Julius Smend

Julius Smend (born May 10, 1857 in Lengerich , † June 7, 1930 in Münster ) was a German theologian .

Life

Julius Smend comes from the old family of lawyers and theologians, who served as pastor in the Reformed community of Lengerich in Westphalia for three generations in a row in the 18th and 19th centuries . His brother was the theologian Rudolf Smend . The liberal-theological thinking in his family should also be formative for him, as well as the love for music, especially for Johann Sebastian Bach , which his parents gave him.

Julius Smend passed his Abitur at the age of nineteen at the Paulinum Gymnasium in Münster. He then studied theology in Bonn , Halle (Saale) and Göttingen . In Bonn he had been a member of the Alemannia Bonn fraternity since 1876 , together with his close friend, the historian Friedrich Philippi . In 1880 he started a synodial vicariate in Paderborn. After an eleven-month vicariate in Minden , which began the following year , he was ordained in April 1881 and moved to Bonn as an assistant preacher . There he also wrote his licentiate thesis , which had the Lord's Supper on the subject. In 1885 he became pastor in Seelscheid , which was then a small farming community. In 1890 he married Helene Springmann from Osnabrück. In 1891 he became a full professor at the Friedberg seminary , where he was also entrusted with pastoral care. He now began to go public with larger publications. In 1893 he was offered a chair in practical theology at the University of Strasbourg . His work The Protestant German Masses up to Luther's German Mass , which is regarded as his main work, dates from 1896. Together with the liturgist Friedrich Spitta , he founded the monthly for worship and church art (MGkK) in the same year . Both thus founded the so-called older liturgical movement , which endeavored to give the evangelical worship a form that should enable an appropriate performance of a worship in the evangelical spirit. Their movement found its first practical application at the St. Thomas Church in Strasbourg . In 1906 the church book he had compiled for the Protestant communities, Vol. 1, was published . This also included his ideas of a character of the divine service that had to take into account the patristic, scholastic and orthodox heritage and formulate the language of prayer in a more contemporary way, but should also allow space for silence. In the same year Smend took over the rectorate at the Strasbourg University.

In 1914 Smend became a co-founder and first dean of the Evangelical Theological Faculty in his hometown of Münster. In 1926 he was at the age of 68 years emeritus . The successor to his chair for practical theology was Wilhelm Stählin . Julius Smend's son Friedrich Smend , born in 1893 , also became a theologian and music researcher.

Fonts (selection)

• Chalice refusal and the giving of the chalice in the Western Church. A contribution to the history of cult . Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1898
• Church register for Protestant communities.
• The Protestant German masses up to Luther's German mass. Goettingen 1896.
• Celebration hours. Brief considerations for the Sundays and feast days of the church year. Göttingen 1892. 2nd edition 1897.
• Schleiermacher's political sermon from 1806 to 1808: Speech on the assumption of the rectorate of the Kaiser Wilhelms-Universität Strasbourg . Strasbourg: Heitz, 1906.
• Lectures and essays on liturgy, hymnology and church music . Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1925

literature

• Paul Graff (Hrsg.): Festgabe Julius Smend on May 10, 1927 offered by the monthly for worship and church art. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1927.
• Konrad Klek: Divine service experience. The liturgical reform efforts at the turn of the century under the leadership of Friedrich Spitta and Julius Smend (= publications on liturgy, hymnology and theological research on church music. Volume 32). Dissertation. University of Hamburg 1995/1996. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1996.
• Konrad Klek :  Smend, Julius Wilhelm Hermann. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 509 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Rüdiger Siemoneit: Julius Smend - the Protestant church service as an alluring power. Liturgical inquiry into a main representative of the older liturgical movement. Dissertation. University of Göttingen 1998. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-631-35393-6 .
• Wilhelm Stählin: Julius Smend in memory. Goettingen 1931.
• Johannes Plath (Ed.): Religious questions of the present. Festschrift for Julius Smend's 70th birthday. Gütersloh 1927.
• Klaus-Gunther Wesseling :  Julius Smend. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 10, Bautz, Herzberg 1995, ISBN 3-88309-062-X .

Documents

Letters from Julius Smend are in the holdings of the Leipzig music publisher CF Peters in the Leipzig State Archives .

Web links

• Literature by and about Julius Smend in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Julius Smend  in the German Digital Library
• Works by and about Julius Smend at Open Library
• Directory of Julius Smend's estate in the Ev. Church in the Rhineland

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernst Elsheimer (ed.): Directory of the old fraternity members according to the status of the winter semester 1927/28. Frankfurt am Main 1928, p. 493.

predecessor	Office	successor
Hermann Ehrenberg	Rector of the University of Münster 1918–1919	Gerhard Schmidt
Hermann Kretzschmar	President of the New Bach Society 1924–1930	Walter Simons