Johann Christian Edelmann

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Johann Christian Edelmann. From an edition of the Physiogomic Fragments by Johann Kaspar Lavaters .

Johann Christian Edelmann (born July 9, 1698 in Weißenfels , † February 15, 1767 in Berlin ) was a German pietist , early enlightener and writer .

Life

Johann Christian Edelmann was born as the son of the married couple Gottlob Edelmann († 1731) and Dorothea Magdaleme, née Haberland († 1723). He attended the Lyceum in Lauban and from 1715 to 1719 the grammar school in Altenburg . He then studied Protestant theology with Lorenz Schmidt from 1720 to 1724. In addition to Johann Franz Buddeus , who was a critic of Wolffianism , he also heard from Johann Georg Walch and Johann Andreas Danz in Jena . For financial reasons, he did not take exams. In 1725 he found employment as a private tutor with Count Hector Wilhelm Kornfeil (1686–1759) in Würmla , Wolf Augustin Auersperg (1677–1750).

In 1728 he moved to Vienna and there came into contact with " Halle Pietism ". In 1731 he traveled to Saxony , where he worked as a private tutor in the Chemnitz catchment area and in Dresden . Gottfried Arnold's writings shaped him into a distinctive pietist, so that he sought contact with the Gichtelian / Angel Brothers , Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf and in 1734 with his congregation in Herrnhut .

In 1735 he wrote four parts of his first book, Innocent Truths, as commissioned . He accompanied Arnold Dippel and Johann Konrad Dippel through his utterances and called for mystical-spiritual Christianity. Because of his publications, he worked on the Berleburger Bible , which grew to eight volumes between 1726 and 1742.

He was the first German scholar to profess Spinozism . Animated by reading Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politius , he wrote three parts of his important work Moses with Uncovered Face in 1740 . In these publications he attacked Matthias Knutzen (* around 1646) sharply, whereupon the Reich Chamber of Commerce ordered the confiscation . In 1741 he left Berleburg and settled in the county of Hachenburg , in 1744 he went to Neuwied . In 1746 he escaped imprisonment .

After falling out with Johann Friedrich Haug , he turned to Johann Friedrich Rock and the " Schwarzenau New Baptists ". After a crisis of faith, in 1743 he wrote Divinity of Reason, which was based on the deistic idea . After a short stay in Braunschweig in 1746, Edelmann moved to Altona , where he met Lorenz Schmidt , the author of the Wertheimer Bible , which was written in 1735 .

As the author of more than 160 counter-writings, he was one of those whose writings were burned by "executioners", for example in Frankfurt in 1750 . After his stay in Hamburg , he traveled to Berlin in 1749 , where the then Prussian King Friedrich II granted him asylum on condition that he refrain from further publications . Frederick II is said to have justified the granting of asylum by saying that "if he had to allow so many fools to stay in his countries, why shouldn't he allow a sensible man a place?"

Edelmann lived withdrawn in Berlin until he died of a stroke in 1767. It is said that he was already a member of the “ Masonic Society ” in Hamburg . Manuscripts in the Hamburg State Library prove his close contact with Freemasons in Hamburg and Berlin, even in the last phase of his life.

Theological meaning

Count Johann Friedrich Alexander (Wied-Neuwied) had "coerced" Edelmann into a creed at the instigation of the Neuwied Consistory. Edelmann presented this on September 14, 1745 and explained the details of this publication in the foreword of the publication Compelled, but not renewed, Confession of Faith, which appeared a year later . In his text, Edelmann confesses his personal faith in twelve articles and already emphasizes in the title that he does not want to "force" this personal creed on others. In this way he makes his basic position on such confessional writings clear. He explains each article in detail on the 328 pages of this book and gives the readership an opportunity for quick orientation with a subsequent “Register of the most distinguished names and things”.

Some important aspects of his criticism, which in some cases was very harshly formulated, can be exemplified. Edelmann, for example, referred to Cor. 13: 9, where it says that the knowledge and prophetic speeches of men are “piecemeal”. Since the Bible conveyed an imperfect knowledge of God, which came "from people, through people, to people", he also counts this book among the "piecemeal works" and denies its infallibility. He became very specific and quoted from the concord formula (“sola sacra scriptura iudex, norma et regula”). In his opinion, the Bible is not an infallible “rule and guideline”. With the dogmatic definition of sola scriptura , the “priests ... sought to rule over others”. With this radical doubt about the most important cornerstone of Protestant dogmatics, Edelmann's writing became an early document of German Enlightenment theology that led to the "crisis of the principle of writing" long before Johann Salomo Semler .

Edelmann's creed calls into question many other church dogmas. So he believed that Jesus was "a true man as we were, and in all respects, none excepted / had our nature and quality". In his explanations of his first article of faith, he writes that one must examine the “narrations of our Bible just as well according to reason and the relationship of nature”, as is also the case with other books that may be considered holy scriptures for other people. Anyone who conducts such critical investigations into the alleged “miraculous birth of a virgin without the help of a man” will soon be assigned the “heretic title”. This leads to the fact that the "lucrative offices" are lost.

reception

Edelmann is considered an important prose writer before Gotthold Ephraim Lessing . When Bruno Bauer wrote a book about “the atheistic enlightenment of the last century” in 1843, which he titled Das Discovered Christianity based on Holbach , he remarked in the preface: “Of the German Enlightenmentists of the last century we only have noblemen ... as Allies can need. "

literature

Works

  • Innocent Truths ... , o. O., 1735–43.
  • Prepared blows on the fool's back , 1738 (directed against JF Rock)
  • Moses with his face uncovered , Vol. 1–3 o. O., 1740. Vol. 3 online
  • The divinity of reason , n.d., 1741.
  • Christ and Belial ... in an exchange of theological letters between Auctore and Brother Zinzendorf , 1741
  • The desire for the sensible pure milk , o. O., 1744.
  • Confession of faith compelled but not re-compelled to others , o. O., 1746; on-line
  • The Gospel of St. Harenberg , o. O., 1747. online
  • J. Chr. Edelmann's most guilty letter of thanks to Probst Süssmilch , 1747
  • Joh. Chr. Edelmann's autobiography, published 1752 , ed. v. CRW Klose, Berlin 1849 online
  • Six letters from Johann Christian Edelmann to Georg Christoph Kreyssig, Philipp Strauch (ed.), Halle 1918.

Modern work edition

  • Johann Christian Edelmann: Complete Writings, 12 vols. , Ed. by Walter Grossmann. Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1969–1987, ISBN 978-3-7728-0109-9 .

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christoph Reimann: The diaries of Count Casimir zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Berleburg (1687–1741) as a self-testimony of a pietistic sovereign . Dissertation 2017, kassel university press GmbH, Kassel 2019, ISBN 978-3-7376-0622--6 (print), ISBN 978-3-7376-0623-3 (e-book), p. 8.
  2. ↑ Walter Nigg: History of religious liberalism. Niehans, Zurich 1937, p. 97.
  3. ↑ New finds on the history of the word "enlightened". In: stjuergen-kiel.de. August 6, 1998, archived from the original on May 22, 2010 ; Retrieved July 10, 2008 .
  4. ↑ Klose, 1849, p. 439.
  5. ↑ Edelmann 1746 p. 42. The Bible is still referred to in the Evangelical Church in Germany on the basis of the concord formula as norma normans ("norm-creating norm"), the church confessions in return as norma normata ("standardized norm") , since they were derived from the Scriptures. Confessions of the EKD
  6. ↑ Wolfhart Pannenberg: The crisis of the writing principle. In: Ders .: Basic questions of systematic theology, Volume 1. Göttingen 1962, pp. 11–21.
  7. ↑ Edelmann 1746 p. 93.
  8. ↑ Edelmann 1746, pp. 95f., P. 295f.
  9. ↑ Bruno Bauer: The discovered Christianity. A reminder of the eighteenth century and a contribution to the crisis of the nineteenth. Verlag des literarian Comptoirs, Zurich, Winterthur 1843, preface, p. VIII. It should be noted that Edelmann's subsumption under "the atheistic enlightenment" is inaccurate, because Edelmann defends himself against the defamatory attribution of an "honest man" "Atheist role". In this way a human “monster” or “monster” would often be described, which could not be proven in the world. (Edelmann 1746, p. 29)
personal data
SURNAME Edelmann, Johann Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1698
PLACE OF BIRTH Weissenfels
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1767
Place of death Berlin