Karl Ernst (clergyman)

Karl Ernst

Karl Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (born March 10, 1806 , † May 25, 1898 in Celle ) was a German Evangelical Lutheran - initially regional church , later free church - clergyman and member of the state assembly of the Kingdom of Hanover . His granddaughter was Agnes E. Meyer , American patroness and letter partner of Thomas Mann .

Life

Ernst came from Gifhorn . From 1824 he studied theology in Göttingen . From 1837 to 1857 he worked as pastor of Eddesse and Dedenhausen , then until 1868 in Großgoltern . With his wife Agnes he had eleven children, five daughters and six sons.

For the pins Bardowick and Ramelsloh he was from 1857 to 1863 as deputy of the Second Chamber of the States General of the Kingdom of Hannover. In it he was assigned to the right wing of the church. He was not re-elected in 1863 because he sided with the reactionary minister Wilhelm von Borries in the debates on the state constitution, civil service legislation, the state budget and the death penalty .

With the Prussian annexations in 1866 , the Kingdom of Hanover became part of the Prussian province of Hanover . Ernst's American granddaughter Agnes E. Meyer, who never met her grandfather, reported in her autobiography Out of These Roots. The Autobiography of an American Woman (1953), that he refused to swear on the King of Prussia. Like his ancestors, he took his oath on the King of Hanover, he justified his resistance, and he could not take a second one. In 1867 he was given early retirement and his salary was halved.

He spent his retirement in Celle. Because of the law on marriage enacted in the Kulturkampf , which prescribed civil marriage , he resigned from the Hanover regional church in 1876 . Without a government request and despite many protests, she had introduced that church weddings must follow civil marriage. Ernst joined the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church in Hanover and for many years was responsible for the editing of her weekly newspaper Unter dem Kreuze .

In his rejection of Prussian militarism , he urged his sons to leave the country. Four of the sons immigrated to the United States . Two of them became ministers there like their father. The son Friedrich HW Ernst became a lawyer and married Luise Schmidt in 1878. The youngest of their children was Agnes Elizabeth Ernst, who married Eugene Meyer in 1910 . Karl Ernst got to know the United States himself. His wife announced in his letter that she was expecting her husband back from there in late autumn 1872.

At his retirement home in Celle, he led a secluded life. His community respected him for his sense of independence. Ernst died in 1898, at the time of his death nine of his children were still alive. In his will he had forbidden any obituary in the church gazette or any other public newspaper. Nevertheless, the Hannoversche Courier published a short obituary in its edition of June 1, 1898.

His writings include the basics for the future design of the Christian primary school system , published by Velhagen & Klasing in 1849 .

literature

• Ernst, Karl . In: Wilhelm Rothert (Hrsg.): Allgemeine Hannoversche Biographie Vol. 1, Adolf Sponholtz Verlag, Hannover 1912, p. 339.
• Hans Rudolf Vaget (Ed.): Introduction. In: Thomas Mann, Agnes E. Meyer: Correspondence 1939–1955 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1992 ISBN 3-10-048200-X pp. 5–71, here pp. 11–15.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Vaget, pp. 12-13.
2. ^ Vaget, p. 13.
3. ↑ Vaget pp. 15-16, p. 19.
4. ^ Vaget, p. 15.
5. ^ Vaget, p. 12.
6. ^ Vaget, p. 14.