Christopher Bruun

This article is about the Norwegian clergyman Christopher Bruun . For the badminton player, see Christopher Bruun Jensen .

Christopher Bruun , Christopher Arndt Bruun (born September 23, 1839 in Christiania , † July 17, 1920 in Gausdal ) was a Norwegian clergyman and teacher at a community college.

Bruun was the founder of the Norwegian folk high school movement and a figure in the transition from the national-romantic peasant society to a society in which the working class came to the fore.

His parents were the Stiftsoverrettprokurator Johan Peter Bruun (1810–1843) and his wife Hansine Nicoline Juliane Sybille (“Line”) Stenersen (1816–1901). In 1872 he married Kari Skar (August 21, 1851-27 May 1924), daughter of the farmer Ole Torsteinson Skar (1804-1886) and his wife Mari Laanke (1814-1894).

Bruun came from a well-off family. After the death of the father, the Christiania family moved to Vang in Hedmark , now part of Hamar , where the mother had her closest relatives. She raised Christopher in "fear of God and diligence". In 1850 the family moved to Lillehammer , where Bruun attended Latin school. After taking his final exam, Bruun began studying theology in Christiania in 1857. There he developed a critical attitude towards pietism . Søren Kierkegaard had a strong influence on him . He was also involved in the Scandinavian student movement and made connections with Grundtvig's supporters in Denmark. He was also a member of the student debating club Det lærde Holland . In 1862 he passed his theological state examination. Due to Kierkegaard's warning that it was dangerous to become a pastor, which expressed a deep skepticism against the state church, he initially hesitated to take up such a profession for a long time and until 1867 traveled abroad more often, worked as a teacher in Christiania and as a tutor for theology students. In 1863 he traveled to Rome with his mother and siblings, where he took part in Scandinavian artistic life.

Vonheim Adult Education Center

When the conflict between Denmark and Prussia arose, he returned to Norway in the spring of 1864. On April 2, he gave a fiery speech in the Norwegian Student Union in support of the Danish combat organizations. He was a supporter of Scandinavianism . Together with 140 Norwegian volunteers, he took part in the battle at the Düppeler Schanzen . Then he went on foot to his family in Rome. From Denmark he got the impression that the peasants had no national consciousness and that the intellectuals were incapable of political action. In 1866 he gave a speech in the student union, where he particularly emphasized the ethnic-national perspective. On his next trip to Europe, he ended up visiting the folk high schools in Dalum in Västra Götalands län and in Askov . When he returned to Norway, he wanted to set up an appropriate facility. In the autumn of 1887, he and Christian Horne founded an adult education center with 20 students on the Romundgard estate in Sel in North Gudbrandsdal . In 1871 the school moved to Gausdal . Today it exists as the Vonheim Adult Education Center.

Christopher Bruun became the most important figure in the development of folk high schools in Norway. His two speeches in 1870 and 1877 before the student association were published in 1878 under the title Folkelige Grundtanker (Völkische Grundgedanken) and became the ideological program for the adult education movement. The aim should be general popular education. For Bruun, the prerequisite for the formation of a Norwegian nation was to bring education to peasant society. The cornerstone of this education should be the Norwegian values ​​from the Edda and the Bible. In contrast to continental Europe with its “over-civilization”, the Norwegian farming society is an untouched and peaceful coexistence due to Norway's peripheral location. It is the Norwegians who, more than any other people, have preserved the tradition of the old days. Now it is the task of the adult education centers to free the peasants from the centuries of darkness and to make them fit for the role that the Eidsvoll constitution had assigned them. He saw the peasant society in an intermediate field between the golden age and the present decay. A Norwegian national feeling and a Christian renewal should be brought about. Contrary to the more individualistic pietism, Bruun saw love for the kingdom of God as the goal that could be reached on the way through love for the nation. He built on Grundtvig's educational program but did not share his views on the Church. Rather, he advocated the consistent separation of church and state.

Bruun's focus on the peasant class was also reflected in his simple lifestyle. He ate peasant food and went out of Vadmal in clothes . The townspeople saw this as a silly provocation, while his students received it with enthusiasm. He was surrounded by capable and influential people, and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was often in Vonheim giving lectures. He became his closest neighbor after buying Aulestad .

In his image of society, Bruun combined Grundtvig's liberalism with political moralism. He criticized the connection between Christianity and conservatism and turned against the "Opraabet til Christendommens Venner" (appeal to the friends of Christianity), which warned against democracy and parliamentarism. His position for church Christianity against pietistic individual Christianity was particularly expressed in his polemical writings of the 1980s: Om Chisten-Samfundets Synder (On the sins of Christian society), Venste-Politiken og Theologerne (The politics of Venstre and the theologians) and Kristendom og politik (Christianity and politics). He supported the Venstre but was critical of Johan Sverdrup's policies. He became the leading figure in the "Moderaten Venstre". In the resistance against Lars Oftedal in 1891 he was at the forefront. On the one hand he advocated freedom of belief, on the other hand he turned against the state support of the free thinker Alexander Kielland .

In 1893 he left Vonheim and became pastor of the state church in the Johannes parish in Christiania. In Vonheim this was seen as Bruun's defeat, who was forced to take this step for economic reasons. The Johannes congregation was a pure workers congregation. In 1893 he founded the newspaper For kirke og kultur (For Church and Culture), which soon became an important organ for dialogue between church and society.

Politically, he resisted the dissolution of the union with Sweden in 1905. He denied the Storting the right to depose the union king in his capacity as Norwegian king. He also invoked the danger that Russia posed. But in the heated mood of 1905 there was no room for dissenting opinions. An announcement for a Bible reading in his own church was blocked by the police, his own newspaper For kirke og kultur rejected the publication of his articles in which he wanted to state his position and found Til det norske folk (To the Norwegian people) for his defense he is not a publisher. Ultimately, the text was printed in Denmark and smuggled into Norway. After the union was dissolved in 1905, Bruun was largely isolated. Nevertheless, at the age of 70, he still took an active part in time problems. Through his encounters with the workers in his community, he had a deep insight into the future Norway in the industrial revolution. He broke away from pre-industrial national romanticism and took part in socialist workers' meetings.

The years after 1893 were difficult. Five of his eight children died. He gave up the profession of pastor in 1918 and died in 1920 after a brief illness.

Works

• Folky basic tankers. Hamar 1878.
• Om Christen-Samfundets Synder. 1881.
• Venstre-Politiken og Theologerne. 1883.
• Kristendom og politics. 1884.
• Om Jesus som menneske. 1897.
• Til det norske folk. Copenhagen 1905.
• Fri Folkekirke. 1909.
• Vaagn op! Til Norges Ungdom. Utg. av en varmhjierter forsvarsven. 1913.
• Soldier for sanning and rescue. Brev frå krigen i 1864, ved Vegard Sletten. 1964.

Explanations

1. ↑ The "Stiftsoverrett" was established in 1797 as a court of appeal from the lower courts and the King's Bench in Copenhagen and solved the King's Bench and the Lagtinge from. One was set up in each of the four dioceses in the country. It was a collegiate court with a chairman and two assessors. Originally, they were responsible for both criminal and civil matters. With the amendment of the Code of Criminal Procedure in 1887, criminal matters ceased to exist. From 1890 they were called "Obergerichte". The procurator was a lawyer who was admitted to the court.
2. ↑ The "Annenexamen" was an Examen philosophicum, an intermediate examination, the passing of which was a prerequisite for further studies for a state examination.

literature

• Knut Aukrust: Christopher Bruun. In: Norsk biografisk leksikon , accessed on February 1, 2010.