Hermann Gerlach

Hermann Karl Ludwig Gerlach (born April 21, 1833 in Niedermarsberg ; † July 31, 1886 in Ischl ) was a professor and cathedral capitular who is considered one of the most important German canonists of the 19th century.

Life

Hermann Gerlach was born on April 21, 1833 in Niedermarsberg as the son of the medical councilor and renter Heinrich R. Gerlach from Madfeld . His mother was Elisabeth Gerlach née Volbracht from Obermarsberg . However, the young Hermann Gerlach did not spend his high school in the Sauerland , but in Paderborn , where he graduated from high school in the summer of 1851 . Because of his interest in theology , his teachers recommended him to study theology in Paderborn.

Professional background

Studied theology and law

Immediately after leaving school, Gerlach began studying theology and law, initially in Paderborn. This was followed by two semesters in Bonn , then one in Tübingen , whereupon he moved to Munich and completed another semester of the subjects mentioned there. At the end of 1854 he received his doctorate with the thesis The right to present in parishes to the doctor of rights. The work was accepted in Munich on December 2, 1854 and published in Regensburg the following year .

After completing his doctorate in law, Gerlach devoted himself to theology. Further studies followed in Breslau and Vienna and again at the philosophical-theological college in Paderborn. Here he was ordained a priest on August 17, 1857 .

Professorship for Philosophy and Canon Law at the Academia Paderbornensis

On October 1, 1857 Gerlach received the office of secretary to the vicar general . A year later he received first the supplent and then from October 6, 1859 a professorship for philosophy and canon law at the Academia Paderbornensis . He worked as an academic teacher and researcher in Paderborn for around eleven years. Gerlach's first writing was the treatise on Paderborn diocesan law and diocesan administration . With his work, Gerlach aimed, among other things, at standardizing diocese practice. The Paderborn diocesan law and diocesan administration primarily focused on internal administration. One of the different practices in the diocese was, for example, that the vicarage was called a chaplain, cooperator or vicar elsewhere for a long time. The vicars of the collegiate parish of St. Cyriakus in Geseke carried the title "Canonicus". In Brilon there was a town chaplain and a parish chaplain. Gerlach tried to compensate for such differences, and not just in terms of their names.

Gerlach began a trend to level the particular rights of the commissariats in favor of the Paderborn central administration. Its publication is considered a milestone in the legal and administrative history of the Diocese of Paderborn.

His second work appeared as early as 1862, entitled Logical-legal treatise on the definition of canon law .

Vicar General in Limburg

Gerlach was called to Limburg in 1869, ten years after his ordination , as cathedral capitular and clergyman . In connection with this he was given the office of vicar general . The diocese of Limburg was created in 1827 as part of the re-registration of the Catholic dioceses in Germany after the Congress of Vienna . Gerlach, who was already a respected canon lawyer through his works and numerous writings , found himself in the middle of the Prussian culture war here in Limburg , which had successively seized the dioceses of Trier , Paderborn , Münster , Osnabrück and Limburg . Bismarck was very suspicious of the Catholic center, which had been established in 1870. For him it was in opposition to the new state and its evangelical empire from the start. He feared a connection between the Catholic Center Party and the Catholic powers France and Austria . However, this policy saw the German bishops, including Limburg Bishop Blum , marginalized.

Church politics in Limburg at that time was like a tightrope act. In 1873 Gerlach had to represent Bishop Blum against the indictment of violating §§ 22 and 23 of the law on the education and employment of clergy.

The proceedings prompted Gerlach to issue a detailed expert opinion entitled The Significance of the Criminal Provisions in Sections 22 and 23 of the Law on the Education and Employment of Clergymen of May 11, 1873, with particular reference to an indictment against the Bishop of Limburg for contravention against any provision of this law . Bishop Blum was subsequently in exile at Haid Castle and wrote in 1880 that he "would rather die in exile than make a shameful peace for the Church!"

In 1867, Gerlach wrote the study on the relationship between the Prussian state and the Catholic Church for his Paderborn employer . His main focus was on whether the state should grant the church full freedom in exercising its rights. He does not consider the relationship in the bourgeois field, as Gerlach called it. So he does not go into the question of the framework in which Prussia is a denominational state. Rather, Gerlach was concerned with the extent to which the state restricts the church in the exercise of its tasks or gives it freedom. For Gerlach, it is crucial that the state and the church jointly create sufficient individual freedom , including through conventions and concordats . These considerations led Gerlach to adopt a balancing but influential stance in the Kulturkampf. He succeeded in dissuading Bishop Blum's secret delegate, Klein , from the hard line he was following with Bishop Blum and practically all bishops. However, Blum did not accept any compromises. The roots of Blum's views can be traced back to March 1848. Even then, Blum tried to use the bourgeois freedom movement to liberate the church from state tutelage. At that time he was already clearly marking his libertas ecclesiae standpoint. Blum himself was harder to convince Gerlach. Klein recognized that the expectations that Rome, now having such strong support from the Catholic people, would not give in so easily, through the policy of Leo XIII. were countered. Gerlach recognized this early on. In 1880, both Gerlach and Klein were ready to accept the settlement desired by Bismarck in the sense of discretionary powers, which offered the possibility of not applying the Kulturkampf Laws against the Church without formally repealing them, as a temporary solution. Gerlach's view as the correct view would later prove. The dismantling of the Kulturkampf required numerous arduous negotiations, in which Gerlach was also involved. Gerlach and Klein also made it possible through skillful diplomacy that Bishop Blum's return from exile was accelerated.

The path of discretionary powers advocated by Gerlach made it possible to reoccupy the parishes and to recall the clergy ordained in other dioceses.

After Bishop Blum's health deteriorated sharply in the fall of 1884, he died on December 30 of the same year. An election of a diocese administrator was not made. On the basis of Gerlach's report, the election of a new bishop was accelerated. According to the law of May 11, 1873, which is still in force, the swearing-in of an administrator should have been based on the state laws. Gerlach had already shown the weaknesses of the law and the rejection that this law had experienced. However, Gerlach could not live to see Klein's appointment as bishop on September 25, 1886. His health had been in poor health in the years before, so that he was in Ischl in Upper Austria for a cure. Hermann Gerlach died there on July 31, 1886 at the age of 53. He found his final resting place in Limburg.

Canon law work

Gerlach can be seen as a typical representative of the legal philosophical method. According to the laws of logic , he worked out the essentialia of the concept of church and of law, carefully separating and weighing the two. In the foreword of the 14th edition of Walter's textbook published by him, Gerlach mentions that through Walter he “came to love canonistic studies”. This should make him one of the most important canon lawyers.

Starting from the sociological concept of society, as he later also of Weber Max , certain Gerlach was represented the church as a religious society that of Christ , which makes them different is donated by others, including religious societies. He defines law as an order in the tension between freedom and barriers. In contrast to the more internal, because moral order, the legal order requires external enforceability. Using concept arithmetic, Gerlach comes to the conclusion that canon law is the externally enforceable order of the religious society founded by Christ. At this point he also emphasized that it did not have to be enforced. The possibility of enforceability is sufficient. The state forces with physical power. But the church can only enforce what it insists on by depriving it of its own advantages. It was clear to Gerlach that the fulfillment of church legal obligations can only be achieved with those who still attach importance to belonging to the church and enjoying church rights. With this approach Gerlach succeeds in a clean separation between canon law and moral theology by making it clear that pure rules of conscience must not be treated like enforceable legal clauses.

By emphasizing that church law primarily aims to regulate the external order, Gerlach also succeeded in separating the forum externum from the purely internal area. “Through its visibility, the church enters the sphere of law by making claims to the external validity of its propositions, the exercise of which requires external recognition, permitting external compulsion to fulfill its commandments. What does not belong in the realm of external legal life falls to morality; Everything belongs to canon law, the execution of which can be made possible by external compulsion, at least according to the idea ”.

Gerlach thus arrives at the extended definition that canon law is the epitome of all norms for the life of the church in relation to its members and those outside of it, as well as to the individual church members in their external ecclesiastical relationships. Until recently after the Second Vatican Council , when a revision of the canonical legal order was deemed necessary, reference was made to the work of Hermann Gerlach when it came to the question of the meaning of the essence of canon law. Gerlach's textbook on Catholic canon law is aptly referred to in the otherwise rather sober Dictionnaire de Droit Canonique as an “oeuvre trés utile et remarquable”.

After this consideration, Gerlach's life can be divided into two parts. The first is his academic and literary work as a professor of canon law. During this phase his most important legal writings were created. The second section falls in the time of the Kulturkampf, which he made a considerable contribution to unraveling. Shaped by his conservative upbringing and his theological, philosophical and legal studies, he made it his main question to fathom the essence of canon law. He succeeded in doing this in his definition of canon law, which gives him a lasting name in jurisprudence.

Fonts

• The right to present parishes (dissertation), Regensburg 1855.
• Paderborn diocesan law and diocesan administration, Paderborn 1861.
• Logical-legal treatises on the definition of canon law (facsimile), Paderborn 1862.
• The relationship between the Prussian state and the Catholic Church in the area of ​​canon law according to Prussian laws is presented, Paderborn 1862.
• Logic, psychology, metaphysics, Paderborn 1864.
• The relationship of the Prussian state to the Catholic Church in the area of ​​canon law. 2nd edition Paderborn 1867.
• Textbook of Catholic Church Law, Paderborn 1869.
• The last things are presented with special consideration of Schleiermacher's eschatology according to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures, Berlin 1869.
• Textbook of Canon Law, 14th edition (edited by Walter), Bonn 1871.
• The significance of the penal provisions in Sections 22 and 23 of the Law on Education and Employment of Clergy of May 11, 1873, Paderborn 1874.
• The entitlement to donation and the emergency of the Protestant Church in the Kingdom of Prussia Leipzig 1875.
• Nekrolog auf F. Walter, Der Katholik 60 (1880), 511-515.
• De imitatione Christi (edited by Thomas a Kempis), Freiburg 1889.

literature

• Hagemann: Important Sauerlanders, the canonist Hermann Gerlach, Trutznachtigall (magazine fd Sauerland) . 1921.
• Guggenberger, K., Gerlach Hermann: LThK IV. Freiburg 1932.
• Wilhelm Liese: Necrologium Paderbornense. Paderborn priests' death book: 1822–1930 . Paderborn 1934.
• A. Naz: Dictionaire de droit canonique, contenant tous les termes du droit canonique avec un sommaire de l'histoire, vol. 1 . Paris 1935.
• Josef Hennecke: Great men of our homeland, Diemeltalbote - the home paper for Diemelland's 5th year, No. 42 . October 15, 1938.
• N. Grass: Hermann Gerlach in: LThK, IV. 2nd edition. Freiburg 1960.
• Winfried Schulz: The question of the nature of canon law in the work of Hermann Gerlach, Theology and Faith . 1989.
• Otto Renkhoff: Nassau biography. Short biographies from 13 centuries . Wiesbaden 1992.
• Hans Jürgen Brandt , Karl Hengst : The Diocese of Paderborn. Vol. 3. The diocese of Paderborn in the industrial age 1821–1930 . Paderborn 1997.
• Patrick Sensburg : The great lawyers of the Sauerland . 22 biographies of outstanding legal scholars. 1st edition. FW Becker, Arnsberg 2002, ISBN 3-930264-45-5 (276 pages).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Winfried Schulz : The question of the nature of canon law in the work of Hermann Gerlach. In: Theologie und Glaube 1989 (4), p. 606.
2. ↑ Josef Hennecke: Great men of our homeland. In: Diemeltalbote - Das Heimatblatt für ́das Diemelland 5th year, No. 42 of October 15, 1938, p. 2.
3. ^ Johann Friedrich von Schulte : The old Catholicism. Giessen 1887, p. 419.
4. ^ Wilhelm Liese: Necrologium Paderbornense. Paderborn priests' death book: 1822–1930. P. 210
5. ^ Wilhelm Kosch: The Catholic Germany. Biographical-bibliographical lexicon. P. 990.
6. ^ Hans Jürgen Brandt , Karl Hengst : The Diocese of Paderborn. Vol. 3. The diocese of Paderborn in the industrial age 1821–1930. P. 171.
7. ^ Otto Renkhoff: Nassau biography. Short biographies from 13 centuries. P. 226.
8. ↑ Winfried Schulz: The question of the nature of canon law in the work of Hermann Gerlach. In: Theologie und Glaube 1989, p. 614.
9. ↑ Published by Schöningh in Paderborn in 1874.
10. ^ Gerlach: Textbook of Catholic Church Law. 4th edition Paderborn 1885, p. 34.
11. ↑ Maibach, Archive for Middle Rhine Church History 7 (1895), p. 276.
12. ↑ Winfried Schulz: The question of the nature of canon law in the work of Hermann Gerlach. In: Theologie und Glaube 1989, p. 617.
13. ↑ Gerlach, Logical-legal treatise on the definition of canon law, Paderborn 1862, p. 12.
14. ↑ Gerlach, Logical-legal treatise on the definition of canon law, Paderborn 1862, p. 13.
15. ↑ Gerlach, Logical-legal treatise on the definition of canon law, Paderborn 1862, p. 26.
16. ^ A. Naz: Dictionaire de droit canonique, contenant tous les termes du droit canonique avec unsommaire de l'histoire. Vol. 135, p. 957.