Carl Muth

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Grave of Carl Muth in the Munich-Solln cemetery

Carl Borromäus Johann Baptist Muth (born January 31, 1867 in Worms , † November 15, 1944 in Bad Reichenhall ) was a German publicist . He is one of the representatives of Catholic existentialism .

Life

Carl Muth was accepted into the Steyl Mission House in Holland in 1881 . After three years he made his way to Algiers , where he met Cardinal Charles Martial Lavigerie , the founder of the White Fathers . Throughout his life, Muth felt connected to this cosmopolitan French spirituality. He studied political science in Giessen , later he attended lectures on economics and German at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin.

During a stay in Paris in 1892/1893 and in Rome in 1893, he carried out art history studies, including current social issues. From 1895 to 1902 Carl Muth worked as editor-in-chief of the monthly “Old and New World, Illustrated Catholic Family Gazette”. As a contribution to the debate on the inferiority of German Catholics, he wrote his critical work “Is Catholic fiction up to date?” (Mainz 1898). He called for a Catholic entertainment literature to be created and for the moralizing "narrow-mindedness" to be overcome.

In October 1903, Carl Muth founded the monthly Hochland , which became a forum for dialogue between Catholic academics and church-critical intellectuals. In this way he tried to lead Catholic literature out of ecclesiastical and civic constriction. In 1927, the 60-year-old Carl Muth published the commemorative publication “Re-encounter of Church and Culture in Germany”, which gives a vivid insight into the intellectual situation at the time. Muth's literary life work was dedicated to the "rebirth of poetry from religious experience".

When the resistance fighter Hans Scholl , founder of the White Rose resistance group , met the scholar Carl Muth through his friend Otl Aicher (1922–1991) in August 1941, the highlands no longer existed because this monthly was from the Nazi regime in June 1941 (Reich Press Chamber) has been banned. From December 1933 the magazine was under censorship , and from that time until the ban in June 1941 the name " Adolf Hitler " was no longer mentioned in the highlands .

When Carl Muth saw how well read his young friend was, he asked him to put his extensive private library in order. In this spiritually stimulating environment, discussions arose about the interdependence of Christian faith and political action. The importance of courage for Scholl also lies in the fact that through him he got to know people who stimulated and shaped his political thinking and religious sentiments.

After Hans and Sophie Scholl were arrested in Munich on February 18 and Christoph Probst in Innsbruck on February 19, 1943 , the Gestapo also carried out a search of Muth's house. After February 22, 1943, Carl Muth spoke of his murdered friends with the grief of a father who had been robbed of his children. A year later Muth died after a serious illness.

Effect and appreciation

“The preserving power in him was closely linked to his openness to everything new, everything that moved the times.” ( Werner Bergengruen ) His lasting merits are his struggle to open up the Catholic milieu and his fatherly friendship with Hans and Sophie Scholl. Winfried Becker praises Muth in the Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon as a “rich, critical and open, probably more receptive than creative spirit”. Courage was a stimulus and his magazine Hochland was a model for the publisher Karl Borromäus Glock .

There are Carl-Muth-Strasse in his birthplace Worms and in Cologne-Neubrück . In his place of residence, Munich- Solln , Muthstrasse has been named after him since 1949. On the cemetery Solln is also Muth's tomb.

literature

Web links

Commons : Carl Muth  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Weiss : Modernism in Germany. A contribution to the history of theology . Pustet, Regensburg 1995, ISBN 3-7917-1478-3 ; therein Chapter 16: Literary Modernism. Carl Muth and the “Hochland” , pp. 458–473.
  2. ^ Karl Borromeo Glock: The risk. Justification of a loner. Experiences and maxims of a publisher . Hohenloher Druck- und Verlagshaus, Gerabronn 1975, ISBN 3-87354-050-9 , p. 55 f.
  3. ^ Hans Dollinger: The Munich street names. 5th edition. Ludwig Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-7787-5174-3 , p. 208.
personal data
SURNAME Courage, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Muth, Carl Borromäus Johann Baptist
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German publicist
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Worms
DATE OF DEATH November 15, 1944
Place of death Bad Reichenhall