Johannes Geibel

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Johannes Geibel, portrayed by Friedrich Carl Gröger

John Geibel (* 1. April 1776 in Hanau , Hesse , † 23. July 1853 in Lübeck ) was a German Protestant - Reformed theologian .

Life

Title page of Geibel's sermon encouraging denial of the ungodly being (1806)

After attending the high school in Hanau, he went to the University of Marburg in 1793 . In 1795 he became a private tutor in Copenhagen , in 1797 he went to Lübeck, where after six months as vicar he took up the position of pastor of the Reformed Church, at that time still in front of the Holsten Gate , as successor to Butendach . During Geibel's years in Lübeck, the pastorate of the Reformed Congregation was located on Fischstrasse in the city's merchant quarter west of St. Mary's Church, where he also held his Bible studies. During the Lübeck French era , he managed to keep the Lübeck Reformed community. Because of his sermons, he was considered one of the most charismatic clergy of his time. Although the Reformed community was only small and still not equal, Geibel became one of the most important innovators of the spiritual and spiritual life in Lübeck. Geibel gathered around himself an influential circle, including the lawyer Carl Wilhelm Pauli , who donated his own hymn book to the community, the Prussian envoy Conrad Platzmann , the mayor Christian Adolph Overbeck , the Russian consul general Gotthard Emanuel von Aderkas , the mineralogist Johannes Quantity , who moved to Lübeck out of enthusiasm for Geibel, a daughter of Matthias Claudius and many more. Geibel also had a great influence on the religious development of the later India missonary Samuel Hebich .

Through exchanges with Friedrich Schleiermacher , Gottfried Menken and especially Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi , his theology changed from rationalism to emphasizing the immediate experience of grace. In 1817 he received an honorary theological doctorate from the University of Berlin on Schleiermacher's suggestion . He was involved in the Masonic Lodge Zum Füllhorn , from 1803 to 1806 as her master of the chair , in the Lübeck Bible Society , which he co-founded in 1814, and in the Mission Association .

In 1826 he was able to inaugurate the new building of the Reformed Church , with which the Reformed community received its own church building within the walls of the city for the first time. The pastorate in the Breiten Straße was only added in 1870, so that today the properties of the church and pastorate are connected via the inner courtyard garden.

Geibel spent his retirement from 1847 to 1853 in Detmold . Fetched back to Lübeck seriously ill by the family, he died here in the summer of 1853. Geibel had been married to Elisabeth Louise Ganslandt (1778–1841), sister of Röttger Ganslandt , since 1799 . The seventh of his eight surviving children (two others died early) was the writer and translator Emanuel Geibel , the youngest the composer Konrad Geibel .

Portrait after the portrait of Gröger by Auguste Hüssener (1831)
The former pastorate of the Reformed Congregation at Fischstrasse 25 in Lübeck (1909). In the picture the second house from right to left.

Portrait

A portrait of Johannes Geibel made in oil by Friedrich Carl Gröger in 1830 is in the possession of the Reformed Church in Lübeck. After this, an engraving by Auguste Hüssener (1831) and a lithograph by Ch. W. Wollien were made.

His son Emanuel Geibel created a lyrical portrait of equal value in a poem:

I only knew my father seriously, and
only living the high calling duty to be the shepherd of his community.
Strictly believing in the Scriptures, but mild and averse to any hereticism, he
practices, true to himself, joyfully at the teaching command;
Never quarrel about the form of the confession and as a brother respect
everyone who seeks his salvation in the Savior.
Everything about him was real, and the faith of the heart gave him,
when he entered the pulpit, always the enthusiastic word,
That he carried away the shaken hearer with victorious strength,
now gently admonishing and now strong as an old prophet.

Works

  • Faith overcoming the world. A sermon. Lübeck: Möller 1810
Digitized copy of the copy from the Bavarian State Library
  • Check everything and keep what is good: speaking for evangelical freedom and truth. Lübeck: Jenssen 1818
Digitized copy of the copy from the Bavarian State Library
  • Christ alone. A guest sermon on 1 Cor. 2.2 held on July 17, 1831 in the Evangelical Reformed Church in Braunschweig. As a supplement: Speech at the ordination of his son Carl Geibel ... held in Lübeck ... 1830. Lübeck: Möller 1831
Digitized copy of the copy from the Bavarian State Library

literature

Web links

Commons : Johannes Geibel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Johannes Geibel  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ After August Zahn (Lit.), p. 545
  2. ↑ Quoted from Otto A. Bode: From the history of the Evangelical Reformed Congregation in Lübeck in Lübecker Jahrbuch 1925, p. 57ff. (72).
personal data
SURNAME Geibel, Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Philalethes (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1776
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanau , Hesse
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1853
Place of death Lübeck