Leonhard Bayrer

Leonhard Bayrer (also: Leonard Bayrer ; born June 22, 1749 in Augsburg ; † April 26, 1802 ibid) was a German Jesuit , moral theologian and spiritual writer .

Career

As an ex- Jesuit, Bayrer was one of the professors at the Jesuit College St. Salvator , the former Jesuit grammar school in Augsburg. He later became cathedral preacher in Augsburg.

In his report “Unter Bayern und Schwaben” (1781), Friedrich Nicolai writes polemically about the apprenticeship at St. Salvator, where Bayrer worked:

“This is a Jesuit school in the narrowest sense of the word and no better than other Jesuit schools, where blind obedience, Aloysius devotions , along with a little poor Latin , scholastic philosophy and history are the main things. Everything is learned from books written by the Jesuits themselves. The fact that all of Augsburg's Catholic youth are educated in such schools explains the great difference between the inhabitants of both religions, but also the extremely harmful influence of the Jesuits. I wanted to attend the lessons of this school, but I was not allowed, any more than in the former Theresianum in Vienna . But if you consider that a few years ago the Jesuit Leonhard Bayrer, author of a history of Augsburg written very maliciously against the Protestants, was a teacher at this school and that now the Jesuit Franz Xaver Jann , the author of the silly Something Against Fashion , taught there, you can see that these people, who are supposed to teach others, are themselves almost a hundred years old in terms of knowledge. "

Writing activity

Many of Bayer's sermons and moral theological writings have appeared in print. With the six-volume collection “Poetisches Magazin”, he also campaigned for the dissemination of contemporary German-language literature among his students, albeit with a moralizing purpose, as he admits in the preface to the first volume: “It was my intention to provide innocuous nourishment for young people eager to read when this magazine was created [...] ”.

The Germanist Hans Pörnbacher, in his “Swabian Literature History”, assesses Bayerer's efforts in the contemporary literature of the time as positive: “Bayrer, an excellent pedagogue and teacher, at the same time a man of literary instinct, tries with his work Poetisches Magazin (6 vols, 1791– 1794) to convey the newer German literature to the students and is not alone in his generation. But among the opponents of the order, this effort has only triggered criticism and ridicule; they would have preferred to brand the Jesuits 'backwardness'. "

Works

• All the sermons. 10 volumes. Rieger, Augsburg 1782–1793.
  • Volume 1: Sermons on Various Subjects (1782)
  • Volume 2: Sermons on Various Subjects (1784)
  • Volume 3: Sermons on Various Subjects (1784)
  • Volume 4: Sermons on the Sunday Gospels (1787)
  • Volume 5: Sermons on the 1st main part of Catholic Christianity (1788)
  • Volume 6: Sermons on the 2nd main part of Catholic Christianity (1789)
  • Volume 7: Sermons on the 3rd main part of Catholic Christianity (1790)
  • Volume 8: Sermons on the 4th main part of Catholic Christianity (1791)
  • Volume 9: Sermons on the 5th Main Part of Catholic Christianity (1792)
  • Volume 10: Sermons on Most Sundays and Some Feast Days of the Year (1793)
• Brief history of Augsburg. A reader for the citizen and his descendants. Rieger, Augsburg 1785.
• Poetic magazine, for use by young lovers of German poetry. 6 volumes. Styx, Augsburg 1791–1794.
• Rules of life for the youth. From a childhood friend. 4 volumes. Veith, Augsburg 1792–1794.
  • Volume 1: Of the true love of God (1792)
  • Volume 2: Of Sincere Charity (1793)
  • Volume 3: On spiritual caution (1794)
  • Volume 4: On political caution (1794)
• Auxiliary booklet for teaching proselytes from Judaism and Protestantism. Doll, Augsburg 1794.
• Complete catechetical sermons on the 5 main pieces of Catholic Christianity. Veith, Augsburg 1806.

Secondary literature

• Clemens Alois Baader: Lexicon of deceased Bavarian writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Part 1. Augsburg and Leipzig 1824. pp. 42–43 ( digitized version )

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1. ^ Friedrich Nicolai: Unter Schwaben ... Augsburg. Observations from the year 1781. ( Digitized version ( Memento of the original from November 8, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ) 
2. ↑ Bayer's preface to the 1st volume of his "Poetic Magazine" (1791)
3. ↑ From the foreword to the 1st volume of the "Poetic Magazine", quoted from: Hans Pörnbacher (Ed.): Bayerische Bibliothek. Texts from 12 centuries. Volume 3: The literature of the 18th century. The Age of Enlightenment. Süddeutscher Verlag, Munich 1990, pp. 424-425.
4. ^ Hans Pörnbacher: Swabian literary history. A thousand years of literature from Bavarian Swabia. Anton H. Konrad Verlag, Weißenhorn 2002, p. 151.