George D. Herron

George Davis Herron (born January 21, 1862 in Montezuma, Indiana , † October 9, 1925 in Munich ) was an American clergyman , lecturer , writer and protagonist of the social gospel movement. During the First World War , Herron broke with the anti-militarist principles of the Socialist Party of America and provided the US government and the British government with reports on public opinion in the German Empire .

Theological career

In 1883 Herron became a congregational pastor and married Mary Everhard that same year. The couple had five children together. He was 1890-1891 pastor of a Congregational church in Lake City ( Minnesota ) and then switched for 17 months in a community in Burlington ( Iowa ). Many of his sermons were published in the local newspaper. They filled two volumes of a collection of sermons. In weekly lectures he organized young men and women of the church into a Christian social association.

Herron became interested in the social gospel movement and organized a working group in Iowa called the Institute of Christian Sociology . In Minnesota he first achieved great fame when he delivered the provocative sermon "The Message of Jesus to the Men of Wealth" in front of the Minnesota Congregationalist Club in Minneapolis in 1890 . Herron stated that the existing social and religious order was wrong because it emphasized competition, selfishness and material power. Such a civilization has failed to secure morality and justice because it surrenders the weak to the grace of the strong while minimizing the overriding Christian principles of leadership and sacrifice. The day will come, Herron preached, when a truly Christian social order would exist on earth - the fulfillment of the heavenly kingdom of God in the here and now. This sermon was published in The Christian Union magazine and then printed as a booklet, giving the author its first US readership.

Herron ceaselessly and clearly condemned the excesses of the wealthy. Historian Howard Quint referred to Herron as a "petrel" who "convincingly questioned the social right of the rich to their property and vigorously preached a powerful gospel of social redemption." Herron has been compared to the Old Testament prophets by his admirers . This determination polarized opinion of him - a significant number of critics saw him as a threat to established social and religious institutions.

Herron made an impression on a wealthy parishioner, widow Elizabeth D. Rand and her daughter Carrie. In 1893, Elizabeth Rand endowed a chair in applied Christianity at Iowa College (later Grinnell College) in Grinnell, Iowa . With this teaching post, Herron should be able to reach more people with his ideas. From 1893 he taught on campus for six years and became well known in the USA because of the novelty of the subject.

Carrie Rand also moved to Grinnell and was named Dean of Women. Herron was in regular contact with her. A love relationship developed and thus an alienation between Herron and his family. This, combined with his political views, provided arguments for his opponents. In 1899 they forced him to resign from teaching at the congregational college. Herron eventually left his family and was divorced in 1901. Society was outraged by these circumstances. The court awarded his wife and children an amount equal to Carrie Rand's private fortune over $ 60,000 in the divorce. Herron married Carrie Rand in May 1901 in an unconventional ceremony in Rochester, New York .

Herron was later deposed by the Iowa Congregational Council for "immoral and unchristian behavior." The couple then moved to Florence with Elizabeth D. Rand . Carrie Rand Herron died in 1914, leaving George Herron with two underage sons. Herron married a third time.

emigration

With the beginning of the First World War, Herron's position changed from a pacifist , socialist and internationalist to a partisan of the allied opponents of the German Reich and its allies. Herron considered Prussia to be incompatible with his ideals. With the outbreak of war he moved from Florence to Geneva .

When President Woodrow Wilson successfully fought for re-election in 1916 with the electoral motto “He keeps us out of the war”, Herron, as a public intellectual in Europe, propagated the opinion that Wilson was anything but neutral with regard to the European conflict and was waiting for it appropriate time to go to war with the United States. Herron was considered one of the most reliable interpreters in Europe for the intentions of the Wilson government. This assessment was confirmed in April 1917 when America entered the war in the second month of President Wilson's second term. Herron disagreed with the Socialist Party's opposition to this decision and broke with the party.

Herron was the keynote speaker on the situation in Italy at a conference of 25 major American decision-makers, which was convened by the American Ambassador William Graves Sharp in late November 1917 and which was held in Paris . Herron then sent the American and British legations in Bern regularly written reports on the situation in the German Empire. The British envoy in Bern paid CHF 1,000 per month for the reports . It was Herron's job to give his superiors details of his conversations and correspondence with many of his German contacts. These included recommendations for action to be taken by President Wilson and his administration. Herron consistently took the view that peace could only come about through the German surrender , which occurred in November 1918. After this, Herron was disappointed with the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the Versailles Treaty , which did not bring about the hope placed in him for democratization and which he viewed as a betrayal of the official war aims of the Allies. In the end he was satisfied with it and said in public that this peace was better than no peace at all. In response to the harsh measures and reparations imposed on Germany , Herron published a book in 1921 with the title "The Defeat in the Victory" (German: "The defeat in victory"). For Herron, Wilson's war for the democratization of the world had become a great disappointment.

Herron was involved in various diplomatic activities, e. In 1918, for example, he sent the invitation from the President of the Grand Conseil de la République et canton de Genève to the American President to establish the League of Nations in Geneva. In January 1919, the Supreme Council of the Paris Peace Conference adopted President Wilson's proposal for action against Russia . It was planned to send a message to the Russian government asking them to send delegates to the Prince Islands in the Sea of ​​Marmara to meet with Allied representatives. Herron was appointed with William Allen White to represent the United States for this conference, which however did not take place.

In 1919, Herren moved from his Villa Le Retour in Geneva back to Villa La Primola in Fiesole . In 1922 the book Revival of Italy was published by the publisher George Allen & Unwin in which Herron praised the social reforms of the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini .

estate

Herron's writings and correspondence are archived in various institutions, mostly in the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University , the library at Grinnell College and the Bobst Library at New York University, and in the AM Simons records at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison .

Web links

• Literature by and about George D. Herron in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Literature by and about George D. Herron in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Barnet Baskerville: American forum: speeches on historic issues, 1788-1900 . Harper, 1960 ( google.de [accessed July 27, 2019]).
2. ↑ Joachim Kuropka: Image and Intervention: Inner Situation in Germany and British Strategies of Influencing in the Decision-Making Phase of the First World War . Duncker & Humblot, 1978, ISBN 978-3-428-44226-3 ( google.de [accessed July 27, 2019]).
3. ↑ Alexandra Kindell, Elizabeth S. Demers Ph.D: Encyclopedia of Populism in America: A Historical Encyclopedia [2 volumes] . ABC-CLIO, 2014, ISBN 978-1-59884-568-6 ( google.de [accessed on July 27, 2019]).
4. ↑ Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in Perspective, [1] [2] [3]
5. ↑ Preston Slosson: George D. Herron and the European settlement. Mitchell Pirie Briggs . In: The Journal of Modern History . tape 4 , no. 3 , September 1, 1932, ISSN  0022-2801 , p. 489-491 , doi : 10.1086 / 235937 ( uchicago.edu [accessed July 27, 2019]).
6. ↑ Revival of Italy, [4]
7. ↑ George Davis Herron papers, 1916-1927  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Stanford University Library.