Johann Peter Romang

Johann Peter Romang (born November 28, 1802 in Gsteig ; † July 25, 1875 in Kiesen ) was a Swiss Protestant clergyman, theologian and university professor .

Life

family

Johann Peter Romang was the son of the farmer and blacksmith Christian Romang (1756-1822) and his wife Anna Maria (née Mösching) (1766-1824), who came from a politically influential Saaner family. His brothers were:

• Christian Romang (1789–1869), notary , court president and governor ;
• Johann Jakob Romang (1792–1857), farmer, ran a Swiss factory in Russia for five years .

He was married to Margaritha (born October 18, 1806 inhabenstorf , † April 1875 in Kiesen), daughter of pastor Albrecht Samuel Ziegler (1776-1842), since 1838 . Together they had a son and a daughter.

education

He attended high school in Biel from 1818 to 1822 and studied theology and philosophy at the Bern Academy from 1822 to 1827 . In 1828 he was ordained ; shortly before that, he took on an apprenticeship at the municipal elementary school . The following year he continued his studies at the University of Berlin from 1829 to 1830, where he heard lectures from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and above all from Friedrich Schleiermacher .

Career

From 1826 to 1827 he learned the philosophy of Johann Friedrich Herbarts (1776–1841) as a private tutor with the politician Sigmund Karl Ludwig von Steiger (1787–1863), who taught his sons from 1797 to 1799 as a private tutor to former bailiff Karl Friedrich Steiger in Interlaken would have.

After his return from Berlin he taught philosophy at the Bern Academy; since 1832 he was employed there as a professor. Because he assumed that he could be passed over by the new government for political reasons when awarding the professorships at the converted university, he resigned from the professorship in 1834; as he later realized, this had been a hasty decision.

From 1837 to 1850 he was pastor in Därstetten im Simmental , in 1851 high school rector in Biel and from 1852 to 1864 pastor in Niederbipp .

After his retirement he spent his retirement in Kiesen.

Writing and spiritual work

In 1835 On Free Will and Determinism appeared , in which Romang understands the world and history as determined by a reasonable moral law, the end purpose of which is the perfection of the whole, in which ultimately also the evil is absorbed. The work received widespread attention, including from Christian Hermann Weisse , Isaak August Dorner , Karl Philipp Fischer , Friedrich Eduard Beneke and Johann Friedrich Herbart, who wrote it, along with a review of Romang's book on his alleged Spinozism, in 1836, On the Teaching of Freedom of the human will .

In 1841 Romang stated in his main work System of Natural Religions in a critical discussion, especially with Friedrich Schleiermacher, Immanuel Kant and Baruch de Spinoza , that natural and positive religions are closer to each other than is usually assumed. With this he contradicted the tendency of his time to be critical of Christianity and religion ( David Friedrich Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach ), while he found approval from Bernard Bolzano , Richard Rothe and Alexander Schweizer .

In the second half of the 1940s, Romang sided with his liberal friend Eduard Bloesch (1807–66) against political radicalism . In this time of upheaval, he spoke to pastors about explosive topics such as the ninth annual meeting of the Swiss Preachers Society in 1847 on the importance of communism and in 1849 on the unity and separation of church and state . In the urgency of the social question he saw and recognized early on the main problem of his time; He rejected revolutionary-atheist communism , but called for social solidarity and political reforms. In view of the rapid individualization , secularization and marginalization of religion and church, he advocated an emancipation of the church from the state instead of the separation of church and state. Numerous publications from the last third of his life are devoted to the question of how the church can be, taking into account the church that professes pluralism outside and within it .

After the Bern government appointed Eduard Zeller as professor for the New Testament at the University of Bern in 1847 , Romang was convinced that he was conveying a pernicious doctrine, especially from the practical-religious point of view, and he published various publications one after the other dealing with deal with the teachings of Zeller.

For his achievements in the fields of religious philosophy , theology and politics in a time of revolutionary upheaval, he found general recognition in professional circles and was praised by his theological-liberal antipode Alois Emanuel Biedermann as an unusually fine, sharp mind and deeply ethical nature . His philosophy was denied a long-term effect.

Memberships

Johann Peter Romang was a member of the fraternity Swiss Zofinger club .

Fonts (selection)

• About moral things under the premise of determinism . Bern: Janni, 1833.
• About free will and determinism . Bern 1835.
• Contributions to illuminating the legal position of the Reformed Church in the canton of Bern . Bern 1836.
• System of natural religious doctrine, developed from the original determinations of general religious consciousness . Zurich 1841.
• About the Young Hegelian Christianity and the Ris-Zeller symbol . Bern: Haller, 1847.
• My opposition to the Junghegel tendency and my relationship to the previously valid Christian doctrine . Bern 1847.
• The?? Meaning of communism: Appreciated from the point of view of Christianity and moral culture . Bern, Zurich: Stämpfl., Schulthess, 1847.
• The latest pantheism or the Junghegel worldview according to its theoretical foundations and practical consequences, dedicated to all thinkers . Bern: Stämpfli Verlag-Buchhandlung, 1848.
• Unity and separation of church and state . Zurich and Frauenfeld: Ch. Beyel, 1850.
• About unbelief, pietism and science - a contribution to the understanding of our time and its tasks . Bern 1859.
• From religious instruction to young people . 1860.
• The religious question of our time: simple explanation for the reformed people, initially in the canton of Bern . Bern: C. Wüterich-Gaudard, 1869.
• On more important questions of religion: Speeches to the more educated among the people . Heidelberg: Winter, 1870.

literature

• Johann Peter Romang . In: Collection of Bernese Biographies , Volume 3. Bern 1898.
• Rudolf Dellsperger: Johann Peter Romang, 1802–1875: Philosophical theology, Christian faith and political responsibility in revolutionary times . Bern: Herbert Lang; Frankfurt / Main: Peter Lang, 1975.
• Rudolf Dellsperger: Johann Peter Romang's Questions . In: Saaner Jahrbuch 6, 1984. pp. 9–67.

Web links

• Rudolf Dellsperger: Johann Peter Romang. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Dellsperger, Rudolf , "Romang, Johann Peter" in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 22 (2005), p. 16. ( online version )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Collection of Bernese biographies: Christian Romang. Retrieved May 4, 2020 . 
2. ^ Collection of Bernese biographies: Johann Jakob Romang. Retrieved May 4, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Bernese families - persons. Retrieved May 5, 2020 . 
4. ^ Collection of Bernese biographies: Sigmund Karl Ludwig von Steiger. Retrieved May 4, 2020 . 
5. ^ Felix Flückiger, Wilhelm Anz: The Protestant Theology of the 19th Century . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975, ISBN 978-3-525-52366-7 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).
6. ↑ Marcel PPLI: Protestant entrepreneurs in Switzerland of the 19th century: Christian patriarchy during the Industrial Revolution . Theologischer Verlag Zürich, 2012, ISBN 978-3-290-17621-1 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).
7. ^ Marianne Derron, Christian von Zimmermann: Jeremias Gotthelf: New Studies . Georg Olms Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-487-15159-5 ( google.de [accessed on May 5, 2020]).