815.

When the school regulations for the Catholic part of the Kingdom of Württemberg were announced in 1810, Werkmeister received the Order of Civil Merit after he was appointed a member of the then newly established censorship college in the same year. In 1816 he was a member of the high school administration and received the character of a church council. The next year he was senior church councilor and knight of the Württemberg crown. Working tirelessly allowed him to regain his health. It made him reach old age. In undiminished possession of his spiritual powers and with calm surrender to the will of God, he passed away at the age of 78.

Act

Werkmeister began his writing activity in 1773 and continued it until 1816. All of his writings, most of which appeared anonymously, although his authorship soon became known, served the purpose of bringing about reform in the Church in the fields of liturgy, doctrine, and the constitution. It unites the different directions in which the Enlightenment of the second half of the 18th century paved its way in literature as well as in legislation since Joseph II and also on the part of many bishops. The like-minded people were in touch with one another everywhere. Werkmeister was friends with the radical Felix Anton Blau , to whom he dedicated a warm obituary, in which he praised him as a model for all Catholic theologians , with the Mainz professor Anton Joseph Dorsch , he was close to Ignaz Heinrich von Wessenberg and had also established connections with Protestants, so among others with Gottlieb Jakob Planck .

The position taken by Werkmeister was reluctant to the Roman Catholic Church. This is shown most sharply in the writing of Thomas Freikirch, or frank inquiries into the infallibility of the Catholic Church. From a cath. Scholars of God who rejected the infallibility of the church. Already earlier he had standing on this point of view in his contributions to the improvement of the cath. Liturgy that denies spiritual power as a legal one. In other writings and essays he called for a completely modern upbringing of the clergy, advocated the permissibility of the full secularization of the priests, the solvability of marriage according to the principles that applied to Protestants, whose divorced marriages he also considered dissolved according to Catholic principles held. He advocated the lifting of celibacy and so on.

His senior clerical authorities had never brought any action against him for these views. This and his impeccable lifestyle, his principles, which never violate spiritual morality, explain that he was given a decisive position in the ecclesiastical and political field in Württemberg. His draft of a new constitution for the German Catholic Church in the German confederation also had a great influence . Printed in the German fatherland . In this work he advised against a regulation of the Catholic church relations through a formal concordat with the Pope, he only advocated recognition of the essential rights of the Pope, as assumed by Josephinism , demanded the establishment of the individual points of the church constitution by state law, which the Pope was to be submitted for acceptance. This draft was distributed to the members of the government in Frankfurt in order to regulate the conference of Catholic Church matters in 1818.

Together with Ignaz von Jaumann (1778–1862) he had worked out the general principles according to which a Concordat should be concluded in German states . This work became the basis of the Württemberg government for a sovereign ordinance in 1830, which in the states of the Upper Rhine Church Province remained the legal basis for the relationship between state and church until the 1950s and 1960s. He also exerted an influence on large circles of the clergy, not only through his writings, but also through the magazine he founded, the annual magazine for theology and canon law of Catholics . Such active work naturally also called opponents on the scene, who used the diverse publication opportunities of that time to take action against him.

Publications

  • Positiones ex universa Philosophia. Dillingen 1772
  • Positiones logicae. Dillingen 1773
  • Positiones metaphysicae. Freising 1773
  • Funeral speech in memory of the Princess Maria Theresa, Imperial Princess of Oettingen-Oettingen and Oettingen-Wallerstein. Wallerstein 1776
  • Ode to this bereavement. Oettingen 1776
  • Talk about the high feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas. Dillingen 1777
  • Tentamen logicum. Augsburg 1779
  • Tentamen psychologicum. Freising 1779
  • Tentamen philosophicum. Freising 1779
  • Speech when Father Reissweg and Father Heiland solemnly renewed their religious vows. Dillingen 1781
  • Irrelevant proposal for the reformation of the lower Catholic clergy, together with materials for the reformation of the higher. Munich 1782
  • Moral speech about Matth. 22, 15-22., Held in the presence of Sr. Your Highness of the Duke of Würtemberg at Neresheim on the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost. 1783, Noerdlingen 1784
  • About Christian tolerance. A book for priests and monks. Frankfurt and Leipzig (Erlangen) 1784 ( online )
  • Funeral speech for the outward ride of the Princess Maria Theresia von Oettingen-Wallerstein. 1784
  • Hymnal, with attached public prayer, for use in the Catholic court orchestra in Stuttgart. Stuttgart 1784, 4th edition, Ulm 1797
  • Moral speech about Matth. 24, 30. Stuttgart 1784
  • Speech about proverb Salomon 20, 28th Stuttgart 1785
  • Worship of God in the char week, for the use of the duke. Translated to the Württemberg court chapel. Stuttgart 1786
  • About the German mass and supper institutions in the Catholic court chapel at Stuttgart; a letter to instruct the Mainz journalists. Stuttgart 1787
  • About the new Catholic catechism, on the occasion of a Mainz award. Frankfurt am Main 1789
  • Thomas Freikirch, or frank inquiries into the infallibility of the Catholic Church, by a Catholic scholar. 1. Vol. Frankfurt am Main (Göttingen) 1792
  • Theological opinion on the question: Can a clergyman who is in the higher consecrations, e.g. B. a priest, dismissed from his clergy and reassigned to the laity? To the heart of German princes and bishops. Frankfurt am Main 1800
  • To the immodest admirers of the saints, especially Mary, an instruction according to the true Catholic doctrine. Hadamar 1801
  • New prayer book for enlightened Catholic Christians, with the approval of the Most Reverend Vicariate in Bruchsal. Edited by Ph. Joss with a preface. Brunner. Heilbronn 1801, 11th edition. Heilbronn 1818
  • Defense of the new prayer book published by Pastor Brunner for enlightened Catholic Christians. Frankfurt and Leipzig 1801
  • Letter from a German pastor to the uncompromised clergy returning to France, in which they are urged to treat their commons more sensibly than before, to maintain harmony with the sworn clergy and to submit to the state legally; together with a frank examination of the alleged schism and the Breven Pius VI issued about it. Germania (Hadamar) 1802
  • Journal of Catholic Theology. From a society of Catholic theologians, 1st volume, 1st to 3rd booklet. Hadamar 1802-1803
  • Proposal how the priest marriage could gradually be introduced in the German Catholic Church; along with materials for a future German Concordate. Ulm 1803
  • Proof that the band divorces customary among Protestants are also valid according to Catholic principles, and that these band divorces could and should also be introduced with Catholics in important cases. Karlsruhe 1804, 2nd edition. Karlsruhe 1810
  • Design of a good village school by a Catholic priest in Swabia. Rothenburg 1804
  • Comments on Mr. Jäger's investigation: According to the teaching of Scripture and the Church of ancient history, whether divorce is permitted or not? From the author of the proof that the divorces customary among Protestants are also valid according to Catholic principles, etc. Würzburg and Bamberg 1805, ( online )
  • New investigations into the divorce from the tape according to Catholic principles, in which Mr. Jäger's answer to the remarks and Mr. Professor Kübel's objections to the evidence, etc., are refuted. Bamberg 1806
  • Annual publication for theology and canon law of Catholics. Edited by a Catholic theologian. Ulm 1806-1820. 5 volumes (each made up three volumes)
  • Hymnal to be used in the worship of God in the Catholic Church. Tübingen 1807, 2nd edition. Tübingen 1809, 3rd edition Tübingen 1820
  • Four booklets of melodies for the above hymn book. Tübingen 1808
  • Letter to a good friend about Canonikus Fabricius zu Bruchsal, along with a short preparation of his book: About prayer, prayer books, and the need for a sharpened state and church police. with regard to ascetic and other scriptures that influence the religious and moral education of the people. Frankfurt and Leipzig 1808
  • Two theological reports: 1) on the nullity of the involuntary monastic profession. 2) On the oath of the bishops to the Pope and on the creed. From a Catholic theologian. (Augsburg) 1808
  • Calendar for the Catholic residents of Württemberg on d. J. 1809-1811. 3 years
  • About the peculiarities of Pestalozzi's method; Dedicated to the clergy of the Protestant and Catholic Confession present in Heilbronn. Tübingen 1809
  • German ritual for Catholic pastors. Freiburg and Constance 1811
  • Sermons held in Stuttgart and Hohenheim in the years 1784–1791. Ulm 1812-1815. 3 vol.
  • About the fear of some Protestants of the Pope and the Jesuits. A word to heart, especially for Protestant princes and governments. Germany (Karlsruhe) 1816
  • Draft of a new constitution for the German Catholic Church in the German Confederation. Printed in the German fatherland. (Karlsruhe) 1816
  • Letter to Mr. Ritter v. Lang about a strange review in the Felder'schen literary newspaper against his writing: P. Marcelli Amores. Kempten 1816. Ä.
  • On the abolition of celibacy. Ulm 1818 (in collaboration with J. Salat.) ( Digitized version )
  • Collection of some small essays by Catholic and Protestant writers on Bible societies. Bible reading and biblical preachers. With a preface and many comments, edited by a Catholic theologian. Rotweil 1823
  • Aloys Henhöfer's religious enthusiasm and fate. Gmuend 1823

literature

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Werkmeister, Benedikt Maria von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Foreman, Benedikt Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman Catholic theologian
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1745
PLACE OF BIRTH Feet
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 1823
Place of death Stuttgart