Gustav Mensching

Gustav Mensching (born May 6, 1901 in Hanover , † September 30, 1978 in Düren ) was a German Protestant theologian who increasingly turned to religious studies, whose independence and claim to knowledge, in contrast to theology, he emphasized and promoted.

Life

Gustav Mensching was the son of the farmer and businessman Gustav Mensching (1869–1906) and his wife Anna Vogler. In 1927 he married Erika Dombrowski, which resulted in two children: the Germanist and writer Gerhard Mensching and the philosopher Günther Mensching .

Gustav Mensching studied philosophy, Protestant theology and religious studies at the Universities of Göttingen, Marburg and Berlin. His formative teacher was Rudolf Otto in Marburg . In Marburg he was awarded a Dr. theol. PhD. In 1927 he completed his habilitation at the TH Braunschweig for the subject of religious history. From 1927 to 1936 Mensching was Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the Theological Faculty of the Latvian University of Riga . From April 1, 1936 to 1972 he was the first professor for comparative religious studies at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Bonn . He gave his inaugural lecture in 1942 on the topic of “The Thought of Fate in the History of Religion”. In his capacity as head of the Bonn People's Education Center from 1942 to 1944, he published repeatedly on work and goals as well as the cultural tasks of popular education, including a. in the West German Observer , the official organ of the NSDAP and all authorities (October 23, 1942). Due to his membership in the Nazi Lecturer Association , Gustav Mensching's teaching license was revoked from 1946 to 1948. In a recent publication, however, Hamid Reza Yousefi rejected allegations of Mensching's involvement in National Socialism.

Mensching died on September 30, 1978 in the St. Augustinus Hospital in Düren-Lendersdorf.

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In Mensching's oeuvre three focal points can be identified: the phenomenology and typology of religion , the sociology of religion and the general and comparative history of religion . He also published several text editions, which were reprinted over and over again over the years ( The Living Word , 1952, Buddhist Spiritual World , 1955, The Sons of God , 1958). His preoccupation with the tolerance problem went back to his Riga years. In 1955 he presented his classic study Tolerance and Truth in Religion . a. into Japanese. The religion offers an introduction to his work . Structure types and laws of life from 1959.

Mensching was a representative of what is now called a substantialist concept of religion . For Mensching, religion is the "experiential encounter with the sacred and the responsive action of the person determined by the sacred". Fundamental to his approach is the religious structural differentiation between folk religions and universal or world religions (for the first time in “Folk religion and world religion”, 1938) as well as the concept of midlife . (Note: The term "folk religion" used by Mensching should not be confused with the popular piety of followers of the book religions , but here means independent ethnic religions without writing .)

Mensching does not see the difference between folk and world religion primarily in the fact that folk religions are only carried by a certain people and have specific gods of nationally limited scope and power, while universal religions achieved supranational, transcultural expansion and a universally powerful deity or a impersonal to know sacred things ( Brahman, Nirvana, Dao, deitas ). Rather, its starting point is the question of salvation. Preparatory thoughts can already be found in the two treatises “The Idea of ​​Sin” (1931) and “On the Metaphysics of the I” (1934). With the distinction between “current and concrete” and “general and essential sin”, Mensching succeeded in working out two fundamentally different structures of disaster, which in turn are indicators of the underlying differences in the religious structure: In popular religion there is a community that guarantees salvation (family, clan, clan , Tribe, etc.) bearer of religion, in universal religion the isolated individual. Popular religions know a collective salvation into which the individual is born. Cultic-ritual performances maintain the functionality of popular religious systems. Universal religions, on the other hand, assume an existential calamity situation in which the individual finds himself and which can be overcome by gaining the salvation offered. Mensching distinguishes between two basic types: “On the one hand, there are religions that see isolation in the physical existence of the individual. […] On the other hand, existential isolation is seen in the fact that the individual has turned away from his personal deity ”(p. 246). Mensching coined the terms "ego-like existence" (here the 'I' as such is an obstacle to salvation) and "ego-addicted existence" (here it is not the existence of the 'I' per se that is the problem, but the fact that man has all his powers directed only towards this ( Die Religion , p. 248)).

There is no religion per se for Mensching. Religion is "only historically real [...] in a multitude of religions in which both the type of encounter with the sacred and the response of man to this encounter can be very different. Each religion therefore has its own center of life [...], the particular peculiarity of both the encounter with the sacred and the response to it ”. Richard Friedli , who has expanded Mensching's concept of “middle of life” to include his conception of “deep culture”, writes: “Gustav Mensching recorded an extremely important intuition with his category of middle of life: the particular religious historical statements, rites, hierarchical forms, ethical norms, commandments and prohibitions, forms of community and instructions for action are not folkloric or accidental information and facts, but just as many concretizations of a fundamental worldview. The individual dogmatic, moral, liturgical, organizational and political facts of a religious and cultural tradition can be understood from mid-life. "

Against the widespread theological and ecclesiastical narrowing, Mensching represented a free Protestantism that led him to the Bund für Free Christianity , of which he was a member of the board for many years. His religious studies contributions still play an important role in interreligious dialogue and for interreligious learning processes. Mensching made a significant contribution to decoupling religious studies from theology and establishing it as an independent scientific discipline.

Mensching's most important students include Hans-Joachim Klimkeit , Karl Hoheisel and Udo Tworuschka , whose chair for religious studies at the University of Jena held the Gustav Mensching Archive from 1993 to 2011. In the series of publications Building Blocks for Mensching Research (Nordhausen 2002 ff), edited by Hamid Reza Yousefi , works on Mensching's work are published. The practical (or applied) religious studies ( Richard Friedli , Wolfgang Gantke , Udo Tworuschka) sees Gustav Mensching as one of their masterminds.

Publications (selection)

• The holy silence ; 1926
• The idea of ​​sin ; 1931
• On the dispute over the interpretation of Buddhist nirvana ; 1933
• To the metaphysics of the ego ; 1934
• Catholicism - His Die and Become ; Editor; 1937
• The holy word ; 1937
• Popular religion and world religion ; 1938
• Comparative Religious Studies ; 1938
• General history of religion ; 1940, 1949 ²
• The Thought of Fate in the History of Religion . Bonn 1942. 15 p. (Inaugural lectures as war lectures of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn; Issue 12)
• Sociology of religion ; 1947
• History of religious studies ; 1948
• The religions and the world ; 1947
• Good and bad in the faith of the peoples ; 1950 ²
• Buddhist spirit world ; 1955
• Tolerance and truth in religion ; 1955; New edition, ed. by Udo Tworuschka 1996
• Life and legend of the founders of religion ; 1955
• Religious primal symbols of humanity ; 1955
• The sons of God ; 1958
• The religion. Manifestations, structural types and laws of life ; 1959
• Idea and task of the world university ; 1962
• Sociology of the great religions ; 1966
• Topos and Typos. Motives and structures of religious life ; ed. by Hans Joachim Klimkeit , 1971
• The world religions ; 1972
• The open temple. The world religions in conversation with one another ; Stuttgart 1974
• Buddha and Christ ; 1978; New edition as Herder TB 2004
• Essays and lectures by Gustav Mensching on the conception of tolerance and truth ; Building blocks for Mensching research 2; ed. v. Hamid Reza Yousefi; Wurzburg 2002
• The error in religion (Stuttgart 1969). New ed. with the new subtitle: An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Error ; ed. by Hamid Reza Yousefi and Klaus Fischer; Nordhausen 2003

literature

• Udo Tworuschka: Assessment of religion as a problem and a task . Gustav Mensching's attitude to the measurement of religion. In: Journal of Religious and Intellectual History . 27, 1975, ISSN  0044-3441 , pp. 122-140.
• Wolfgang Gantke, Peter Parusel:  Mensching, Gustav. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 86 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Wolfgang Gantke, Karl Hoheisel, Wilhelm P. Schneemelcher (eds.): Religious studies in a historical context. diagonal, Marburg 2003, ISBN 978-3-927165-85-4 (= religious studies series. Volume 21).
• Hamid Reza Yousefi, Ina Braun: Gustav Mensching - life and work. A research report on the concept of tolerance, dedicated to Gustav Mensching on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-8260-2233-5 (= building blocks for Mensching research. Volume 1).
• Hamid Reza Yousefi, Ina Braun:  MENSCHING, Gustav Hermann Heinrich Friedrich. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 21, Bautz, Nordhausen 2003, ISBN 3-88309-110-3 , Sp. 976-1007.
• Hamid Reza Yousefi: The concept of tolerance in Gustav Mensching's thinking. An intercultural philosophical orientation. Bautz, Nordhausen 2004, ISBN 978-3-88309-146-4 (= building blocks for Mensching research. Volume 7).
• Hamid Reza Yousefi: Applied Tolerance. Gustav Mensching read interculturally. Bautz, Nordhausen 2008, ISBN 978-3-88309-447-2 (= Intercultural Library. Volume 49).
• Nikandrs Gills: Gustav Mensching and University of Latvia. In: The European connection. Baltic intellectuals and the history of Western philosophy and theology, Riga 2006, pp. 44-57
• Christian Grethlein : Gustav Mensching (1901–1978). In: Benedikt Kranemann / Klaus Raschzok (eds.): Divine service as a field of theological science in the 20th century, Münster 2001, vol. 2, pp. 722–731
• Udo Tworuschka: Religious Studies. Wegbereiter und Klassiker, Böhlau, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna 2011, pp. 214–237.
• Udo Tworuschka: Introduction to the History of Religious Studies, WBG, Darmstadt 2014

Web links

• Literature by and about Gustav Mensching in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Hamid Reza Yousefi / Ina Braun: Gustav Mensching - Life and Work. A research report on the concept of tolerance, with a foreword by Klaus Fischer, Würzburg 2002, 409.
2. ↑ Die Religion , pp. 18-19
3. ↑ Hamid Reza Yousefi (ed.) U. Ina Braun: Gustav Mensching - life and work: a research report on the concept of tolerance. Edition, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 978-3-8260-2233-3 . P. 239, footnote 766.
4. ↑ The Religion , p. 20
5. ↑ Tolerance and Intolerance as a Topic of Religious Studies , Frankfurt / Main 2003, pp. 52–53