Franz Xaver Kraus
Franz Xaver Kraus (born September 18, 1840 in Trier , † December 28, 1901 in San Remo ) was a German art and church historian .
Life
Franz Xaver Kraus came from a middle-class family from Trier. His father worked as a drawing teacher at the city high school. After graduating from school in 1858, Kraus entered the Trier seminary under the influence of his religious mother . Between 1860 and 1862 he interrupted his studies at the seminary for health and financial reasons; During this time he earned his living as a tutor for French aristocratic families. He took the opportunity to do his own academic training at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris . While still in Paris, he sent a paper on Synesius of Cyrene to the University of Freiburg , in order to obtain the title of PhD in absentia. phil. whether to acquire eximiam eruditionem (due to special scholarship), a procedure that was not uncommon at the time, but did not entitle the holder to enter an academic career. He then returned to Trier to continue his theology studies. In 1864 he completed his studies and was ordained a priest by Auxiliary Bishop Matthias Eberhard . In the autumn of 1864 Kraus moved to the Freiburg University, where he obtained a theological doctorate in church history in 1865 under the church historian Johann Baptist Alzog . In 1865 he went to Bonn, where he studied with the philologist Friedrich Ritschl and made the acquaintance of the theologian Franz Heinrich Reusch . Here Kraus was also employed by the Catholic student association K.St.V. Arminia Bonn introduced. On September 1st, 1865 Kraus took up the position of early knife in Pfalzel near Trier. Personal ambitions to take on a teaching position at the Trier seminary in church history were not fulfilled, as he had made himself unpopular with the clergy because of critical writings about the relic of the holy nail, venerated in Trier, and the apostolic origin of the diocese of Trier. In 1872 Kraus received an extraordinary professorship for Christian art history in the philosophy faculty of the University of Strasbourg . An appointment to the University of Breslau failed in 1874 due to the resistance of the Breslau prince-bishop Heinrich Förster . In 1878 he succeeded his former teacher Alzog in Freiburg as a full professor of church history. During his term of office in Freiburg, which lasted until the end of his life, Kraus wrote important works on Christian art history and the poet Dante . In 1890/91 he was Vice Rector of the University.
Having already in 1876 with art and antiquity in Alsace-Lorraine , the monuments of Alsace and Lorraine had inventoried, he founded in 1887, having already 1,882 state conservator of ecclesiastical monuments in the Grand Duchy of Baden had become, with the series The historical monuments of the Grand Duchy of Baden , the Inventory of art monuments in Baden. On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Heidelberg University (1886) he gave in 1887 on behalf of the Baden government to him from his Paris period of study known Heidelberg song manuscript ( Codex Manesse ) before the return of the original at the University of Heidelberg in a facsimile edition in light print out . He is considered to be one of the founders of modern Christian archeology .
With his strictly scientific attitude he became a model and with his critical and polemical journalism (pseudonym Spectator ) the figurehead of reform Catholicism , but without joining an organization or party himself. Kraus saw himself as an opponent of the political Catholicism of the Baden Center Party under its leader Theodor Wacker . His ideal of a "religious Catholicism" was based on Dante Alighieri and John Henry Newman .
Shortly before his death, Franz Xaver Kraus was made an honorary citizen in his hometown Trier for his scientific achievements. He bequeathed valuable works of art and parts of his library with 12,000 volumes to the city of Trier; these went into the Trier City Library . His written legacy (including the extremely extensive correspondence) was also given to the city library - albeit sealed: Kraus had decreed that it could only be opened 50 years after his death, which also happened in 1951. The then head of the Trier City Library, Hubert Schiel , published parts of it in the following years, including Kraus' diaries. Kraus donated other parts of his library and his fortune to the establishment of a chair and an institute for Christian archeology at the University of Freiburg. The chair was first held in 1916 by Kraus 'youngest student, Joseph Sauer , who had previously continued Kraus' history of Christian art.
Some of the works of art bequeathed to the city of Trier were later sold in order to be able to use the proceeds to buy pieces with a regional reference, the remaining objects are now in the Trier city museum .
Kraus, who was often seriously ill in his last years, died at the age of 61 from stomach cancer during a vacation in San Remo; He is buried in the main cemetery in Freiburg .
Impact history
The Kraus Society , which was founded in Munich in 1904 and endeavored to reform Catholicism , referred to Kraus .
literature
- Franz Xaver Kraus: Diaries. Published by Hubert Schiel . Bachem, Cologne 1957.
- Franz Xaver Kraus: Liberal Catholicism. Biographical and church-historical essays (= library of the German Historical Institute in Rome, vol. 57). Commented and edited by Christoph Weber . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1983, ISBN 3-484-82057-8 .
- Ernst Hauviller: Franz Xaver Kraus. A picture of life from the time of Reform Catholicism. With three autotypes and an appendix of unpublished letters, poems and church-political documents. Roock, Colmar 1904, digitized , (2nd edition. Lehmann, Munich 1905).
- Hubert Schiel : In the area of tension between church and politics. Franz Xaver Kraus. Commemorative publication on the 50th anniversary of death due to the unsealed estate (= Trierisches Jahrbuch. Supplement 1, ISSN 2196-4661 ). With a pedigree of FX Kraus from Heinrich Milz. Paulinus-Verlag, Trier 1951 (basic).
- Hubert Schiel: Kraus, Franz Xaver. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , pp. 684 f. ( Digitized version ).
- Martin Persch : Kraus, Franz Xaver. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 4, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-038-7 , Sp. 616-620.
- Claus Arnold: Catholicism as a cultural power. The Freiburg theologian Joseph Sauer (1872–1949) and the legacy of Franz Xaver Kraus (= publications of the Commission for Contemporary History, Series B Research, Vol. 86). Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 1999, ISBN 3-506-79991-6 .
- Michael Graf: Liberal Catholic - Reform Catholic - Modernist? Franz Xaver Kraus (1840–1901) between the Kulturkampf and the Modernism Crisis (= Forgotten Theologians, Vol. 2). Lit, Münster et al. 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6481-2 .
- Claus Arnold: “Religious” versus “Political” - The “Liberal Catholic” Franz Xaver Kraus on the Cardinals John Henry Newman and Edward Manning. In: Claus Arnold, Bernd Trocholepczy, Knut Wenzel (eds.), John Henry Newman. Doctors of the modern church: Herder, Freiburg i. Br. 2009, pp. 54-72.
- Martin Dennert: Franz Xaver Kraus. In: Stefan Heid, Martin Dennert (Hrsg.): Personal Lexicon for Christian Archeology . Researchers and personalities from the 16th to the 21st century . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-7954-2620-0 , Vol. 2, pp. 758-751.
- Sonja Tophofen: Franz Xaver Kraus (1840–1901). A life between science and church teaching . Lang, Frankfurt a. a. 2013, ISBN 978-3-631-63934-4 .
- Heinz Monz (Ed.): Kraus, Franz Xaver , In: "Trier Biographical Lexicon" , WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier 2000, ISBN 3-88476-400-4 , p. 235 f.
Individual evidence
- ^ Siegfried Koß, Wolfgang Löhr (Hrsg.): Biographisches Lexikon des KV. 2nd part (= Revocatio historiae. Volume 3). SH-Verlag, Schernfeld 1993, ISBN 3-923621-98-1 , pp. 70-73.
- ↑ Wolfgang Stopfel : The office of the conservator of the church monuments in Baden . In: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg 12, 2, 1983, pp. 105-108 ( digitized version ).
- ^ Richard Strobel : Eduard Paulus the Younger and Franz Xaver Kraus. The beginnings of the inventory of art monuments in Württemberg and Baden . In: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg 17, 2, 1988, pp. 43–52 ( digitized version ( memento of 23 September 2015 in the Internet Archive )).
- ^ Franz Xaver Kraus: History of Christian Art. Volume 2, Section 2: Italian Renaissance. Ed. U. continued by Joseph Sauer, Herder, Freiburg i. Br. 1908.
- ^ Franz Xaver Kraus in LThK1 vol. 6, col. 233f.
Web links
- Literature by and about Franz Xaver Kraus in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Franz Xaver Kraus in the German Digital Library
- Entry on Franz Xaver Kraus in the Rhineland-Palatinate personal database
- Proof of publications by Franz Xaver Kraus in the catalog of the Heidelberg University Library
- Franz Xaver Kraus in the state bibliography of Baden-Württemberg
- Franz Xaver Kraus - biography, bibliography. In: Freiburg University Library. Retrieved August 22, 2020 .
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Kraus, Franz Xaver |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Spectator (pseudonym) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German art and church historian |
DATE OF BIRTH | September 18, 1840 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | trier |
DATE OF DEATH | December 28, 1901 |
Place of death | Sanremo |