Johann Georg Widmann

This article deals with the missionary Johann Georg Widmann; the article on the politician of the same name can be found under Hans Widmann (Politician) .

Johann Georg Widmann (born November 12, 1696 in Weilheim an der Teck , † October 21, 1753 probably in Stettin ) was the first missionary of the Institutum Judaicum et Muhammedicum .

Coming from a broken family background, he studied Protestant theology in Tübingen , Jena and Halle and completed his vicariate in Weilheim, where he headed pietistic convents . In 1728 he was expelled from Württemberg as a "troublemaker" after he had previously been dismissed from church service on suspicion of heresy and a moral mistake.

In 1730 he joined Johann Heinrich Callenberg and became a member of the Institutum Judaicum et Muhammedicum , in November 1730 he was sent out with Johann Andreas Manitius (1707-1758) as the first missionary of this institution. He traveled to Germany , Austria , Poland , Bohemia , the Netherlands , Denmark and also England .

Familiar with the Yiddish language and rabbinism, he made a lasting impression on many Jewish listeners. Pressed by the Catholic Church , exposed to hostility and rejection, he was arrested in Bohemia in 1733. In the summer of 1739 he stopped working for the Institutum, returned to Württemberg and worked for a short time as a private teacher. His work has been observed by ecclesiastical and secular authorities, as he is said to have attracted attention as a leader of pietistic meetings and again for exorcistic practices. Finally he went to Szczecin and Danzig , where he taught and preached as a teacher.

His theological thinking and piety were shaped by eschatological-salvation-historical ideas and by mystical-spiritualistic inclinations that accompanied him for a lifetime as a loner with a melancholy nature.

He wrote smaller missions .

Works

• De consiliis naturae. Praes. Johann Eberhard Rösler . Tubingae 1716 (Philos. Master's disputation together with Georg Christoph Griesinger)
• De fide justificante. Praes. Gottfried Hoffmann. Tubingae 1721 (Theol. Magisterdisputation); Mission writings: A brief outline of today's Judaism, 1731
• Christian prayers of a converting Jew, 1737, etc. a. - See also other mission writings, in: Archive of the Francke Foundations, Halle and printed in Callenberg's reports (where)

literature

• Christoph von Kolb, M. Georg Widmann: the first Württemberg missionary to Jews, in: BWKG NF 4 (1900), 143–152
• Paul Gerhard Aring: Christians and Jews today - and the »mission to the Jews«? History and theology of Protestant mission to the Jews in Germany , presented and examined using the example of Protestantism in central Germany, 1989, 101ff.
• Martin Jung: The Württemberg Church and the Jews in the Time of Pietism (1675-1780) , 1992 (SKI 13), 214–218, etc.; - From Halle to Jerusalem. Contributions to the conference of the same name of the seminars Jewish Studies and Christian Orient at the Institute for Oriental Studies at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg from June 27th - 30th, 1994. Edited by Eveline Goodman-Thau and Walther Beltz, 1994,
• See also lit. on Johann Heinrich Callenberg and the Institutum Judaicum, in: Werner Raupp (Hrsg.), Mission in Quellentexten, 1990 (wo), 228
• Werner Raupp :  Widmann, Johann Georg. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 13, Bautz, Herzberg 1998, ISBN 3-88309-072-7 , Sp. 1051-1053.