Johannes Müller (Pastor)

Johannes Muller

Johann (es) Müller (born June 6, 1598 in Breslau ; † September 29, 1672 in Hamburg ) was a German Lutheran theologian.

Life

Müller attended high school in his hometown, where he acquired the tools to be able to attend university. On May 5, 1618 he enrolled at the University of Wittenberg , where he acquired the academic degree of Master of Philosophy on April 4, 1620 . To continue his studies in theology, he went to the University of Leipzig to meet the famous theologians there. He moved back to Wittenberg, where he was accepted as an adjunct in the philosophical faculty on October 23, 1622 .

In 1623 he was given the professorship of ethics , but he did not stay long in this office because he pursued a theological goal. This wish was made possible the following year, when he was hired as a preacher in Lüneburg . In order to advance his ambitions, he became a licensed theology student on December 17, 1624 . In 1626 he was given the pastorate in the St. Petri Church in Hamburg . After receiving his doctorate in theology on October 12, 1641 in Wittenberg , from 1648 he worked at St. Petri as senior pastor , senior minister of the clergy and inspector of schools and all churches in Hamburg. He died of a heart attack while preaching.

Act

Müller was a strictly Orthodox Lutheran theologian and dedicated himself to fighting against those of different faiths such as Jews , Catholics and Reformed people . He claimed: “The belly is God in Hamburg” and demanded that the authorities show religion and the church more respect.

His vehement struggle against the Jews shaped Hamburg's Jewish policy of his time. He supported the anti-Jewish pulpit propaganda and wrote countless reports, complaints and diatribes against the Jews. He demanded the strictest restrictions and the closure of the privately furnished prayer rooms, because the religious practices of the Jews were for him an expression of blasphemy. Synagogues were for him " Satan's schools" and the Jews should be banned from rabbis. Instead, “Christian rabbis” should lead Christian services, because in his opinion it only made sense for Jews to stay in Hamburg if they were converted. Although he rejected compulsory baptisms , he demanded that the living conditions of the Jews should be so depressing that they converted voluntarily. So he chalked the Jews not only about their Jewishness, but also about the supposed luxury of the Sephardic upper class and their acceptance in Hamburg society: “They walk along, adorned with gold and silver pieces, with precious pearls and precious stones. At their weddings they dine out of silver vessels and drive in coaches that only high-ranking persons are entitled to, and on top of that they need pioneers and a large following ”.

The Hamburg Senate, which for economic reasons showed a certain tolerance towards the Jews, had to give in to Müller's anti-Jewish zeal at times. In 1649, the fifteen German-Jewish families who found refuge in Altona , which was under the Danish crown, were expelled from Hamburg . Müller also managed to have the Portuguese-Jewish doctor Binjamin Mussaphia , whose text " Sacro-Medicae Sententiae toto V (etere) T (estamento) collectae " allegedly contained blasphemies, was expelled.

In his 1500-page work Judaism or Judenthumb / This is a detailed report of the Jewish people's unbelief / blindness and stubbornness / ... from 1644, Müller wanted to prove that the Jewish religion was nothing but unbelief. In it he repeated the anti-Judaist stereotype of the Jews as "enemies of Christ". He referred to the church fathers , literature by converts from Judaism, Johannes Pfefferkorn and Martin Luther . In this work he demands, among other things, that the Sabbath should be abolished or moved to Sunday.

Müller's polemic against the Jews, which intensified with advancing age, occasionally led to rioting by the mob and brought the Jews a myriad of restrictions, but he could not prevent the community from growing steadily and being largely tolerated by the Hamburg Senate.

Genealogically it should be noted that he married Sophia, the daughter of Erasmus Schmidt , on October 22nd, 1623 . His grandson, the Hamburg lawyer Johannes Joachim Müller (1661–1733), inspired by Johannes Müller's work Atheismus devictus after G. Bartsch wrote De tribus impostoribus and erroneously dated it back to 1598.

Varia

A copy of Judaism and Judenthum reprinted in 1707 was in the possession of Johann Sebastian Bach .

Selection of works

1. Prodomus anti Jansenii. Hamburg 1632
2. Anti Jansenius. Wittenberg 1632 and 1634
3. Brevis admonitio de Nicolai Jansenii Monarchi Dominicani ruditate, maledicentia et libidine. Hamburg 1634
4. Responsio ad Jansenii defensionem fidei Catholicae. Hamburg 1634
5. Qväcker Greul and Quackeley. Hamburg 1661 and 1663
6. The Augsburg Confession. Hamburg 1630
7. Lutherus defensi. Arnstadt 1648. Hamburg 1658
8. Defensio Lutheri defensi. Hamburg 1659
9. Judism. Hamburg 1644
10. Warning for El. Praetorii Shan's book on the abuse of the preaching office. Hamburg 1645
11. Refutation of the Dordrecht absoluti decreti. Hamburg 1649 and 1652
12. Hamburg school sermons. Hamburg 1651
13. Dawn of the goodness and mercy of God from Thren. III. Hamburg 1651
14. Explanation of the 51st Psalm in 17 sermons. Hamburg 1666
15. Explanation of the 23rd Psalm in 7 sermons. Hamburg 1627
16. Explanation of the 8 Psalm in 8 sermons. Hamburg 1628
17. Green Thursday sermon of the Most Revered Lord's Supper. Hamburg 1627
18. Sermon on Sunday Eraudi delivered to the King of Sweden Gustav Adolph. Hamburg 1631
19. Whether anyone ever, especially the Layes in the Old Testament without knowledge of Christ, have been saved. Hamburg 1628
20. Nine sermons on the Symbelum Athanasii. Hamburg 1626
21. Defense of the report of the new prophetic religion against Niclas Teting. Hamburg 1636
22. Inauguration sermon of a baptismal font. Hamburg
23. Thorough answer and refutation of the papal objections, by which the Lutheran Church is made suspicious and to persuade people to apostate from the true evangelical faith is respected. Hamburg 1631
24. Human poems about the repudiation of the greater part of men for eternal damnation without respect for unbelief, out of the mere advice of God. Hamburg 1637
25. Anabaptism. Hamburg 1644 and 1669
26. Lüneburg valet and Hamburg suit sermon. Hamburg 1626
27. Warning to the community in Hamburg. Hamburg 1630
28. Atheism devictus. Hamburg 1672
29. Acerra Biblica. Leipzig 1697

literature

• G. Bartsch (Ed.): De tribus impostoribus Anno MDIIC; Of the three swindlers, 1598 . Latin-German, 1960, Berlin
• Jutta Braden: Müller, Johannes . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 2 . Christians, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-7672-1366-4 , pp. 294-296 .
• Jutta Braden: Hamburg's Jewish Policy in the Age of Lutheran Orthodoxy 1590–1710. Christians, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 978-3-7672-1355-5
• Jutta Braden: "From the Jews' apartment". Lutheran Orthodox Positions on the Coexistence of Jews and Christians. In: Hamburg Key Documents on German-Jewish History, September 22, 2016, doi: 10.23691 / jgo: article-63.de.v1
• Heinz Kathe : The Wittenberg Philosophical Faculty 1502–1817 (= Central German Research. Volume 117). Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-412-04402-4 .
• Heinrich Graetz : History of the Jews
• Müller, Johann was born in Breßlau. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 22, Leipzig 1739, columns 230-232.

Web links

• Publications by and about Johannes Müller in VD 17 .
• Jews in Hamburg
• Entry by Müller in Deutsche-Biographie.de, numerous further links

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ursula Winter: The European manuscripts of the Diez library in the German State Library Berlin . Closing volume, p. 73
2. ↑ Barbara Möller: guilty verdict for BACH. In: Die Welt , June 25, 2016, p. 22

predecessor	Office	successor
Valentin Wudrian	Chief Pastor to St. Petri in Hamburg 1626 - 1672	Hermann von Petkum