Konrad Deubler

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Detail of the Deubler monument in Bad Goisern

Konrad Deubler (born November 26, 1814 in Goisern ; † March 31, 1884 at Primesberg near Goisern ; also called the farmer's philosopher ) was an Austrian farmer , baker, innkeeper and mayor of Goisern (near Ischl in the Salzkammergut).

Life

Deubler gardening in front of his house in Goisern (around 1875)
Konrad Deubler Goisern.jpg

Konrad Deubler was born on November 26th, 1814, the son of a poor miner. He learned milling and, in addition to hard work, found time and inclination to teach himself. On trips to Vienna , Venice and Dresden he got to know the world and after his return home in 1853 got into conflicts with the law enforcement because of his support and dissemination of enlightening and religion-critical writings. His books have been confiscated. In documents confiscated from his bookseller (Fink in Linz ) by the police , the examining magistrates found that he had bought books for a large sum (1,800 guilders (Ö. W.)) in the course of the previous years.

Deubler pretended that he had sold all those nefarious books to several families who had emigrated to America shortly before his arrest. After a year and a half in custody, he was sentenced to two years in heavy dungeon in Brno as a traitor and religious disorder . In addition, he was interned in Olomouc , so that he had to stay away from home for four years. In 1857 he was pardoned by the emperor, but he was exiled again from 1862 to 1864. After his release, he made a trip to Ludwig Feuerbach in Nuremberg to personally meet this thinker whom he admired. Feuerbach later visited Deubler in Goisern for a few months; they became friends, and Deubler visited Feuerbach shortly before his death in 1872 on Rechenberg. For the years 1870/71 he was elected mayor by his community.

Deubler was a gifted autodidact , whose pronounced desire for further training gave him the strength to study on his own alongside work. He drew his philosophy of life from the works of Ludwig Feuerbach, David Friedrich Strauss , Eugen Dühring , Ernst Haeckel , Ludwig Anzengruber and others, with whom he also contacted them by letter, visited them and also invited them to Goisern. He always endeavored to spread his knowledge among the common people around him. So he wrote to David Friedrich Strauss , enthusiastic about his two-volume book Das Leben Jesu, edited critically (published 1835/36), that he should summarize this in a generally understandable way in a popular edition. Thereupon Strauss published The Life of Jesus. Easily comprehensible arrangement , which then appeared in 1864 under the title The Life of Jesus for the German People . A friendship developed with Ludwig Feuerbach in particular through a lively correspondence and mutual visits. After Feuerbach's death in 1872, Deubler turned to Ernst Haeckel. He was also in contact with Peter Rosegger and the writer Minna Kautsky , mother of the Marxist theorist Karl Kautsky . What he read included:

  • Buckle: History of English Civilization
  • Ludwig Feuerbach: Essence of Christianity , thoughts about death and immortality
  • Eugen Dühring: value of life
  • Ernst Haeckel: Natural history of creation
  • Alexander Humboldt: Views of Nature ,
  • Moleschott
  • Christian Radenhausen: Isis: man and the world
  • Peter Rosegger
  • Roßäßler: People in the mirror of nature , the magazine Die Heimat
  • Friedrich Schiller
  • David Friedrich Strauss: The life of Jesus worked critically
  • Ule
  • Vogt

As far as he was able, he passed on the knowledge he had gained to the simple population to which he belonged. Despite the narrowness of the village in the secluded region, he recognized the intellectual upheavals of his time and spread their word. He promoted free thinking all his life. It is amazing how far he knew how to continue his education despite the simplicity of his surroundings and his limited means. However, in his late letters to Haeckel and others, his lack of critical attitude towards the authors and their theories becomes clear. Through his participation, a non-denominational school was set up in Goisern. Konrad Deubler wrote a few poems himself and there was a well-written autobiography in his estate.

Konrad Deubler was married and had at least one child with his wife.

Working after death

Konrad Deubler is regarded by the atheists and free thinkers in Upper Austria as their forerunner. With his approach to education, he set an example for future generations of atheists. In this spirit, three Konrad Deubler symposia were held from 1997 to 1999 in cooperation with the Freidenkerbund Upper Austria (today freidenker.at) and the Bad Goisern community.

As early as 1905, Deublerstrasse in Linz and finally Deublergasse in Vienna- Floridsdorf (21st district) in 1919 were named after him. In Steyr, today's Schosserstrasse was still called Konrad Deublerstrasse in 1934 .

On the occasion of the 2014 World Heritage Festival, the Konrad Deubler monument in the spa gardens of Bad Goisern, which had been redesigned by Paul Riedmann, a student in Hallstatt, was unveiled.

Also in 2014 the Austrian National Library in Vienna was able to acquire Konrad Deubler's estate. Four volumes contain original correspondence with Ludwig Feuerbach , Ernst Häckel , Eugen Dühring and Ludwig Anzengruber , documents on Deubler's political and free-thinking association activities, and some fragments from his writings and diaries.

literature

Web links

Commons : Konrad Deubler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Humanistic press service: Konrad Deubler. Retrieved July 17, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Bad Goisern municipality: Konrad Deubler 1814-1884. Retrieved September 30, 2017 .
  3. ↑ F .: Konrad Deubler died twice . Ed .: Der Freidenker. A magazine for freethinkers, humanists and atheists. No. 3/2014 , 44th year Freethinkers Association Austria, Vienna.
  4. ^ Austrian National Library: Konrad Deubler estate. Catalog of the National Library, accessed on September 19, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Deubler, Konrad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Farmer philosopher
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian farmer, baker, innkeeper and mayor of Goisern
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1814
PLACE OF BIRTH Goisern
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1884
Place of death Primesberg near Goisern