Karl Eschweiler

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karl Eschweiler (born September 5, 1886 in Euskirchen , † September 30, 1936 in Berlin ) was a German Catholic theologian and religious philosopher .

Life

Coming from a family of craftsmen, Eschweiler graduated from high school in his hometown of Euskirchen in 1906. He then studied philosophy and theology in Bonn and Munich . In Munich, together with Oswald von Nell-Breuning, he became an active member of the Academic Görresverein (KStV Südmark) in the KV . In 1909 he received his doctorate under Georg von Hertling at Munich University with a thesis on the philosophy of religion of Augustine. phil.

After his ordination in March 1911 in Cologne , he initially worked as a chaplain in Elberfeld and spent the years of the First World War as a chaplain on the western front. After falling ill and returning home, Eschweiler first became a chaplain at St. Martin in Bonn and soon afterwards a repetition at the Bonn theological convict "Collegium Albertinum". In 1921 he received his doctorate in Bonn under the supervision of Arnold Rademacher in the subject of fundamental theology, in which he also completed his habilitation in 1922. Since that year he has been teaching in Bonn as a private lecturer . From 1923 he also worked as a pastor in Berkum near Bonn. Since then he has had an intense personal friendship with the constitutional lawyer Carl Schmitt .

Eschweiler's two theological qualification papers, which are dedicated to “rationalism” and “fideism” in the Catholic founding of faith since the Enlightenment, were first published from the estate in 2010 under the title The Catholic Theology in the Age of German Idealism . In 1926 Eschweiler's much-noticed monograph The Two Paths of Modern Theology was published , which aimed at a new foundation of Analysis fidei in the spirit of original Thomism and was fiercely opposed, especially by the Jesuit theologians of the time. Further publications in Bonn dealt with the post-Tridentine development of Catholic theology, especially the school theology of the 17th century, which Eschweiler called "Baroque scholasticism", as well as the German theology of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. In these publications, Eschweiler proved to be a knowledgeable historian of theology and a speculatively gifted systematist who was inclined to the anti-dolinist Thomist school.

In the winter semester of 1928/29 Eschweiler became a full professor for systematic theology at the State Academy (formerly Lyceum Hosianum ) in Braunsberg, East Prussia . In 1931/32 and from 1933 to 1936 he was the rector of this university, which was a stronghold of National Socialism in East Prussia . Eschweiler himself joined the NSDAP and the SA in April 1933 and immediately developed a lively journalistic, university and church political activity in favor of the “Third Reich”. Because of them, he must be described as one of the most active and convinced Nazi theology professors from the Catholic camp. He taught a strict separation of religion and worldview, which, however, are teleologically related to each other (model "natural grace"). The church should therefore not impair the ideological endeavors of the Nazi state, which Eschweiler praised as the rediscovery of the "natural man" and preparation of the gospel, but must even promote them. In contrast to the official teaching of the Catholic Church, Eschweiler expressly approved the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring of 14 July 1933 (sterilization law) and the implementing ordinances issued in October 1933.

Eschweiler was suspended from priestly service by the then Bishop of Warmia , Maximilian Kaller , together with his colleague Hans Barion , by a decree of the Roman Council Congregation of August 20, 1934 . This suspension was lifted after a declaration of submission by the theologian in 1935. Even afterwards, Eschweiler proved to be a supporter of National Socialist ideology by writing in the journal Deutsches Volkstum in 1936, the year he died : “The ideological emphasis on blood and race means [...] the most bitter struggle against the international powers who are destroying the German people want to justify with the sham spirit of a universal humanity. "

The Two Ways of Modern Theology (1926)

The book The Two Paths of Modern Theology , first published in 1926, is Eschweiler's most important publication. Its goal is a theoretical re-foundation of theology. It is undertaken against the background of a historical examination of the fate of theological epistemology and apologetic method since the Enlightenment, to which Eschweiler had already devoted himself in his theological qualification papers (Diss. 1921, Habil. 1922 in Bonn). In Two Paths , Eschweiler first presents the problem that Catholic theology has been exposed to in dealing with the “spirit of the modern age” since the Enlightenment (Chapter 1). It is important to him to prove that the Catholic “Analysis fidei” (theological analysis of faith) was itself an important source of that modern focus on the subject and its acts of certainty, which Descartes and Kant then radicalized into an “anthropocentric” new foundation of philosophy. As a result, Catholic theology in its innermost field is much more closely related to modern thinking than it was usually ready to admit to itself. Then (Chapters 2 and 3) Eschweiler presents two opposing attempts to answer the modern challenge in the outcome of paradigmatic representatives: On the one hand, he looks at "theological rationalism", the most striking representative of which he identifies the Bonn dogmatist Georg Hermes (1775–1831) , on the other hand, on a “theology based on faith”, exemplified by the Cologne Thomist Matthias Joseph Scheeben (1835–1888). As a résumé (Chapter 4), Eschweiler outlines his own program of a theology, which is supposed to succeed in escaping the tensions in the analysis of faith that recur in modern theological epistemology by reflecting on the peculiar formal object of theological knowledge. The renewal of the "one way" of theology, which Eschweiler wants to show with recourse to an original Thomism, will, according to his conviction, also create further tensions that he names in the religious life of the modern age ("Faith and Life", "Dogma and Philosophy", "Theology and Science") help bridge.

With its theological-historical and systematic theses, Eschweiler's Zwei Ways sparked fierce controversies, which were reflected in numerous contemporary reviews. To this day, the book is regarded as a central contribution to the redefinition of the fundamental theological self-image in the 20th century and as one of the most important works of Catholic theology in the interwar period.

Works

  • The aesthetic elements in the philosophy of religion of St. Augustine. Euskirchen 1909. Digital edition, ed. and with an afterword by Thomas Marschler (2011): Online resource
  • Religion and metaphysics. In: Hochland 19 (1921) 303-313.
  • The two ways of modern theology , Augsburg 1926. Digital edition, ed. by Thomas Marschler (2010): online resource
  • A new controversy about the relationship between belief and knowledge. In: Bonner Zeitschrift für Theologie und Seelsorge 3 (1926) 260–276.
  • A new controversy (II). In: Bonner Zeitschrift für Theologie und Seelsorge 4 (1927) 155–160.
  • The Philosophy of Late Spanish Scholasticism in Seventeenth-Century German Universities. In: Spanish research by the Görres Society I, Aschendorff, Münster 1928, 251–325. Online resource: http://www.fgbueno.es/ger/ke1928a.htm
  • Johann Adam Möhler's concept of the church - Braunsberg in Pr. 1930.
  • The Church in the New Kingdom. In: Deutsches Volkstum 15/1 (1933) 451–458.
  • Catholic theology in the age of German idealism: The Bonn theological qualification papers of 1921/22. Edited from the estate and provided with an introduction by Thomas Marschler . Monsenstein and Vannerdat , Münster, 2010, ISBN 978-3-86991-180-9 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On Berlin as the place of death see u. a. Siegfried Koß: Eschweiler, Karl . In: Biographical Lexicon of the KV . Volume 3 (1994), 36 f .; Thomas Marschler: Introduction. In: Karl Eschweiler, Catholic theology in the age of German idealism. The Bonn theological qualification papers from 1921/22. Edited from the estate and provided with an introduction by Thomas Marschler, Münster 2010, XIV; Thomas Marschler: Karl Eschweiler (1886-1936). Regensburg 2011, 338 f, 377. - LThK 2 , LThK 3 , BBKL, DBE (according to BBKL) indicate Braunsberg as the place of death.
  2. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 140.
personal data
SURNAME Eschweiler, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION theologian
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Euskirchen
DATE OF DEATH September 30, 1936
Place of death Berlin or Braunsberg