Johann Hess

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Johann Hess, painting 1546
Johann Hess, sepia ink drawing with heightened white

Johann Heß , also (Jan) Hess, Hesse (born September 23, 1490 in Nuremberg ; † January 5, 1547 in Breslau ) was a Lutheran theologian and reformer .

Life

Hess comes from a wealthy middle-class family in Nuremberg , his father was the merchant Johann Hess the Elder. Ä. (1460–1524), his mother the merchant's daughter Anna, née Geiger from Pforzheim. He went to school in Zwickau for three years . With a humanistic background, he studied in Leipzig from 1505 to 1510 , where he graduated with a baccalaureate , then studied the seven liberal arts and jurisprudence in Wittenberg for two years and received his master's degree . At the Leucorea he joined Johann Lange and Georg Spalatin . From here he went to Breslau in 1513 and entered the service of Bishop Johannes V. Turzo as spiritual secretary , who awarded him a canonical in Neisse . At the instigation of Karl I. von Münsterberg and Oels , his son Joachim was raised by Hess from 1515–1517, who at the time owned a canonical in Neisse. Hess went with him to the University of Prague for two years . In Neisse he met the humanist Valentin Krautwald , who in 1515 was the episcopal secretary. Then he was provost to St. Maria and St. Georg in Oels for two years .

In 1518/1519 he traveled to Italy. On September 9, 1519, he acquired his doctorate at the University of Ferrara and was previously ordained a subdeacon on June 18, 1519 . On March 24, 1520. consecrated him in Rome for Deacon .

He left Italy and returned to Silesia. In Breslau he was ordained a priest on June 3, 1520 , but remained in contact with friends from Wittenberg. Philipp Melanchthon often warned him about his fearfulness. After the bishop's death - his successor was Jakob von Salza - he accepted a position as court preacher to Duke Karl I von Münsterberg and then traveled to Nuremberg in 1522. In his commitment to the Reformation, Voss was offered the position of senior pastor at St. Sebald's Church . There he met Dominicus Sleupner . 1523 Breslauer appointed him magistrate against the resistance of the cathedral chapter to pastor at St. Mary Magdalene . He stayed there until his death on January 5, 1547.

After the Breslau disputation from April 20 to 23, 1524 in the Dorotheenkirche , he quietly began to introduce Wittenberg regulations and to improve the school system and the poor. The innovations remained within narrow limits. The Breslau Reformation retained this peculiarity until the 19th century. In this way denominational peace was maintained.

Hess kept any theological argument away from Breslau. Like Kaspar Schwenckfeld, he rejected the Swiss Reformation . He did not take part in the major disputes in the empire . He was well educated, but did not express himself literarily. In the world of the reformers he was still in high regard and exchanged letters with the most important theologians . In 1540/1541 he visited his hometown for the last time and traveled with Veit Dietrich to the Regensburg Religious Discussion . In his last years he did not stand out. For Hess caring for the poor in Breslau was an important part of his activities. This can be seen, for example, in the fact that, soon after taking office, he had sacrificial boxes set up in churches for the poor in the city. An action on May 8, 1525 called on all needy to gather in the Magdalenenkirche, there they were u. a. assessed by doctors and councilors and, if necessary, admitted to city hospitals. As reported in 1526, more than 500 poor people were cared for every day in the seven city hospitals. Outside the same area, more than 400 people received support in the form of bread, clothing, house rent, etc. Ä. m. The magistrate appointed a committee for the whole of the poor, headed by Hess. He also made a contribution to the construction of the All Saints Hospital in Breslau in 1526.

Johann Heß married twice, in 1525 and in 1531. When he died he left six children. Voss was buried in front of the main altar of the Magdalenenkirche in Breslau . His comrade Ambrosius Moibanus and his pupil Johann Crato von Krafftheim spoke at his coffin . One of his descendants is the Pietist poet Karl Heinrich von Bogatzky, born in 1690 .

The Reformation of Silesia is closely related to him.

literature

Web links

  • Martin Luther: Letter to Johann Hess in Breslau about the danger emanating from the false doctrine of Schwenckfeld and Crautwald. Greet Ambrosius Moibanus. Thuringian University and State Library Jena, www.archive.thulb.uni-jena.de archive.thulb.uni-jena.de

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georg Kretschmar :  Heß, Johann. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 7 f. ( Digitized version ).
  2. ↑ Friedrich Nösselt : Breslau and its surroundings: description of everything worth knowing for locals and friends. Korn, Breslau 1833, pp. 73-74
  3. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from July 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.breslau-wroclaw.de
  4. ^ Julius Köstlin : The theses of the disputation of Johann Hess of April 20, 1524 in German texts. Journal of the Association for the History and Antiquity of Silesia, Sv. 10 (1870-1871 [1871]), 369-372
  5. ↑ archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de (PDF)
  6. ↑ Michael Sachs: The flight of the evangelical wife Anna Magdalena von Reibnitz (1664– ~ 1745) with her five children from Silesia, threatened by forced Catholicization, in 1703 - a mood picture from the age of the Counter Reformation and Pietism. In: Medical historical messages. Journal for the history of science and specialist prose research. Volume 34, 2015 (2016), pp. 221–263, here: p. 233.
personal data
SURNAME Hess, Johann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hess, Johann; Hesse, Johann; Hess, Jan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lutheran theologian and reformer
DATE OF BIRTH around 1490
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH January 5, 1547
Place of death Wroclaw