Georg Bauhofer

Pastor Georg Bauhofer

Johann Georg (Hungarian: János György ) Bauhofer (born November 26, 1806 in Ödenburg (today Sopron), † July 14, 1864 in Ofen (today Buda)) was an Evangelical Lutheran pastor and journalist.

life and career

Youth, studies and first pastor's position in Sommerein

Bauhofer was born as the son of the master shoemaker Abraham Bauhofer and his wife Barbara. Unger born. He was the first of nine children. Bauhofer attended elementary school in Ödenburg. At the beginning of the 19th century, his hometown was a purely German-speaking town, and since his parents wanted little Georg to learn the Hungarian language too, he was sent to meet friends in Felsöbükk, Hungary, during the summer holidays. He then attended the famous lycees of Ödenburg and Pressburg , in order to finish his studies at the Imperial and Royal Protestant Theological College AC and HC, which later became the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the University of Vienna . In February 1828 he was superintendent of the János Until Lutheran pastor ordained .

After a short time as assistant preacher in his hometown, Bauhofer was appointed pastor in Sommerein on the fertile Große Schüttinsel , only about 20 km from Pressburg, in May 1829 . In November of the same year he married Wilma, born in Ödenburg, too. Schneider, with whom he spent 35 happy years of marriage. The marriage resulted in 14 children, of which only 8 reached adulthood.

During Bauhofer's time, Sommerein, along with nine other parishes, was a member of the Pressburg Seniorat ; it is located in a purely rural area and is characterized by agriculture. In Sommerein there has been a beautiful classical church building again since 1785, in which Bauhofer took care of the approximately 300 Protestant parishioners with pastoral care. Another 12 small diaspora districts in the area belong to the community, which also had to be looked after from Sommerein.

Friendship with Maria Dorothea von Württemberg

Bauhofer was a theologian of the cross. In contrast to the theological rationalism of the time, he was a revival preacher who was influenced by the Bible and who was close to the mission fire of the Moravian Brethren . This attitude seems to be the main reason why he impressed Maria Dorothea of ​​Württemberg , the third wife of Joseph Anton Johann of Austria , Palatine of Hungary , as a preacher. The palatinessa took an active part in the personal well-being of Bauhofer and his family until the end of their lives. Again and again she supported him financially in order to supplement his small annual salary, which was around 250 guilders . In 1846 she took over the sponsorship of Bauhofer's youngest daughter; the girl - who the Archduchess also held personally over the baptismal font - was given the baptismal name of her godmother, Maria Dorothea.

When Maria Dorothea stayed in Pressburg, she often attended Bauhofer's church services in Sommerein, which caused a considerable sensation among the local village population. But Bauhofer, too, was often invited by the Archduchess to her residences during this time, first to the Grassalkovich Palace in Pressburg and later also to Ofen on the Burgberg , in order to hold intensive religious discussions. Maria Dorothea advocated that the numerically very small community in Ofen (in 1844 the number of Evangelicals was only 402 souls) should become independent, and wanted Bauhofer to be appointed as the first preacher of this community and at the same time the office of Court preacher should hold at the Ofener Castle. She underscored this wish with a generous donation of 20,000 guilders. Years of negotiations with the church leadership followed, which were ultimately crowned with success.

On the basis of the tolerance patent of Emperor Joseph II. Built prayer house in Sommerein from the year 1785. The building was not allowed to have a tower or bells. Baufofer worked here for 15 years.

Move to oven

In September 1844, Bauhofer left Sommerein after 15 years and moved with his family to Ofen. On October 20, 1844, he gave his inaugural sermon on the Ofener Burgberg on the words of the Apostle Paul in ( 1 Cor. 2: 1–2  LUT ): “I, too, dear brothers, when I came to you, I did not come with high Words and great wisdom to preach the mystery of God to you. For I thought it right not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, who was crucified ”. In the course of time, Bauhofer developed several projects; He was the first editor of the newspaper Der Evangelische Christ , the first German-language Protestant magazine in all of Old Hungary, founder of the Protestant state orphanage and the first archivist of the Protestant church.

The first Protestant church (and school house) on Burgberg zu Ofen around the middle of the 19th century (demolished in 1896)

In 1846, with the help of the palatine, it was possible to acquire a plot of land on the Burgberg zu Ofen (on St.-Georg-Platz near the gate to the water town) for the construction of the first Protestant church in Ofen. As early as 1847, a small church, school and rectory could be built on this property. This empire-style castle church served the small, initially purely German Protestant parish of Ofen for almost 50 years. In 1896 the community moved to its current domicile, the new church on Vienna's Torplatz ( Bécsi kapu tér ).

Journalistic activity

In addition to his pastoral work, Bauhofer was also active as a journalist. 22 of his works have appeared in print. His most important work is The History of the Protestant Church in Hungary from the Reformation to 1850 . The origin of this work has an interesting history. Maria Dorothea found out that there are valuable church-historical manuscripts in the estate of the superintendent Theophil Gamauf in Ödenburg. In total there were 445 units that Maria Dorothea acquired, donated to the Evangelical Church in 1847 and given to Bauhofer in care. This donation motivated Bauhofer to write his book. Bauhofer's manuscript came abroad in an adventurous way as a result of the revolution of 1848 . The wives of two Scottish missionaries expelled from Hungary hid the manuscripts in the folds of their crinoline clothes and thus passed the Hungarian-Austrian border. In Vienna the manuscripts were handed over to Maria Dorothea, who had them brought abroad via the English embassy there. One copy was translated into English and appeared, with a foreword by the eminent church historian Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné , in London in 1854 and at the same time in Boston , USA . The second copy came to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia in Berlin, where his court preacher Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher also published it in German in 1854. The costs were borne by Maria Dorothea. Since it was feared that Bauhofer, as the author of this book, could face reprisals, the book was published anonymously. With this font, Bauhofer presented an up-to-date, generally readable standard work on the history of the Church in Hungary that is valid up to the present day, in which research findings from Gamauf's collection of manuscripts were processed.

Church politics

In addition to his everyday work as a pastor, Georg Bauhofer was also active in church politics. He was often a member of delegations of the Evangelical Church of Old Hungary, which negotiated church affairs at government offices in Ofen, but also in Vienna.

In 1851 the Viennese court commissioned a number of well-known evangelical theologians, including the important Slovak priest and scholar Karol Kuzmány , who had been a professor of theology in Vienna from 1849, to draw up an “imperial patent”. This patent was intended to regulate the organization of the Protestant Church in terms of content and administration (for example, instead of the existing four, six superintendents were planned; the power of secular church inspectors was to be significantly restricted, etc.). When the patent was issued by Emperor Franz Joseph I on September 1, 1859 , it sparked heated discussions and a storm of indignation in many communities. Ultimately, 333 - mostly Hungarian - municipalities (out of a total of 559) rejected the patent. The patent could therefore not come into force and had to be withdrawn by the emperor in June 1860; it was replaced by the Protestant patent in 1861 .

Georg Bauhofer was one of the proponents of the patent, which made him unpopular with many of his contemporaries and was branded as a "monarchist". It cannot be ruled out that national considerations also played a role. After all, Bauhofer was German by birth and his mother tongue. As a great admirer of Maria Dorothea, who as Archduchess of Austria was his great patroness and who was certainly very close to his nature, he could ultimately not be an “antimonarchist” at all.

Last years of life and death

In the last year of his life, Bauhofer retired into private life due to illness. He looked after his large family, some of which grew to become eminent personalities. His son Stephan (1832-1906) madjarized his name to István Bánhegyi and also became a Protestant pastor. Between 1858 and 1861 he worked - like his father before - as a preacher in his native town of Sommerein. Later he made a steep career in church politics, which ended as a Hungarian-royal school inspector and book author. Georg Bauhofer's numerous descendants, most of whom live as "Bánhegyi-s" in present-day Hungary, gave rise to some important churchmen.

When Georg Bauhofer closed his eyes forever on July 14, 1864 at the age of 58, sincere and deep sorrow spread. The differences of opinion about the Imperial Patent of 1859 were suddenly forgotten. Bauhofer's remains were laid out in the small Protestant church of Ofen. A crowd of several thousand attended the funeral on July 17, 1864. The altar liturgy and funeral speech were held by Bauhofer's long-time companion, Superintendent József Székács . The sermon was given in German by old Michael Lang . The funeral procession set off from the castle hill in the direction of the old Tabaner cemetery, where Pastor Bierbrunner said the farewell prayer. For eighty years, Bauhofer's grave was in this churchyard. When the old Taban cemetery was closed in 1944, it was thanks to the care of one of his successors, the then pastor of Ofen, Mátyás Varsányi, that Bauhofer's remains, including the original tombstone, were transferred to the largest cemetery in Ofen, the Farkasréti temetö (for example, "Friedhof auf der Wolfswiese ”) and were reburied there where his grave is still frequently visited by admirers.

literature

• Sámuel Markusovszky: A pozsonyi ág. hitv. evang. lyceum története ("The history of the Pressburg evang. Lyceum"), Wigand FK Koenyvnyomdája, Pozsony (Pressburg), 1896
• Gyözö Bruckner: A magyarhoni ev. Egyház egyházkerületeinek beosztása történelmi és egyházjogi megvilágításban , Ludvig István Könyvnyomdája, Miskolc 1937
• Dezsö Wiczián, Jenö Sólyom: Az egyház története , A Magyarországi ev. Egyházegyetem kiadása, Győr 1946
• Adalbert Hudak : The Church of our Fathers (- way and end of German Lutheranism in Slovakia -), published by the auxiliary committee for the Evangelical Lutheran. Slovakian German, Stuttgart 1953
• P. Rainer Rudolf, Eduard Ulreich: Karpatendeutsches Biographisches Lexikon. Working group of the Carpathian Germans from Slovakia, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-927096-00-8 .
• Carpathian Yearbook 2006 , Stuttgart 2005; ISBN 80-88903-78-5
• Zoltán Fallenbüchl: Magyarország föméltóságai ("The highest dignitaries of Hungary"), Maecenas Könyvkiadó, Budapest 1988
• Tibor Fabiny : Mária Dorottya, az utolsó magyar nádorné (Maria Dorothea, the last palatinessa of Hungary), Enciklopédia Kiadó, Budapest 1997
• Tibor Fabiny: Kincs a cserépedényben; Bauhofer György élete ("The treasure in an earthen vessel; the life of Georg Bauhofer"), Harmat Kiadó Budapest, 2000
• B. Petrík, P. Rybár; Evanjelická encyklopédia Slovenska ("Evangelical Encyclopedia of Slovakia"), Vydavatelstvo BoPo pre Gen.bisk.úrad ev. Cirkvi av na Slovensku, Bratislava 2001
• Evangélikus arcképcsarnok / Szerkesztette Tóth-Szöllös Mihály, ("Evangelical Life Pictures") Evangélikus Sajtóosztály, Budapest 2002
• Péter Zaszkaliczky (Red.): Oltalom a zivatarban , Budapest 2011, ISBN 978-963-08-1512-3 (Hungarian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ A Bauhofer daughter was Luise Wilhelmine (* 1830, † 1911) who married István Czékus (* 1818, † 1890), who later became a Protestant bishop for the Tisza district (IV) of the then "Hungarian Evangelical Church AB". The marriage resulted in nine children. As a girl, Luise Wilhelmine was a frequent guest at the Palatinessa, later she was also active as a journalist and published her own memoirs.
2. ^ Anton Klipp: Fragments on the history of Protestantism in Old Hungary, in Carpathian Yearbook 2006, p. 61ff