Georg spokesman

Georg Sprecher (born May 18, 1813 in Davos , † July 27, 1854 in Chur ) was a Swiss Reformed clergyman .

Life

Georg Sprecher was born in Davos as the son of the governor Florian Sprecher and his wife Elisabeth Alder. A day later he was baptized in St. John's Church . After attending the village school, he went to Brescia in 1826 at the age of 13 to be trained as a pastry chef . The next year he was a teacher at the Davos village school for a few weeks. In 1828 he gave up the apprenticeship position, the reasons for this are not known. In the winter of 1928, at the request of his father, he learned the Italian language in Poschiavo .

After 1829, Sprecher attended the Bündner Kantonsschule in Chur. Among other things, he made up for a degree in Latin there . In January 1834 he left the school with the prospect of studying theology at a university - why he did not leave school until the end of the school year, at Easter, has not been clarified, possibly there was a conflict with the headmaster.

At the University of Munich , he attended lectures by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling before actually studying theology . In the fall of 1834 he began his one and a half year theology course at the University of Halle and studied the Hebrew language . In 1836/1837 he was registered as a speaker at the University of Jena , and in the spring he returned to his home country in order to take the examination of the Evangelical-Rhaetian Synod in June . On May 27, 1837, received permission from the church council to preach. However, he did not apply to the synod; This was probably due to the fact that he dealt intensively with David Friedrich Strauss ' work The Life of Jesus, edited critically . In fact, he went to the University of Tübingen for a semester that summer .

In June 1838 the Synod took up speakers in Vicosoprano after he had applied. Since he was allowed to work as a pastor in the Free State of the Three Leagues , he took over the pastoral position in Conters in Prättigau in the same year . In 1840 he married Anna Brosi there. However, there must have been tension between him and other pastors, as he had dealt with Friedrich Schleiermacher and his works and supported his theological message, but most of the other pastors belonged to the revival movement . In the synod, however, he was greatly respected, so that in 1840 he was appointed examiner for exams for admission to the synod. In the summer of the next year he gave up the pastor's position in Conters and moved to Igis , but in the winter of that year he accepted an offer to become a religion teacher in Chur and a second deacon .

In 1843, Sprecher was also appointed pastor at the Sennhof cantonal penal institution . At the same time he became secretary of the preaching community as well as of the synod. He was also active in the Evangelical School Association. In the meantime his health was in poor health, but in 1846 he went to Chur to teach ancient languages ​​as well as religion and history at the canton school there. In the same year taught Hebrew. The evangelical church council recorded speakers in 1850 and two years later it was also responsible for the synodal proposition . In 1854 the Synod decided to make him its chairman and dean for the next year . However, Sprecher could no longer accept these positions: On July 14, 1854, he picked up his exams from the cantonal school, fell ill the same day and died on July 27 at the age of 41.

Spokesman wanted to reform the church in Graubünden. Before the Synod, he gave lectures on the matter, which were published. He called for a reform of the church system, wanted to create a state-free people's church. He campaigned for the rights of the laity and for the introduction of a presbytery . A commission had been set up to examine this, and in 1856 the subject was publicly negotiated before the synod. However, spokesman had since passed away. In the end, the synod rejected his proposals, but some of them were incorporated into the church constitution of 1874.

plant

• Synodal proposition about state and church and their mutual representation. Read to Ilanz on June 28th (Chur 1852)

literature

• Christian Immanuel Kind : Concise report on the negotiations of the Evangelical-Rhaetian Synod in Ilanz. From June 24th to 30th, 1852 (Chur 1852)
• Erich Wenneker :  Speaker, Georg. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 19, Bautz, Nordhausen 2001, ISBN 3-88309-089-1 , Sp. 1307-1310.