Hugo Assmann

Hugo Assmann , (born July 22, 1933 in Venâncio Aires , † February 22, 2008 in Piracicaba ), was a Brazilian theologian. He is considered to be the co-founder of liberation theology .

Life

1951–1960 Assmann studied philosophy in São Leopoldo and 1954–1958 theology at the Gregoriana in Rome. He also studied sociology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. He was ordained a priest and received a doctorate in theology from the Gregorian. He later gave up the priesthood to get married.

Assmann was considered one of the most radical liberation theologians in the 1970s, as he advocated establishing political ties to Fidel Castro . During the time of the military dictatorship he had to flee from Brazil and later from Uruguay, Bolivia and Chile.

In 1984 he was one of the liberation theologians most severely criticized by the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger .

In Costa Rica he worked with Franz Josef Hinkelammert , Pablo Richard and Julio de Santa Ana at the Ecumenical Research Institute, the Departamento Ecuménico de Investigaciones (DEI), which was founded on an idea by Assmann. Among other things, he was the first director of the DEI. Most recently Assmann worked as a university lecturer in Brazil and headed the postgraduate program at the Methodist University of Piracicaba (UNIMEP).

Think

According to Assmann, theology can only be practiced in close proximity to social practice. A theology that starts from abstractions deceives itself because it ultimately hypostatizes the social situation of the theologian without being aware of it. The concern of the Christian faith, however, is a concrete one: to practice "active love for God" in one's neighbor. Christian practice therefore belongs to the human realm, and Christian theology must accordingly be a reflection of this practice. Theology is then no longer purely theological, but finds its criteria in the “human references to history”.

In the 1980s, Assmann worked in exile with Franz Josef Hinkelammert on a theological criticism of the capitalist market economy based on Marx's analysis of fetishism and thus became a pioneer of the idolatrous approach in liberation theology.

After the end of the East-West conflict, he revised parts of his earlier positions under the influence of systems theories and cybernetics . Among other things, he works on the development of a liberating pedagogy . Assmann's theoretical approaches gained in this way are continued today by his student Jung Mo Sung .

Works in German translation

• The idols of oppression and the liberating God. Edition Liberación, Münster 1984, ISBN 3-923792-13-1 .
• with Franz J. Hinkelammert : Götze Markt. Patmos, Düsseldorf 1992, ISBN 3-491-77726-7 .
• Ed .: Idols and sacrifices. René Girard in conversation with liberation theology. Thaur, Vienna / Munich 1996, ISBN 3-85400-008-1 , ISBN 3-8258-3113-2 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Hugo Assmann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Jung Mo Sung : Hugo Assmann y el coraje de decir la verdad . In: Adital , February 26, 2008. Retrieved March 31, 2010.
• Hugo Assmann is dead . Obituary of the Institute for Theology and Politics. Retrieved October 30, 2009.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hugo Assmann is dead . Website of the Institute for Theology and Politics. Retrieved October 30, 2009.
2. ↑ DEI - Historia ( Memento of the original from February 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Website of the Ecumenical Research Institute. Retrieved March 31, 2010.
3. ↑ Jung Mo Sung: Hugo Assmann y el coraje de decir la verdad ( Memento of the original dated February 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Adital , February 25, 2008. Retrieved March 31, 2010.  
4. ↑ José Míguez Bonino : Theology in the context of liberation. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1977, pp. 69f.
5. ↑ Jung Mo Sung: The Human Being as Subject. Defending the Victims. In: Ivan Petrella : Latin American Liberation Theology. The next generation. Orbis Books, New York 2005, pp. 12f.
6. ^ Hugo Assmann, Jung Mo Sung: Competência e sensibilidade solidária. Educar para a esperança. 2nd Edition. Editora Vozes, Petrópolis 2001.