Carl Jatho

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Carl Wilhelm Jatho (born September 25, 1851 in Cassel , † March 11, 1913 in Cologne ) was a Protestant pastor who was dismissed from his service because of teaching objections.

Life

Carl Jatho was born as the son of the Protestant pastor Louis Jacob Victor Oskar Jatho and Louise Sophie, née Klingelhöfer. During the Franco-Prussian War , he graduated from high school in 1871 in order to still take part in the war. In the fall of 1871 he began studying theology in Marburg and then Leipzig . After completing his studies, he accepted a position as a religion teacher in Aachen in 1874 . After the second theological exam before the consistory in Koblenz , he was pastor of the evangelical congregation in Bucharest for nine years from 1876 after his marriage to Johanna Becker from Soest (this marriage had four sons, including Carl Oskar Jatho ) . Then he took up a job in Boppard , also to cure a malaria disease . From July 1, 1891, he was pastor of the Christ Church in Cologne . The presbytery had elected him unanimously.

In Cologne, his teaching and preaching were warned by the general superintendent of the Rhenish church province of the old Prussian regional church . The accusation was that he taught pantheism and contradicted the early church confessions. The basis for these allegations were texts that Jatho published from 1903 with the financial support of the presbyter of the community and Kalker industrialist Julius Vorster . When the press became aware of him, the church leadership stepped in, initially with the intention of protecting Jatho. Since Jatho did not respond to these discussions and continued his teaching, the rift deepened between him and the church leadership. At that time, however, the church had no legal means to impose sanctions for deviating teachings on clergy. When a corresponding law came into force in 1910, teaching objection proceedings were opened against Jatho. With 11: 2 votes he was ousted in 1911 because his "position, which he occupies in his teaching on the confession of the church, is incompatible" with the office of a pastor. This means that Jatho was retired while retaining his pension benefits. He then preached outside the church and did a lot of traveling and lecturing.

Grave of Carl Jatho in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne

Only shortly after his release, Jatho died of blood poisoning caused by a shin injury while climbing into a cab. He was buried with great public sympathy in Cologne's Melaten cemetery , hall 73a.

Teaching

Jatho corresponded to neither the liberal nor the orthodox theology of his time. Rather, his positions are clearly influenced by the natural philosophy of Goethe (and the Jewish philosopher Spinoza). He relied on a subjectivist understanding of religion that offered space for the individual's religious feelings. He sometimes referred to himself as a monist and a pantheist . In a letter to Martin Rade in 1911 after his impeachment, he wrote: “I consider monism to be the foundation of the religion of the future. It is a worldview that we can no longer ignore, in many cases can no longer do without. It does not prevent us from being religious people and from loving God. ”For Jatho, Jesus was an ethical model and herald of the idea of ​​God, a hero of spiritual and spiritual freedom. What remains controversial about Jatho's teaching is that he gained it from his own considerations, but could not justify it biblically. The appeal to the freedom of a Christian in his defense against the Old Prussian Evangelical Higher Church Council is problematic, since precisely this freedom is always understood as a freedom dependent on God and God's Word.

effect

The Jatho case also caused a sensation in Germany outside of church circles. The case was discussed controversially in the newspapers of the time. Well-known theologians of the time commented on this. Adolf von Harnack distanced himself from Jatho's teaching, but spoke out against impeachment. Ernst Troeltsch completely rejected the heresy law. The social democratic newspaper Vorwärts , despite its fundamentally critical attitude towards the church, advocated the impeachment of Jatho on the grounds that the church could not afford to proclaim arbitrarily. The thrust of this argument is directed more against the Catholic Church than in favor of the Protestant Church.

George L. Mosse names Gottfried Traub , Max Maurenbrecher and Wilhelm Stapel as the most important supporters of Jatho's free religious community . He does not consider it a coincidence that all three became leading supporters of the Volkish movement ; they tied in with Jatho's irrationalism and mysticism and turned him into “Germanic”. It should be noted, however, that Traub was later a staunch opponent of National Socialism. The publisher Eugen Diederichs from the same ideological camp was one of Jatho's most ardent supporters.

In 1985 a street in Cologne-Rondorf was named after him.

Works

  • You are called to freedom. The sixteen sermons in the hall. Eugen Diederichs, Jena 1913
  • Jatho's last four sermons in the hall. Paul Neubner, Cologne 1913
  • Sermons from Carl Jatho, pastor in Cologne. Printed from shorthand . Roemke publishing house, Cologne 1906

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jatho exhibition Christ Church 2009, text after Kuttner (PDF online; 3.4 MB) (accessed June 2011)
  2. ↑ Carl Dietmar: Preacher for Love and Justice , Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, from 25./26. June 2011, p. 35
  3. ^ Schneider, 183.
  4. ↑ after the exhibition
  5. ^ Carl Jatho: Ein Brief Jathos (1911). In: Christoph Schwöbel (ed.): To the friends. Confidential messages not intended for the public (1903–1934). Berlin 1993, p. 215
  6. ↑ George L. Mosse : "One people, one empire, one leader". The Volkish Origins of National Socialism. Athenaeum, Königstein (Taunus) 1979 ISBN 3761080565 , p. 60. First in English 1964
  7. ^ Rüdiger Schünemann-Steffen: Cologne Street Names Lexicon , 3rd exp. Ed., Jörg-Rüshü-Selbstverlag, Cologne 2016/17, p. 144.
personal data
SURNAME Jatho, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jatho, Carl Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Protestant pastor
DATE OF BIRTH September 25, 1851
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1913
Place of death Cologne