Johanna Eleonora Petersen

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Johanna Eleonora Petersen, contemporary copper engraving

Johanna Eleonora Petersen , born von Merlau also Johanna Eleonor (e) a von und zu Merlau (born April 25, 1644 in Frankfurt am Main ; † March 19, 1724 on the Thymern estate (Thümern) near Lübars (Möckern) ) was a theological Writer and one of the leaders of radical pietism . Since 1680 she was married to Johann Wilhelm Petersen .

Life

Johanna Eleonora von Merlau was the second of four daughters of the court master Georg Adolph von Merlau († 1681) and his wife Sabina, b. Ganß von Utzberg († 1653). She was born in Frankfurt, where her family had sought protection until the end of the Thirty Years' War . Then she grew up partly on her father's estate in Merlau (today part of the Mücke community in the Vogelsbergkreis in Hesse ), and partly on the Philippseck estate (in Heddernheim near Frankfurt). The family had economic difficulties, partly due to the aftermath of the war. The father was often absent for professional reasons, and the mother's upbringing of the children was religious. When Johanna Eleonora von Merlau was nine years old, her mother died and soon afterwards her older sister had to run the household first and then she herself. She received no outside instruction other than being prepared to receive sacrament by a Lutheran minister.

At the age of twelve, Johanna Eleonora von Merlau, like many girls of her age from impoverished noble families, took up a position at court. She was initially court maid of Countess Eleonora von Solms-Rödelheim (1629–1680), but was treated badly by her according to her own statements. In 1659 she got a job with her godmother Anna Margarete von Hessen-Homburg (since 1650 Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Wiesenburg ), who resided with her husband Philipp Ludwig at Lißberg Castle and later at Wiesenburg Castle near Zwickau . Johanna Eleonora von Merlau worked there for a total of 14 years as a maid of honor and, after a promotion, as a maid. Her tasks included, in addition to serving the ducal family and guests, accompanying them on trips and participating in festivities. In the autobiographical retrospective, she judged this phase of life positively overall, but regretted the necessary participation in worldly pleasures. Her piety was already very strong at that time. This connected her with Countess Benigna von Solms-Laubach (1648–1702), who lived in neighboring Wildenfels and with whom a lifelong friendship developed. While she was living in Wiesenburg, Johanna Eleonora von Merlau was engaged to the son of Lieutenant Colonel Brettwitz for several years, but he eventually broke the connection. A later marriage proposal by the clergyman Johann Winckler was rejected by her father.

On a trip in 1672 she met the two leaders of Frankfurt Pietism , Philipp Jacob Spener and Johann Jakob Schütz , with whom she corresponded from now on. Her service as a maid ended when her father called her back to his household. He had since remarried and his wife had died in childbed. After the child died too, however, he no longer needed his daughter's services. At the age of 31 she was free of obligations for the first time and was able to move to Frankfurt at her own request. In spring 1675 she moved to the young widow Maria Juliane Baur von Eyseneck (1641–1684) at the Saalhof in Frankfurt. Following the example of the Collegia pietatis Speners, but also under the influence of the Labadist Anna Maria von Schürmann and the mystic Antoinette Bourignon , the two of them gathered a Collegium in the Saalhof on Sunday evening since Advent 1676 to turn away from the sinful nature of the world and lead a Christian life to practice. There soon appeared tendencies towards separation from the official church , which led to the expulsion of Johanna Eleonora von Merlaus (later withdrawn) in 1678.

In 1676 she met the theology student Johann Wilhelm Petersen in Saalhof , who in 1677 became court preacher and superintendent of the prince-bishopric of Lübeck in Eutin . Despite the difference in rank, he asked for her hand. After the approval of your father, who had rejected a bourgeois application a few years earlier, they were married by Spener in September 1680. Until her death, she followed her husband's life, who became superintendent in Lüneburg in 1688 , but was dismissed and expelled from Asseburg in 1692 because of his connections to the visionary Rosamunde Juliane . With the help of noble friends such as Chamber Presidents Dodo (II.) Zu Innhausen and Knyphausen and Eberhard von Danckelman , the couple was able to acquire the Niederndodeleben estate near Magdeburg. There both were engaged in writing theological books. In 1724 they moved to Thymern (Thümern), which no longer exists today, near Groß Lübars, where Johanna Eleonora Petersen died in 1724.

Works

Johanna Eleonora von Merlau was already writing before her marriage, but without publishing her works. The first of the 15 books by Johanna Eleonora Petersen published under her name, the edification book Conversations of Hertzens with God , was published in Plön in 1689 (2nd edition, Frankfurt 1694). It contained meditations on individual Bible verses and, as an appendix, the first version of her biography, which was published again in an expanded version in 1718 and 1719 and became the style-setting for the Pietistic autobiography .

Her most important work was the Commentary on the Revelation of St. John Instructions for a Thorough Understanding of the Holy Revelation of Jesus Christ of 1696, in which she developed in detail the doctrine of the coming millennial kingdom . In the treatise The Eternal Gospel of the General Restoration of All Creatures (1698) she advocated the doctrine of the Apokatastasis . The secret of the first-born: who is from the beginning ... together with a summary explanation about the epistle to the Romans, as well as about the 17th cap. Johanniss (1711) contains a mystical interpretation of Christology , which should become the basis for a reconciliation of the denominations. From 1715 Johanna Eleonora Petersen turned back to the meditative interpretation of the Bible .

She is probably the translator of the first German edition of Molière's comedies in three volumes , published in 1694 .

New editions

  • Johanna Eleonora Petersen b. from and to Merlau, life, put on by herself with her own hand. Autobiography . Edited by Prisca Guglielmetti. Leipzig: EVA, 2003.
  • The Life of Lady Johanna Eleonora Petersen, Written by Herself. Pietism and Autobiography . Translation, with Notes and Introduction by Barbara Becker-Cantarino . Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005.

literature

  • Markus Matthias: Johann Wilhelm and Johanna Eleonora Petersen: A biography until Petersen's impeachment in 1692 , 1993, ISBN 9783525558140 - text online .
  • Klaus-Gunther Wesseling:  Johanna Eleonora Petersen. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 7, Bautz, Herzberg 1994, ISBN 3-88309-048-4 , Sp. 273-275.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Stefan Luft: Living and Writing for Pietism. The struggle of the Pietist couple Johanna Eleonora and Johann Wilhelm Petersen against Lutheran Orthodoxy . Herzberg: Bautz 1994 ISBN 3883090557
  • Markus Matthias:  Johann Wilhelm Petersen. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 256 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Martin H. Jung : Johanna Eleonora Petersen b. von and zu Merlau: Female lay theology in radical Pietism , in: Martin H. Jung and Peter Walter (eds.): Theologians of the 17th and 18th centuries. Confessional Age - Pietism - Enlightenment. An introduction , Darmstadt 2002.
  • Lucinda Martin: Female Reformers as the Gatekeepers of Pietism: The Example of Johanna Eleonora Merlau and William Penn . In: Monthly Issues for German-Language Literature and Culture, Vol. 95, No. 1 (2003), pp. 33-58.
  • Ruth Albrecht: Pietistic writer and theologian: Johanna Eleonora von Merlau-Petersen (1644-1724) , in: Elisabeth Gössmann (ed.): Wisdom - a beautiful rose on the Dornen-Strauche , Munich 2004, archive for women's studies in the history of philosophy and theology 8, pp. 123-196.
  • this: Johanna Eleonora Petersen. Theological writer of early Pietism. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005. ISBN 3525558309
  • this: Johanna Eleonora Petersen (1644-1724). A committed and argumentative writer . In: Peter Zimmerling (ed.): Evangelical pastors. Biographical sketches, texts and programs , Göttingen 2005, pp. 82–102.
  • this: The Apokatastasis concept by Johanna Eleonora Petersen . In: Ruth Heß / Martin Leiner (ed.): All in all. Eschatological impulses. Festschrift Christine Janowski , Neukirchen-Vluyn 2005, pp. 199–214.
  • Dieter Breuer: "The affirmed Origen": the Petersen couple and the denial of the eternity of the punishments in hell . In: Heterodoxy in the Early Modern Age . Ed. V. Hartmut Laufhütte and Michael Titzmann. - Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2006. pp. 413-424.
  • Gerlind Schwöbel : Longing for the perfect - Johanna Eleonora von Merlau zu Merlau . Frankfurt: Lembeck 2007 ISBN 3874765245
  • Ruth Albrecht: From the disappearance of theology in favor of biography. To the reception of Johanna Eleonora Petersens . In: Ulrike Gleixner / Erika Hebeisen (eds.), Gendering Tradition. Culture of remembrance and gender in Pietism, Korb 2007, pp. 123–148.
  • Barbara Becker-Cantarino: "The maternal strength of our new fee": theological ideas and religious effectiveness of Jane Lead (1623/24 - 1704) and Johanna Eleonora Petersen (1644 - 1724) . In: Faith and Gender. Pious Women - Spiritual Experiences - Religious Traditions . Ed. V. Ruth Albrecht u. a. Cologne u. a .: Böhlau 2008, pp. 235-252
  • Ruth Albrecht: On Johann Georg Gichtel's correspondence with Johanna Eleonora Petersen . In: Wolfgang Breul u. a. (Ed.): The radical Pietism: interim balance and perspectives of research . Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010. ISBN 978-3-525-55839-3 , pp. 361-368

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ruth Albrecht: Johanna Eleonora Petersen. Theological writer of early Pietism. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, p. 41.
  2. ↑ Ruth Albrecht: Johanna Eleonora Petersen. Theological writer of early Pietism. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, p. 55.
  3. ↑ digitized version
  4. ↑ digitized version
  5. ^ Hilary Brown: Johanna Eleonora Petersen and the Reception of Molière in Germany . In: Forum for Modern Language Studies 43 (2007), pp. 69–80
personal data
SURNAME Petersen, Johanna Eleonora
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Merlau, Johanna Eleonorea from and to; Petersen, Eleonora
BRIEF DESCRIPTION theological writer and one of the leading figures of radical pietism
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1644
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH March 19, 1724
Place of death Gut Thymern (Thümern) near Lübars (Möckern)