Hamburg-Altonaische Bibelgesellschaft
The Hamburg-Altonaische Bible Society (HABG) exist as a temporary print and constantly Bibles distributed Bible Society nearly two hundred years (1814 to 2003) in the field of Hanseatic City of Hamburg and its Holstein neighboring town of Altona , which only in 1938 in the Greater Hamburg Act to Hamburg was incorporated. She was a member of the North Elbian Bible Societies from 1980 until it was dissolved .
International and ecumenical roots
Siegfried Meurer , then Secretary General of the German Bible Societies , wrote in his greeting on the 175th anniversary of the HABG in 1989:
“In 1814 Hamburg was a Free Imperial City and Altona belonged to the Kingdom of Denmark . The Biblical Society for Hamburg and Altona, founded by the travel pastor of the BFBS Paterson, has deliberately defied state borders. That was an important step back then. The ecumenical character of the Bible Society also deserves special mention, as Lutherans , Reformed , Catholics , Moravians and Mennonites were among the founders of the Bible Society. And a few years later the English independents who had a parish in Hamburg joined them. In its beginnings, the HABG was distinguished by its international and ecumenical attitude in an excellent way. "
history
The Mennonites in Altona , the men from the old, important merchant families of the Roosen and the van der Smissen, were interested in the establishment. As early as 1801 and then again in 1812, the secretary of the BFBS , Carl Friedrich Adolf Steinkopf , met the van der Smissens in Altona and tried to win them over to the plan for an Altona Bible Society. But there were various reasons for implementing such a plan only together with Hamburg.
founding
The leading minds and driving forces behind the founding of the Hamburg-Altonaische Bibelgesellschaft in October 1814 were Friedrich Perthes , Johann Daniel Runge , Ferdinand Beneke and Pastor Johann Heinrich Mutzenbecher. In 1815 the new Bible Society had 279 members and 204 benefactors. At the annual meeting in 1817, Ferdinand Beneke highlighted the ecumenical structure of the new society against the backdrop of the anniversary of the Reformation:
“... and the union of so many Catholic and Protestant Christians for the communal spread of the communal Word of God makes this year's jubilation of the Evangelical Confession appear to us in a very special glorification, as if the various Confessions were henceforth merged in peace and brotherly love that is pleasing to God no longer see them as hostile and alien, but only as fraternal forms of one and the same Christian faith standing next to and with one another ... "
Consistent with the history of theology, the founding of the Hamburg-Altonaische Bibelgesellschaft was later understood as the prelude to a:
"... novel piety awakened and strengthened in the wars of freedom , fertilized by the spirit of romanticism, which revolted against the rationalism rooted in Hamburg and represented on most pulpits ."
particularities
Hamburg's location made it desirable to distribute Bibles in the ports, on ships, to sailors and emigrants, Bibles in five different languages. New Testaments from the Regensburg Bible Society and the translation by Leander van Eß were acquired for the Catholic citizens . Most of the Bibles went to schools, orphanages or confirmands. With this practice, the Bible Society was more at the side of the various Christian charities for the poorer population than with the mission societies, which were still in their early stages.
In the following years, however, the company also took care of installing aid companies for Bergedorf , Moorfleth and Ritzebüttel - with a certain degree of success. The main task for the next few years was the production of Bibles.
Bible print
In its early days, the HABG bought the Bibles and New Testaments that it wanted to bring to the people, primarily from the Canstein Bibles Society in Halle , also from Zwickau and from the BFBS , namely those in other languages for distribution to seafarers, 1815 z. B. in Dutch, Danish and Swedish. Relatively early on, namely in 1815, those responsible in the administrative committee calculated that they would get away with printing their own Bible for less. For half a century the HABG became a printing Bible society .
In the summer of 1817 the printing of the New Testament was finished, and in 1818 the full Bible was also finished. The settlement ultimately resulted in a profit for the Bible Society.
In the same year 1818 a new, second Bible print was planned, again 10,000 copies, but this time
"With the restored authentic Lutheran text, ... which contains all of Luther's words, in which none has been left out, none inserted, none exchanged for another, even if Luther had translated incorrectly in individual cases ..."
That is how far Luther's preference in this supposedly ecumenical biblical society went. One not only abandoned the otherwise generally recognized Hallesche Druck, but one undertook its own text revision; the "original Luther" in the version of the edition by Adolph Friedrich Meyer (Hamburg 1740) was used. Hamburg even suggested that such an “original” Luther text should be used consistently by all Bible societies for all Bible editions - a weighty suggestion for a revision of the Luther Bible , which was admittedly not followed at the time.
With the printing of this edition (the printed full Bible was only available in March 1821), the Bible Society had really taken a new approach to designing and revising the text of the Bible. It was an attempt to return to the "original wording" of Luther's Bible translation in a readable and understandable new version.
Another edition of this edition with the "real" Luther text was decided in 1822, but did not appear until the summer of 1824, this time comprising 12,000 Bibles and 3,500 New Testaments.
In 1826 preparations began for another edition, based on 2,000 New Testaments and 12,000 Bibles. The 5th edition, which in turn was to comprise 12,000 copies (the edition was later increased to 15,000 copies), appeared in 1833. The printing of the 6th edition was completed in 1839. With this edition, the attempt to revise the text “back to Luther” was taken one step further. Another and for the time being the last, 7th edition of the Bible and the New Testament appeared in 1846.
The fact that the Bible Society no longer had regular new editions of the Bible printed after 1846 was the result of economic conditions. The cost per copy had risen in the meantime so that you could get the Bible from the von Canstein Institute in Halle for half the price. In 1894 a New Testament and Psalter were printed again by the Society. The Psalter in this edition had its own title page: “The Psalms based on Martin Luther's translation”. On the back of the title page you can now read: "Copy of the text reviewed on behalf of the German Evangelical Church Conference ." The attempts to revise the Luther text in Hamburg-Altona were thus ended.
For its 150th birthday in 1964, the HABG printed an edition of the Acts of the Apostles .
Disputes about the form of printing in the Bible
When the Society began operating, concerns arose about the way the Bible was printed. Johann Gottfried Gurlitt , director of the Johanneum and an important representative of theological rationalism , had taken part in the constituent meeting of the Bible Society, but had declared there that the Old Testament was only of minor concern to Christians and that it could also be disseminated do not approve of Bibles without explanation. The Mennonites in the Bible Society had raised concerns about the chapter headings as early as 1814 because they seemed to violate the principle of impartiality with their often one-sided dogmatic declarations. Since the assembly did not want to follow his view, Gurlitt resigned on the day it was founded.
In Altona, around the time the Bible Society was founded, the preparations for the printing of Pastor Nikolaus Funk's “Altona Bible” had begun, which appeared in 1815 and which the Pietists strictly rejected because of its modern, rationalistic and neological comments . This Bible edition was one of the reasons why the van der Smissens did not want their own Altona Bible Society, but preferred to join forces with the Hamburg Lutheranism . The people of Altona had to fear that the rationalistic Funk Bible, which already had the approval of General Superintendent Adler , would otherwise become the "normal Bible" of such a society.
Meanwhile, Pastor Claus Harms protested against the Altona Bible, and King Frederik VI. von Denmark bought the rest of the edition in 1817 and withdrew it from circulation. Pastor Nikolaus Funk joined the HABG as a member after the failure of his Bible experiment.
Further developments in the 19th century
From 1805 to 1924 the incumbent provost from Altona was always a member of the board.
The number of members, indicated in 1825 as 545, had dropped to 213 (and 72 “benefactors”) in 1856. There was no broad recruitment of members.
It was the Hamburg pastor Carl Mönckeberg who, in 1856 and then again in 1870/71, came up with the plan to unite all German Bible Societies into a single main German Bible Society and represented it at the Protestant Church Congress of that time .
Developments in the 20th Century
In 1924 the situation had changed and the Protestant Christians had to be called upon by the Hamburg-Altonaische Bibelgesellschaft to help spread the Bible.
Due to its founding long before the legal introduction of the law of associations, the HABG was not an " eV ", but had the status of an association under Old Hamburg law and was subject to direct Senate supervision. Associations under Old Hamburg law traditionally submit the minutes of their statutory general meetings to the Senate and notify it of changes in their organs.
In the anniversary publication for the 175th anniversary of the HABG in 1989, Herwarth von Schade , then director of the North Elbian church library , summarized his outline of the history of the HABG as follows:
"A miracle of collaboration between Hamburg and Altona citizens, theologians and lay people, Pietists and rationalists, Mennonites and Lutherans, Reformed and Catholics had occurred ..."
Brief flourishing and ending
In the "Letter from the North Elbian Bible Center" from Advent 2000, Pastor Anke Vagt reported on her activities on behalf of the HABG:
“In the meantime, for the third time, from 9.-13. October the Bible adventure exhibition "See, Hear, Feel, Do" takes place in Hamburg's main church St. Petri. The HABG invited school classes and confirmation groups to discover the Bible with all their senses. Over 500 children and young people came and had the opportunity to listen to the narrator Jochem Westhoff in the nomad tent, to print the Beatitudes themselves, to sniff biblical scents and essences or to transport themselves into the Middle Ages with a monk's habit, with ink and pen. The kids explored the exhibition with enthusiasm during a rally and learned a lot about the origins and transmission of the Bible. Not a matter of course in Hamburg: “Many children are in a church for the first time,” said a teacher. “It's nice that it was such a good experience for you.” In order to address the other visitors to the St. Petri Church, the exhibition “Bible as a comic” with exhibits by the well-known illustrator Rüdiger Pfeffer offered the opportunity parallel to the “closed” adventure exhibition to get into conversation with the Bible. This exhibition not only gave answers to the question of how a comic is actually created, there were also numerous biblical stories - from the Gospel of Luke and "David and Saul" - set in the picture. The fact that this opened up a new, unusual look at supposedly well-known biblical stories can be seen in the different reactions: They ranged from angry protest to enthusiastic approval. In any case, it became clear: “The Bible as a comic” leaves no one indifferent that quickly - but the most useless Bible would be the one to which one has got used. Some of the discussion evenings that also took place on the subject of the Bible in the week of October 9-13 came to this conclusion. were offered in St. Petri. In addition to personal and new creative approaches to the Bible, one evening also dealt with its importance in the Russian Orthodox Church. The week ended with a drawing course for the “untalented”. At Rüdiger Pfeffer, interested people could learn how to draw comics on the Bible and use them in work with children and young people. "
The departure of Anke Vagt and the inability to fill the pastor's position again in view of the financial situation of the North Elbian Church triggers a crisis in the HABG. After several unsuccessful attempts to revive the Hamburg-Altonaic Bible Society, also with the participation of the then chairman of the North Elbian Bible Society, Peter Godzik , the Althamburg law association dissolved on December 31, 2003.
swell
- Rudolf Hermes: From the history of the German Evangelical Reformed Congregation in Hamburg , Hamburg: Hans Christians 1934
- Hartwig Harms: Hamburg and the mission at the beginning of the 19th century. Church missionary associations 1814-1836 , Hamburg: Friedrich Wittig 1973
- Herwarth von Schade (Ed.): In God pleasing peace and brotherly love. Festschrift for the 175th anniversary of the Hamburg-Altonaische Bibelgesellschaft (1814-1989) , Hamburg 1989
- Peter Godzik (Ed.): History of the North Elbian Bible Societies , 2004 (online at pkgodzik.de) (PDF; 411 kB)
literature
- Wilhelm Gundert: History of the German Bible Societies in the 19th Century (Texts and Works on the Bible 3) , Bielefeld: Luther 1987, pp. 115, 131, 136, 176 f., 195, 208, 221 ff., 226, 250 ff. , 255 f., 259, 263, 266, 273, 277, 310.
Individual evidence
- ↑ von Schade 1989, p. 7
- ^ Hartwig Harms: Hamburg and the mission at the beginning of the 19th century. Church missionary associations 1814–1836, Hamburg: Friedrich Wittig 1973
- ↑ von Schade 1989, p. 32 f.
- ↑ Rudolf Hermes: From the history of the German Evangelical Reformed Congregation in Hamburg, Hamburg: Hans Christians 1934, p. 184)
- ↑ von Schade 1989, p. 37
- ^ Carl Bertheau: Mönckeberg, Carl . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 52, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1906, pp. 464-468.
- ↑ von Schade 1989, p. 50
- ↑ Godzik 2004, p. 11