Erik Peterson

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Erik Peterson in Rome 1938

Erik Peterson Grandjean (born June 7, 1890 in Hamburg ; † October 26, 1960 there ) was a German theologian and Christian archaeologist . In 1930 he converted from the Protestant to the Roman Catholic Church .

Life

Peterson had ancestors who were partly of Swedish , partly of French origin, and grew up in Hamburg-Blankenese . After studying Protestant theology in Strasbourg , Greifswald , Berlin , Basel and Göttingen as well as his doctorate and habilitation , he taught as a private lecturer for Christian archeology and church history in Göttingen from 1920 and from 1924 to 1929 as professor for church history and the New Testament in Bonn . At Christmas 1930 he converted in a sensational step from the Protestant to the Roman Catholic faith in Rome .

Since he could not find a suitable teaching opportunity in Catholic Germany, Peterson moved to Rome in 1933, where he founded a family with five children with the Roman Matilde Bertini. Years of great economic hardship followed, which since 1937 had hardly been alleviated by a small teaching load on church history at the Pontifical Institute for Christian Archeology (PIAC). Peterson ruled out a permanent return to National Socialist Germany, where its effectiveness was increasingly politically restricted. It was not until 1947 that his teaching assignment in Rome was expanded to include an extraordinary professorship for patristics and the relationship between antiquity and Christianity. A few weeks before his death in his native Hamburg, Peterson, who was already seriously ill, received honorary doctorates from the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Bonn and the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Munich . His grave is on the Campo Verano in Rome, his legacy is kept in the Biblioteca Erik Peterson at the University of Turin .

Work and effect

By the early 1920s, Peterson initially freed himself from previous ties to a pietistic religiosity and from an initially uncritical fascination with the school of religious history and quickly developed a comprehensive patristic and broad exegetical foundation. In the nature of his philological and theological interpretations, he was influenced by the phenomenology native to Göttingen .

Peterson first achieved international scientific reputation in 1926 with the publication of his extended habilitation thesis on the ancient acclamation of Heis Theos ("A God!"). He continued his research on church history and religious history in many special studies on Christian antiquity and thus gave important impulses for the understanding of ancient Gnosticism , asceticism and apocalyptic as well as the relationship between Judaism and Christianity (anthology of specialist essays Frühkirche, Judentum, Gnosis , 1959).

In dealing with both liberal theology z. B. Adolf von Harnacks as well as with the dialectical theology of Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann - Peterson was in close personal contact with Barth during the years together in Göttingen from 1921 to 1924 - Peterson provoked 1925 with the treatises What is theology? and in 1928/1929 the church caused a scandal. He pleaded for a theology that is committed to the dogmatic tradition of the church in forms of “concrete argumentation” and for a church that knows that it is founded on apostolic foundations. Peterson's theology was centered on a specific understanding of the eschatological public. He discussed the consequences for the concept of the church in 1928 in an exchange of letters with Adolf Harnack , which he published in 1932/33 together with an " epilogue ", which he understood as a justification for his conversion .

As a theologian, Peterson continued to work through lecture tours and publications during the Nazi dictatorship , especially in German-speaking countries, with sublime ideology-critical debates in the form of scriptural and historical interpretation. B. re-examined the category of martyrs ( Witness of Truth , 1937). 1935 appeared in conflict with the former "Kingdom Theology" that sought proximity to the Nazi regime and Christian anti-Semitism with anti-Semitic nationality ideology merged, his study The monotheism as a political problem , which with its thesis of the "discharge any political theology " which abuses the Christian faith for political purposes, initiated the break of the friendship with Carl Schmitt that had existed since 1925 and is still lively discussed today. In the same year, Von den Engeln (1935) united the liturgical, political and mystical dimensions of Peterson's theology.

Peterson's writings, with their rediscovery of eschatology derived from the New Testament and Patristic, were received as groundbreaking, especially in French theology. The treatise The Church of Jews and Gentiles (1933) influenced u. a. Jacques Maritain , who explicitly referred to him in his treatise Les juifs parmi les nations (Paris 1938). Peterson indirectly plays the role of a stimulus for the change in the attitude of the Catholic Church to Judaism, which is carried out not least at Maritain's suggestion at the Second Vatican Council , although Peterson was accused of "subtle anti-Semitism " for this treatise ( Karl Löwith ) .

Following the example of his former “spiritual mentor” Søren Kierkegaard, Peterson remained an outsider throughout his life, even a - as Karl Barth put it - “marginal figure of this aeon”, although Peterson felt this existence in exile, not just inward, as appropriate to the radicalism of Christianity, especially since in a world whose domination by capitalism, greed for consumption and belief in technology he vehemently criticized throughout his life.

Some works by Erik Peterson

The best known to this day are his pre-war studies, collected in the Theological Tracts 1951 (new edition Würzburg 1994), which had a considerable influence on theologians like Karl Barth, Ernst Käsemann , Heinrich Schlier , Joseph Ratzinger , Jean Daniélou and Yves Congar .

The meditative marginalia on theology 1956 (new edition Würzburg 1995) with essays on, among other things, the theology of dress , Sara's laughter , existentialism and gnosis, as well as very personal aphoristic fragments, provide insights into the spiritual depth of a thinker who is often puzzling with age . The publication of his rich handwritten estate now offers a broader basis for a more systematic interpretation of Erik Peterson's life's work.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Erik Peterson's death , the Priestly College Campo Santo Teutonico and the Patristic Institute Augustinianum with the participation of the Pontifical Institute for Christian Archeology took place in Rome from October 24th to 26th, 2010 under the patronage of the Prefect of the Vatican Library , Cardinal Raffaele Farina International Symposium Erik Peterson. La presenza teologica di un outsider took place. At the reception of the participants on October 25th in the Sala Clementina in the Vatican , Pope Benedict XVI. in his address the work of Erik Peterson, in whose theological treatises he found the theology he was looking for in 1951.

Publications

Single fonts
  • What is theology Cohen, Bonn 1925.
  • The church. Beck, Munich 1929 (actually autumn 1928)
  • The Church of Jews and Gentiles. Three lectures. Pustet, Salzburg 1933.
  • Monotheism as a political problem. A contribution to the history of political theology in the Imperium Romanum. Hegner, Leipzig 1935.
  • Witness the truth. Hegner, Leipzig 1937.
  • Apostle and witness of Christ. Interpretation of the letter to the Philippians. Herder, Freiburg i.Br. 1940.
  • Theological tracts. Kösel, Munich 1951 (tr. En .: Theological tractates. Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction by Michael J. Hollerich, Stanford 2011).
  • Marginalia on theology. Kösel, Munich 1956.
  • Early Church, Judaism and Gnosis. Studies and Investigations. Herder, Freiburg 1959.
  • The book of the angels. Position and meaning of the holy angels in the cult. Hegner, Leipzig 1935; 2nd edition: Kösel, Munich 1955 (Spanish: El libro de los ángeles (= Patmos. Libros de Espiritualidad. Vol. 71). Rialp, Madrid 1957; English: The Angels and the Liturgie. The Status and Significance of the Holy Angels in Worship. Longman & Todd, Darton, London 1964; Herder and Herder, New York 1964; French: Le livre des Anges. Desclée de Brouwer, Paris 1954; Ad solem, Genève 1996; Italian: Il libro degli Angeli. Gli esseri angelici nella Bibbia, nel culto e nella vita cristiana. CLV Ediz. Liturgiche, Roma 2008).
selected Writings
  • Erik Peterson: Selected Writings . Published by Barbara Nonweiß, Echter-Verlag, Würzburg, 1994ff.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Address by Benedict XVI. on October 25, 2010
  2. ↑ The only one should live high! in FAZ of October 6, 2012, page L32
  3. ^ Andreas R. Batlogg: Erik Peterson (1890–1960) - an outsider , in: Voices of the Time, October 2010
personal data
SURNAME Peterson, Erik
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Peterson Grandjean, Erik (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theologian and Christian archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1960
Place of death Hamburg