Hans von Campenhausen

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Family coat of arms of those of Campenhausen

Hans Erich Freiherr von Campenhausen (born December 16, 1903 in Rosenbeck , Livonia , † January 6, 1989 in Heidelberg ) was a German-Baltic Protestant theologian . He is considered one of the most important Protestant church historians in the 20th century.

Live and act

Hans von Campenhausen came from the landed nobility. Von Campenhausen fell victim to the Russian Revolution . He lost his father and went to prison. His family finally managed to escape to Germany. In 1922 he passed the Abitur in Heidelberg. He then studied theology and history at the Universities of Heidelberg and Marburg . He was particularly influenced by the theologians Rudolf Bultmann and Hans Freiherr von Soden . Methodically, Martin Dibelius exerted the greatest influence on him. Campenhausen received his doctorate in Heidelberg in 1926 with the work of Hans von Schubert on Ambrosius of Milan as a church politician. His habilitation took place in 1928 with a thesis on passion sarcophagi inspired by Hans von Soden. In 1930 he was given the unprofitable position of inspector at the Theological Monastery in Göttingen.

Despite his signing of the professors' commitment to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist state on November 11, 1933, von Campenhausen was distant from National Socialism . He mainly considered Germany's freedom of action internally and externally necessary and then joined the Confessing Church . The distance to National Socialism also prevented him from becoming a professor until the end of the war. From 1935 he took over professorships and teaching assignments at the universities in Gießen, Greifswald, Göttingen, Kiel, Heidelberg and Vienna. Two appointments failed for political reasons: in 1935 he was to succeed Heinrich Bornkamm in Gießen and in 1937 to succeed Walther Köhler as professor of church history at Heidelberg University.

Since 1945 he was the successor of his teacher Hans von Schubert Professor of Church History in Heidelberg. In 1946 he was elected rector. His most important works were created in Heidelberg with Church Office and Spiritual Authority in the First Three Centuries (1953) and The Origin of the Christian Bible (1968). His representations of the historical church fathers ( Latin church fathers and Greek church fathers ) have been reprinted several times and translated many times. He also published numerous studies on the ancient church. Since the founding of the Patristic Commission of the West German Academies of Science from 1960 to 1980 he was its president. Von Campenhausen was no less important as an academic teacher. 15 later university lecturers emerged from his teaching activities. It is probably the largest group of students in the 20th century by a Protestant church historian after Adolf von Harnack . A severe visual impairment made scientific work increasingly difficult for him in the last years of his life and ultimately made it completely impossible.

He was awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Göttingen, Oslo, St. Andrews, Uppsala and Vienna. He was a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences for more than 40 years . He was a corresponding member of the British Academy and the Göttingen Academy of Science . He was also an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1972).

His son Axel Freiherr von Campenhausen became a professor of canon law.

Fonts (selection)

  • Ambrose of Milan as a church politician. de Gruyter, Berlin 1929.
  • The passion sarcophagi for the history of an early Christian pictorial circle. Marburg 1929.
  • The idea of ​​martyrdom in the old church. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1936.
  • Ecclesiastical office and spiritual authority in the first three centuries. Mohr, Tübingen 1953.
  • Greek church fathers. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1955; 8th edition 1993, ISBN 3-17-012887-6 .
  • Latin Church Fathers. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1960; 7th unchanged edition 1995, ISBN 3-17-013504-X .
  • From the early days of Christianity. Studies on church history in the 1st and 2nd centuries. Mohr, Tübingen 1963.
  • The creation of the Christian Bible. Mohr, Tübingen 1968; Reprinted in 2003.
  • Theologians spit and fun. Hamburg 1973, ISBN 3-7990-0133-9 .
  • The "grumbling" of Hans Freiherr von Campenhausen. "Memories as dense as a snowstorm". Autobiography . Edited by Ruth Slenczka. Norderstedt 2005, ISBN 3-8334-2955-0 .

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd updated edition, Frankfurt 2005, p. 90, as well as list of names ( PDF )
  2. ↑ Adolf Martin Ritter: The Heidelberg Church Historians in the Time of the "Third Reich". In: Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz , Carsten Nicolaisen (Hrsg.): Theological faculties in National Socialism. Göttingen 1993, pp. 169–180, here: p. 174.
  3. ^ Bernd Moeller: Nekrolog Hans Freiherr von Campenhausen, December 16, 1903 to January 6, 1989. In: Historische Zeitschrift 249, 1989, pp. 740–743, here: p. 741.
  4. ^ Adolf Martin Ritter: Hans Frhr. v. Campenhausen. In: Zeitschrift für Evangelisches Kirchenrecht 34, 1989, pp. 113–116, here: p. 114.
personal data
SURNAME Campenhausen, Hans von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Campenhausen, Hans Erich Freiherr von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian and church historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 16, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Rosenbeck
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1989
Place of death Heidelberg