Kaspar Schwenckfeld

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Kaspar Schwenckfeld

Kaspar Schwen (c) kfeld von Ossig (also Caspar , Kaspar von Schwenckfeld ; * 1490 in Ossig near Lüben , Duchy of Liegnitz ; † December 10, 1561 in Ulm ) was a German reformer , spiritualistic theologian and religious writer.

Life

He was the son of the heir Hans Schwenkfeld von Ossink. Kaspar Schwenckfeld came from an old noble family , studied from 1505 to 1507 at the University of Cologne and at the Viadrina in Frankfurt / Oder , where he mainly devoted himself to legal studies, later worked in various places as court junior , for example in 1510 with Duke Karl I von Münsterberg-Oels as well as with the Duke Georg I von Brieg , in order to finally take up the position of councilor at the court of the Liegnitz Duke Friedrich II in 1521 . He carried out this task until 1523.

Since a visit to Wittenberg in 1522 he was inclined to Protestantism and tried to introduce it to Liegnitz , where in 1523 he met the humanist Valentin Krautwald, appointed by the Duke . But soon he developed his own doctrine of the Lord's Supper (1525). He interpreted the words of institution in such a way that he opposed the real presence developed by Luther . He also preached the "inner word" (1527) and opposed church Christology and Luther's doctrine of justification . He understood this as a religious-moral process, spoke in the manner of the mystics of “spiritual feeling” of God's grace and referred to continual divine inspiration . In sum, Schwenckfeld's teaching can be assigned to spiritualism .

After he was banished from his homeland in 1528, he moved to Strasbourg from 1529 to 1534 , where he met Sebastian Franck and Jakob Kautz , among others , and then lived under constant persecution in Swabia , where Duke Ulrich tolerated him and on Rhine . In Esslingen he found special support in the house of Hereditary Marshal Hans Konrad Thumb and his brother Hans Friedrich Thumb, which also extended to the Württemberg region, especially to Stetten in the Rems Valley.

For the first time in 1535, the reinstated Duke Ulrich forbade Schwenckfeld literature; an attempt at arbitration in Tübingen ( Tübingen Agreement ) in the same year brought only temporary calm. Schwenckfeld had to give way in 1539 after a dispute with the (since 1537) Supreme Praedicant in Ulm and later Tübingen theology professor Martin Frecht (1494–1556) by order of the city council also from Ulm. In 1540 the Schmalkaldic Convention of Lutheran theologians decided to convict him. Nevertheless, this had no personal consequences for Schwenckfeld, as he had influential friends, such as Michael Ludwig von Freiberg, who housed him in his Justingen Castle from 1540–1547 .

A summary of his views is found in the Confession and Account of the Main Points of the Christian Faith of 1547.

Schwenckfeld died seriously ill in 1561 in the house of the Ulm doctor Agatha Streicher , in whose cellar he also found his first grave.

Following

Schwenkfelder Church in Palm / Pennsylvania (US)

After Schwenckfeldt's death, his followers gathered mainly in southern Germany and Silesia . While the southern German Schwenckfeldians were primarily city dwellers or came from aristocratic estates, the Silesian followers of the spiritualist lived more in rural regions. Among them were mainly farmers and village artisans. The circles of Schwenckfeldians from southern Germany, which incidentally were also led by women, disappeared in the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War .

The Silesian Schwenckfeldians formed larger communities in the area between Löwenberg, Goldberg and Haynau from the middle of the 16th century . From 1725 their Jesuit opponents were given extensive powers. Among other things, they were allowed to issue compulsory catechesis and baptisms . On the night of January 14th to 15th, 1726, most of the Schwenckfeldians fled to Görlitz and the surrounding area. Others found their way to Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf in Herrnhut and Berthelsdorf . From 1734 around 180 Schwenckfeldians emigrated to Pennsylvania via Altona , Haarlem, Rotterdam and Plymouth MA . There are still 6 parishes with around 2,300 members. In Silesia the remaining Schwenckfeldians joined the Lutheran Church from 1741. The last Schwenckfeldian is Melchior Dorn, a farmer who died in Harpersdorf (now Twardocice ) in Lower Silesia in 1826 .

Works (selection)

The richest handwritten tradition on Schwenkfeld can be found in the Confession and Declaration of the Knowledge of Christ , of which only the first part was printed (1541 in Frankfurt). The prehistory of this work results from the disputes with his theological opponents: for example, Martin Frecht prompted Vadian in St. Gallen to write against Schwenckfeld. Shortly before June 12, 1542, the Ulm city council received a letter from Schwenckfeld requesting that his teachings be examined; The recorder also speaks of a book that has been sent and that it has been discussed whether “the writing and the book should or should not be delivered to the predicants”. On June 30, the council actually asked the predicants to comment, which, although not received, was undoubtedly negative. Frecht himself reports in a letter to Vadian that Schwenckfeld also sent his book to Nuremberg, Strasbourg and Augsburg, although the Augsburgers did not even receive it. The copies made for the city council all seem to have been preserved. Schwenckfeld had already sent an early copy to Philipp Melanchthon in Wittenberg, which is now in the Lippische Landesbibliothek Detmold ; another to St. Gallen to Vadian (StB St. Gallen, 374); the Codex Cgm 959 of the Bavarian State Library was the copy for the Nuremberg city council and bears the old archive signature Stat. AN 17; the Tübingen manuscript Md 3 that for Ulm. The manuscript of this work sent to the Zurich theologians (cf. Schwenckfeld's cover letter of Jan. 16, 1542) is in the Zurich Central Library , Ms. Car. I 272 (and was not yet known to the editors of the Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum).

The title of the manuscripts is consistent: Von der Herrlichait / Christi vnnd his recognized / nus arithmetic power of faith / and / responsibility / on writing out the learned / zu Schmalkald etc. / and / on the ant [h] ilogia D. Vadiani / An the famous M. / Philippum Melanchton / Ordered / Caspar Schwenckfeld

Work edition

  • Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum. 19 volumes, Leipzig, later Pennsburg (Pennsylvania) 1 (1907) - 19 (1961)

literature

  • Gustav Bossert: From the religious movement of the Reformation period in Württemberg. (Anabaptists and Schwenckfelder). In: Leaves for Württemberg Church History. New series Vol. 33, 1929, ISSN  0341-9479 , pp. 1-41.
  • Ulrich Bubenheimer: Black Book Market in Tübingen and Frankfurt: On the Reception of Nonconforming Literature in the Prehistory of Pietism. In: Rottenburger yearbook for church history. Vol. 13, 1994, ISSN  0722-7531 , pp. 149-163.
  • Ulrich Bubenheimer:  Schwenckfeld von Ossig, Kaspar. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 9, Bautz, Herzberg 1995, ISBN 3-88309-058-1 , Sp. 1215-1235.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • André Derville: Gaspard Schwenkfeld. In: Dictionnaire de spiritualité. Vol. 14: Sabbatini system. Beauchesne, Paris 1990, col. 451-453.
  • Paul Gerhard Eberlein: Heretic or Saint? Caspar von Schwenckfeld, the Silesian reformer and his message (= studies of the Silesian and Upper Lusatian church history. 6). Ernst-Franz-Verlag, Metzingen 1999, ISBN 3-7722-0300-0 .
  • Christian Friedrich David Erdmann :  Schwenkfeld, Kaspar von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 33, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1891, pp. 403-412.
  • Ute Evers: The spiritual song of the Schwenckfelder (= Mainz studies for musicology. 44). Schneider, Tutzing 2007, ISBN 978-3-7952-1222-3 (also: Mainz, University, dissertation, 2005).
  • Thomas Konrad Kuhn :  Schwenckfeld von Ossig, Caspar. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 63 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Arno Mentzel-Reuters : Tübingen sources on the book system of the Schwenckfeld communities in the 16th century. In: Gutenberg yearbook . Vol. 70, 1995, pp. 311-318.
  • Günter Mühlpfort: Schwenkfeld and the Schwenkfeld - their “middle way” as an alternative. From nonviolent German radical reformation to the American free church. In: Günter Vogler (Hrsg.): Wegscheiden der Reformation. Alternative thinking from the 16th to the 18th century. Böhlau, Weimar 1994, ISBN 3-7400-0832-6 , pp. 115-150.
  • Selina Gerhard Schultz: Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig. (1489-1561). Spirtual Interpreter of Christianity, Apostle of the Middle Way, Pioneer in Modern Religious Thought. The Board of Publication of the Schwenckfelder Church, Norristown PA 1947.
  • Douglas H. Shantz: Crautwald and Erasmus. A Study in Humanism and Radical Reform in Sixteenth Century Silesia (= Bibliotheca dissidentium. Scripta et studia. 4). Koerner, Baden-Baden et al. 1992, ISBN 3-87320-884-9 .
  • Johann Nepomuk von Vanotti : A contribution to the history of the Schwenkfeld sect in Würtemberg, with an excerpt from the will of Hans Pleykard von Freyberg zu Justingen from 1605/6. In: Würtembergische yearbooks for patriotic history, geography, statistics and topography. Jg. 1827, ZDB -ID 243531-7 , pp. 200-218 .
  • Franz Michael Weber: Kaspar Schwenckfeld and his followers in the Freiberg lords of Justingen and Öpfingen. A contribution to the history of the Reformation in the Alb-Danube region (= publications by the Commission for Historical Regional Studies in Baden-Württemberg. Series B: Research. 19, ISSN  0521-9884 ). Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1962, (At the same time: Freiburg (Breisgau), university, dissertation, 1958, as: Kaspar Schwenckfeld and his teaching in the Freiberg lords of Justingen and Öpfingen. ).
  • Horst Weigelt : From Silesia to America. The history of Schwenckfeldism (= new research on Silesian history. 14). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2007, ISBN 978-3-412-07106-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ monuments in the Ossiger Church . Accessed December 30, 2019.
  2. ^ Lore Sporhan-Krempel : Agatha Streicher, doctor from Ulm (around 1520–1581). In: Diethard E. Klein (Ed.): Swabian women pictures. Stieglitz et al., Mühlacker et al. 1986, ISBN 3-7987-0268-3 , pp. 27-26, here p. 36.
  3. ^ Emmet McLaughlin: Schwenckfeld, Kaspar von. In: Mennonite Lexicon . Volume 5 (MennLex 5).
  4. ^ Occupation of Silesia by Prussia.
  5. ↑ Horst Weigelt: Zinzendorf and the Schwenckfelder. In: Martin Brecht , Paul Peucker (ed.): New aspects of Zinzendorf research (= work on the history of Pietism. 47). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-525-55832-5 , pp. 64-83.
personal data
SURNAME Schwenckfeld, Kaspar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schwenkfeld, Kaspar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Silesian reformer and religious writer
DATE OF BIRTH 1490
PLACE OF BIRTH Ossig near Lüben
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 1561
Place of death Ulm