Hermann Samuel Reimarus

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Hermann Samuel Reimarus; Oil painting by Gerloff Hiddinga, 1749

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (* December 22, 1694 in Hamburg ; † March 1, 1768 ibid) was a high school professor for oriental languages in Hamburg, a representative of Deism and a pioneer of Bible criticism in the early days of the Enlightenment .

Life

Hermann Samuel Reimarus was born on December 22nd, 1694 as the first child of Nikolaus Reimarus and Johanna Wetken in Hamburg.

On the father's side of a Lutheran pastor's family, on his mother's side of a respected family of the Hamburg bourgeoisie, Reimarus received a thorough education at the Hamburg Johanneum from 1708 , where his father worked as a teacher. He deepened this from 1710 under the care of the theologian, Latinist and Graecist Johann Albert Fabricius at the Academic Gymnasium .

At the age of 19 Reimarus began studying theology, philosophy and oriental languages ​​in Jena in 1714. With the help of his Hamburg teacher Fabricius, he moved to Wittenberg in 1716, where he obtained his master's degree with a disputation on Hebrew lexicology and in 1719 became an adjunct of the philosophical faculty. In 1720/21 Reimarus went on a study trip to the Netherlands and England and, after a short stay in Wittenberg, in 1723 accepted the post of rector at the Wismar city school .

After he, supported by Fabricius, had accepted the professorship for oriental languages ​​at the Academic Gymnasium in Hamburg in 1728, Reimarus married the daughter of his colleague and former teacher, Johanna Friederike Fabricius (1707–1783) that same year. Of the seven children in the family, only the eldest son Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus and the daughter Margaretha Elisabeth, called Elise Reimarus , reached adulthood.

Reimarus remained in his office as rector at the Academic High School for 40 years. During this time he wrote a number of philological, theological and philosophical writings, developed into an important and respected person in the Hamburg public, moved in enlightened circles and made contacts with important personalities of his time. Reimarus was one of the initiators of the Hamburg Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Useful Trades, founded in 1765 . Since 1760 he was an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg .

Less than ten days before his death on March 1, 1768, Reimarus invited his friends and told them that this was his last farewell meal.

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From a literary point of view, Reimarus was extremely productive throughout his life. After smaller studies and editions in his younger years, he completed a translation and commentary on the Book of Job in 1734, which the Hamburg early enlightenment scientist Johann Adolf Hoffmann had begun. In 1737 Reimarus published an appraisal of the life and work of his father-in-law Johann Albert Fabricius , whose edition by the Roman historian Dio Cassius (155 ̶ 235 AD) he continued and published in two volumes in 1750 and 1752.

The series of his own philosophical works began in 1754 with the publication of ten essays on “The Most Noble Truths of Natural Religion” - a work with which he presented himself as a “typical representative of the German Enlightenment” and “a philosophically adept defender of the Christian faith against atheism French or English style "established. This extremely successful pamphlet was followed in 1756 by the “Doctrine of Reason as an Instruction for the Correct Use of Reason in the Knowledge of Truth” and in 1760 by a pamphlet on “General considerations about the instincts of animals”.

With this extensive and varied work, Reimarus was already considered one of the most important representatives of the enlightened popular philosophy during his lifetime.

His most important work, however, the “Apology or Protective Scripture for the Reasonable Admirers of God” - an “anti-Christian pamphlet of unprecedented sharpness” - on which he had worked from 1736 to 1768 parallel to his official work, Reimarus did not dare to publish during his lifetime. He was aware that the generation at that time was not yet ready for the scriptures critical of the Bible and religion, which turned against biblicism and Christian orthodoxy and ultimately resulted in a fundamental negation of the Christian revelatory character. Reimarus wrote in the "Preliminary Report on the Apology":

“The writing may remain hidden for the use of understanding friends; it should not be made common to my will by the pressure until the times are cleared up ”.

After his death, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing came into possession of an earlier version of the Apology through Reimarus' children, with whom he was friends, and from 1774 began to publish excerpts from the script. However, in order to protect the Reimarus family, he did not disclose the author's name. It was not until 1814, when Albert Hinrich Reimarus bequeathed the complete manuscript of the Apology to the Hamburg library, that the author's identity was finally clear. The scholar Reimarus, who was highly respected during his lifetime, was then discussed posthumously with extremely controversial.

The publication of the Reimarus fragments by Lessing under the title Fragments of a Wolfenbüttel Unnamed , which he says were "written with the utmost frankness, but at the same time with the utmost seriousness", without "mockery and antics", caused the so-called " fragmentation dispute “, Probably the greatest theological controversy in Germany in the 18th century.

The starting point of Reimarus' argument was the observation that in many enlightened European - especially Protestant - states various Christian denominations and also Jews were tolerated, in Russia even Muslims, but not the followers of a natural, rational religion that was not based on a revelation : "To have and to practice a pure, reasonable religion is nowhere allowed, at least in Christendom." Even the ancient Israelites had praying strangers who adhered to Noah's religion - that is, Reimarus' so-called natural, rational religion - and who worshiped no idols, tolerated at the gates of the temple, even if they disregarded the Jewish rules. The contemporary preachers, however, wanted to force people first to blindly accept their religion, which they had practiced from childhood, and to “save” them reasonable insight up to a more mature age. Reason is presented to you as a "weak, blind, depraved and seductive leader"; it supposedly does not help to happiness. Reimarus criticizes the theological school mastery: It is easy to fool ignorant children into a dazzling work such as the horror of hell. But God could not have made the way to salvation dependent on the understanding of Revelation. Half of the newborn children in the big cities died by the age of four - Reimarus even uses statistics here -; only one third reach the age of ten, when they start thinking independently.

Reimarus shows that the conception of these preachers, according to which the natural man is incapable of grasping the spirit of God and can only obtain revelation through obedience, is based on a mistranslation and misinterpretation of 1st Corinthians : Paul means here the carnal people who full of affect and malice and unable to perceive the effects of the Spirit of God. Also, according to Paul, reason should not be placed under the obedience of Christ, rather it should convince the Corinthians to obey Christ ( 2nd letter of Paul to the Corinthians ). So what is meant is not the obedience of blind faith. The rules governing nature are not wrong, otherwise Noah and his descendants, who have not yet received the revelation, would have to be naturally corrupt. A revelation that all people could believe without a doubt is impossible; it would be a supernatural miracle. But that God should constantly do supernatural miracles would not correspond to his nature; otherwise he would not have endowed her with the means of natural knowledge such as the eyes. God would not "let an angel come from heaven for every human being to guide and pluck him". Also, he would not have passed the revelation on to others through a few people or peoples, since this made them appear less credible, especially since the revelations of different peoples, but even the teachings of Paul and Jacob, contradict each other. The customs prescribed by Moses' law showed no more wisdom and understanding than the pagan ones. Only the belief in the immortality of the soul spreads among all peoples, according to Pausanias first among the Indians and Chaldeans, according to Herodotus among the Egyptians, according to Cicero among all nations.

Well-founded doubts about the divinity of Revelation, about miracles such as the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea and especially about the credibility of the contradicting traditions of the resurrection story, which he carefully analyzed, lead Reimarus to the thesis,

"[...] That the evidence from Scripture for the resurrection of Jesus before the judgment seat of reason cannot exist forever [...]"

Reimarus' deistic criticism of religion served as the starting point for the subsequent research on the life of Jesus and provided considerable impetus for the historical-critical work on the writings of the Old and New Testaments. The Wolfenbüttel fragments caused unrest among church-organized Christians from the Age of Enlightenment to modern times, so that the entire Apology of Reimarus could not be published in Germany until 1972. Reimarus individually lists "ten contradictions" in the resurrection accounts of the Gospels.

Catalog raisonné

  • Treatises on the Noble Truths of Natural Religion (1754)
  • The doctrine of reason, as an instruction for the correct use of reason in the knowledge of truth (1756)
  • General considerations on the instincts of animals, chiefly on their artistic instincts. To the knowledge of the connection of the world, the creator and ourselves (1760)
  • Apology or protective pamphlet for the reasonable admirers of God (written 1735–1767 / 68, known as a complete work since 1814, first printed in full in 1972 and edited by Gerhard Alexander. In Insel-Verlag (Frankfurt).)
  • Small scholarly writings. Preliminary stages to the apology or protective script for the reasonable worshipers of God . Edited by Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann . Publication of the Joachim-Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Hamburg 79. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1994. (656 pages) ISBN 3-525-86270-9
  • Treatises on the Greatest Truths of Natural Religion. Fifth edition, reviewed and accompanied by a few notes by Johann Albert Heinrich Reimarus [1729–1814]. Hamburg, Bohn, 1781, 704 p. (Both worked as high school professors in Hamburg)

Counter reply

One of the harshest critics of Lessing and Reimarus was the radical pietist Johann Daniel Müller (1716 to after 1785) from Wissenbach (Nassau), today's district of Eschenburg . He published the writing anonymously

  • The victory of the truth of God's word over the lies of Wolfenbüttel's Bibliothecarii, [Gotthold] Ephraim Lessing, and his fragment writer [i.e. Hermann Samuel Reimarus] in their blasphemy against Jesus Christ, his disciples, apostles, and the whole Bible (1780) .

Trivia

A street in Hamburg near the port (north of the Elbe ) is named after Hermann Samuel Reimarus .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Hermann Samuel Reimarus. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed October 19, 2015 .
  2. ^ A b Hannes Kerber: Review by Ulrich Groetsch: “Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768). Classicist, Hebraist, Enlightenment Radical in Disguise ” . In: Philosophical Yearbook . tape 123 , no. 1 , 2016, p. 256 ( academia.edu ).
  3. ↑ Lacher, 1994.
  4. ↑ GE Lessing (ed.): Preliminary remark to Von Tuldung der Deisten. Fragments of an Unnamed. Works Vol. VII, arranged by: Helmut Göbel, Munich 1976, p. 313.
  5. ↑ GE Lessing (ed.): From Duldung der Deisten. Fragment of an unnamed. In: Werke Vol. VII, Munich 1976, p. 320.
  6. ↑ GE Lessing (ed.): A multiple from the papers of the unnamed. Works Vol. VII, 1976, first fragment, p. 332 f.
  7. ↑ Lessing, Werke Vol. VII, 1976, second fragment, p. 353 ff.
  8. ↑ Lessing, Werke Vol. VII, 1976, first fragment, p. 338.
  9. ↑ Lessing, Werke Vol. VII, 1976, second fragment, p. 344 ff., Quotation p. 346.
  10. ↑ Lessing, Werke Vol. VII, 1976, fourth fragment, p. 398 ff.
  11. ↑ Lessing, Werke Vol. VII, 1976, fourth fragment, p. 422 f.
  12. ↑ Lessing, Werke Vol. VII, 1976, Third Fragment, p. 388 ff.
  13. ↑ Lessing, Werke Vol. VII, 1976, Fifth Fragment, p. 426 ff.
  14. ↑ From the Apology or Protective Scripture for the Reasonable Admirers of God
  15. ↑ Online: General considerations on the instincts of animals, mainly on their artistic instincts. On the knowledge of the connection between the world, the creator and ourselves in the Google book search, 2nd edition, Hamburg, Johann Carl Bohn, 1762
  16. ↑ See on the Lessing and Reimarus opponent Johann Daniel Müller the treatise by Reinhard Breymayer : An unknown opponent Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. The former Frankfurt concert director Johann Daniel Müller from Wissenbach / Nassau (1716 to after 1785), alchemist in the vicinity of [Johann Wolfgang] Goethe, Kabbalist , separatist chiliast , friend of the Illuminati of Avignon ("Elias / Elias Artista") . In: Dietrich Meyer (ed.): Pietism - Herrnhutertum - Awakening Movement. Festschrift for Erich Beyreuther . Köln [Pulheim-Brauweiler] and Bonn 1982 ( Series of the Association of Rhenish Church History , Volume 70), p 109-145 [to S. 108: " silhouette of [Johann] Daniel Müller"].

Web links

Commons : Hermann Samuel Reimarus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
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personal data
SURNAME Reimarus, Hermann Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION High school professor in Hamburg for oriental languages; Defender of deism, pioneer of scientific biblical criticism
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1694
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 1768
Place of death Hamburg