Franz Theremin

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Franz Theremin

Ludwig Friedrich Franz Theremin (born March 19, 1780 in Gramzow , † September 26, 1846 in Berlin ) was a German Protestant theologian.

Life

Theremin came from an old French Huguenot preacher's family who fled to Prussia after the Edict of Fontainebleau . The Theremin family provided a number of Huguenot clergymen whose ancestor Chepas Theremin was ordained personally by Calvin in Geneva in 1545 . The father David Louis Theremin (born June 30, 1743, † 1827) was a pastor in Granzow, Neustadt and Stettin.

He completed his Abitur at the French Gymnasium in Berlin and then went to Halle , where he studied theology and philology . He discovered his love for literature early on. His role models were above all Sallust and Klopstock . After completing his studies, he stayed in Geneva , where he was ordained a pastor , and then spent some time in Paris . It was there that he developed his first theories of eloquence, which would later become a major part of his oeuvre. In 1810 he was appointed preacher to the French community in Berlin and then in 1814 cathedral and court preacher. With his good rhetoric and clever thoughts, Theremin managed to impress and bind many community members in this role. The demand for his sermons was so great that they were all published in writing and read across Germany for a few decades after his death. In 1824 Theremin was appointed senior consistorial advisor in the Ministry of Culture and the University of Greifswald awarded him a theological doctorate. In 1839 he was promoted to the real senior consistorial councilor and Theremin was appointed associate professor. A year later he was a full honorary professor at the University of Berlin . His last years were marked by loneliness and the fear of going blind . As early as 1826, his wife, whom he had married twelve years earlier, was different and Theremin had to take care of raising his two children on her own. In 1846 he died after a brief and severe abdominal disease and was buried in the old cathedral cemetery on Liesenstrasse .

Memorial stone on the Berlin Cathedral Cemetery II

Franz Theremin felt most mentally related to the Romantics throughout his life . If , surprisingly, he had little contact with the leading theologians of his time, for example Friedrich Schleiermacher , he felt all the more drawn to the writers. Theremin was one of the founding members of the Nordsternbund and associated with personalities such as Adelbert von Chamisso and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué . He often stayed in the Sophie Sander salon , with whom he had a brief love affair, and was thus fully integrated into literary Berlin. Some of his own writings clearly show the influence of the Romantic School. This is particularly the case in his best-known work Evening Hours , a lyric book of edification. With this widely published book, Theremin finally gained recognition as a poet.

Works

  • The eloquence, a virtue (1814; 2nd, improved edition 1837), 2nd edition 1837
  • Cross of Christ (1817–1841)
  • The doctrine of the divine kingdom (1823)
  • Adalbert's Confessions (1828)
  • Testimonies of Christ in Troubled Times (1830)
  • Evening hours (1833–1839)
  • Demosthenes and Massillon, a contribution to the history of eloquence (1845)
  • Hebrew chants by George Gordon Byron translation 1820 digitized

literature

  • Marie Sydow:  Theremin, Franz . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 37, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1894, pp. 724-727.
  • Dr. Otto Frommel: Franz Theremin. A contribution to the theory and history of the sermon , Mohr und Siebeck Verlag, Tübingen 1915
  • Alen Ruiz, Une famille huguenote de Brandebourg XVIII siecleles Theremin in Revue l'Allemange 14, pp. 217-228

Web links

Commons : Franz Theremin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Franz Theremin  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Frommel, Franz Theremin: a contribution to the theory and history of the sermon , p. 4
personal data
SURNAME Theremin, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Theremin, Ludwig Friedrich Franz (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Protestant theologian and poet
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1780
PLACE OF BIRTH Gramzow
DATE OF DEATH September 26, 1846
Place of death Berlin