Friedrich von Hügel

Friedrich von Hügel (actually Friedrich Maria Aloys Franz Karl, Freiherr von Hügel , known as Baron von Hügel , born May 5, 1852 in Florence , Tuscany, † January 27, 1925 in London ) was an Austro-British religious author, Catholic theologian and Christian apologist . He is considered one of the key figures of modernism .

Life

Friedrich von Hügel was born as the son of Carl von Hügel , who was the Austrian ambassador to the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Elizabeth Farquharson , a Scottish convert to Catholicism. Friedrich received private tuition and moved to England in 1867 at the age of 15 , where he spent the rest of his life.

In 1873 he married Lady Mary Catherine Herbert , daughter of statesman Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea, and Lady Elizabeth Ashe à Court-Repington , an avid philanthropist and converted Catholic. Mary Catherine Herbert, like von Hugel's mother and her own mother, was also a convert. Friedrich von Hügel had three children with her: Gertrude (1877–1915), Hildegarde (1879–1926), and Thekla (1886–1970), who was to join an order. Von Hügel retained his Austrian citizenship until August 1914, when he liked to describe himself as a “hostile stranger” when England declared war on Austria. At that time he asked for naturalization and received citizenship in December of the same year.

Friedrich von Hügel never earned a university degree, but had acquired in-depth biblical knowledge through self-study and was fluent in French, Italian, German and English. Although he never held an ecclesiastical office or a chair, he was traded on an equal footing with John Henry Newman as an important mediator of Catholic identity in times of upheaval. Von Hügel found his main sphere of influence in the context of the modernism crisis . Through his extensive network of personal contacts, he brought together reform theologians such as Alfred Loisy , Henri Bremond , George Tyrrell and Evelyn Underhill . In Germany, he was mainly in contact with Franz Xaver Kraus and Albert Ehrhard . From 1902 the young Kraus student Joseph Sauer was his most important Catholic liaison there. Von Hügel stood out particularly because he made the works of the philosophers Ernst Troeltsch and Rudolf Christoph Eucken accessible to the English-speaking population, regardless of the rejection of any German culture during the First World War . Friedrich von Hügel took the view that the Catholic Church should absorb the best of the new social and psychological sciences in order to change attitudes towards the Catholic faith in the modern world.

Honorary doctorate

In 1914 the University of St. Andrews awarded him an honorary doctorate for his new approaches to mysticism. Friedrich von Hügel also bequeathed his entire library, now known as the Hügel Archives , to the University Library of St. Andrews .

As it the University of Oxford , the honorary doctorate awarded in 1920 for his work in theology, this should be the first awarded to a Catholic honorary doctorate since the Reformation.

Fonts

• The Church and the Bible. 3 volumes. Dublin Review, Dublin 1894–1895.
• La Méthode historique et son application à l'Etude des documents de l'Hexateuque. In: Compte rendu du Quatrième Congrès Scientifique Internationial des Catholiques. Tenu à Friborg (Suisse) du 16 au 20 août 1897. Section 2: Sciences Exégétiques. Librairie de l'oeuvre de Saint-Paul, Friborg (Switzerland) 1898, pp. 231–265 (lecture at this congress).
• You Christ éternel et de nos christologies successives. In: La Quinzaine , June 1, 1904.
• with Charles A. Briggs : The papal Commission and the Pentateuch. Longmans, Green, & Co., London 1906.
• Experience and Transcendence. In: Dublin Review. Vol. 138, No. 24, April 1906, pp. 357-379.
• The Mystical Element of Religion as studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and her Friends. Dent, London et al. 1909;
  • Volume 1: Introduction and Biographies.
  • Volume 2: Critical Studies.
• Essays and Addresses in the Philosophy of Religion. 2 volumes. Dent et al., London et al. 1921-1926.
• as editor of: Ernst Troeltsch : The historicism and its overcoming. Five lectures. Introduced and issued. Pan Verlag R. Heise, Berlin 1924.
• Religion as a whole. Selected from his works and translated by Maria Schlüter-Hermkes. Patmos-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1948.

Letters

• Friedrich von Hügel, Nathan Söderblom , Friedrich Heiler : Correspondence. 1909–1931 (= confessional writings of the Johann Adam Möhler Institute. No. 14). Edited with introduction and commentary by Paul Misner. Verlag Bonifatius-Druckerei, Paderborn 1981, ISBN 3-87088-194-1 .

literature

• Claus Arnold : Catholicism as a cultural power. The Freiburg theologian Joseph Sauer (1872–1949) and the legacy of Franz Xaver Kraus. Schöningh, Paderborn 1999, pp. 180-253 ISBN 3-506-79991-6
• Michael de la Bedoyère : The life of Baron von Hügel. Dent, London 1951.
• Joseph P. Whelan: The Spirituality of Friedrich von Hügel. Collins, London 1971, ISBN 0-00-215770-5 .
• Peter Neuner : Religious Experience and Historical Revelation. Friedrich von Huegel's foundation of theology (= contributions to ecumenical theology. Vol. 15). Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 1977, ISBN 3-506-70765-5 (also: Munich, University, dissertation, 1976).
• Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz :  HÜGEL, Friedrich. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 2, Bautz, Hamm 1990, ISBN 3-88309-032-8 , Sp. 1122-1123.

Web links

• Literature by and about Friedrich von Hügel in the catalog of the German National Library