Matthäus Alber

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Matthäus Alber (also Aulber; * December 4, 1495 in Reutlingen , Free Imperial City ; † December 2, 1570 in Blaubeuren , Duchy of Württemberg ) was a Württemberg reformer .

Live and act

Origin and educational path

Matthäus Alber on an engraving from around 1571; from: T. Dinkel, G. Schweizer: Ancestors and family of the poet Friedrich Schiller . Stuttgart 2005

Matthäus Alber came as the son of the goldsmith Jodokus Aulber and his wife, Anna, geb. Schelling, to the world. First he attended Latin school in his hometown . When a city ​​fire broke out in Reutlingen in 1506 , the family lost their breadwinner and suffered financial hardship.

In the following period Alber attended Latin schools in Strasbourg , Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Schwäbisch Hall . Noticed by his good performance, he was later given a job as a teacher at the Latin school in his hometown.

In November 1513, Matthäus Alber enrolled at the University of Tübingen , where he obtained the degree of Baccalaureus in the Seven Liberal Arts on May 14, 1516 . The prerequisite for later studies at the high faculty of medicine , law or theology . In 1518, Matthäus Alber completed the next higher degree, the Magister artium , which enabled him to become a teacher at the Tübingen Latin School in order to secure his livelihood.

Matthäus Alber meets Melanchthon and Reuchlin

Philipp Melanchthon on an oil painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder

Alber got to know the young scholar Philipp Melanchthon here . He attended his lectures on Greek grammar , as well as his lectures on the comedy poet Terence from Carthage and on the history of ancient comedy. When Melanchthon went to Wittenberg in 1518 , Alber accompanied him there. As his companion, he met Johannes Reuchlin in Stuttgart on the trip .

On June 1, 1521, Alber enrolled at the University of Freiburg , where shortly thereafter, on June 5, he acquired the Baccalaureus biblicus and on August 8 the Baccalaureus sententiarius and the Baccalaureus formatus. During his humanistic studies in Freiburg , he also studied the writings of Martin Luther .

Reutlingen time

The nave of St. Mary's Church overlooking the choir and the apse , and the dominant over the altar in the vault floating crucifix
Memorial plaque to Alber's work at the Marienkirche in Reutlingen
The west portal of the Marienkirche in Reutlingen, with the view of the main tower, the church was built between 1247 and 1343 and is today one of the most beautiful and important buildings from the Gothic period in the county of Württemberg

On November 8, 1521, Alber was ordained a priest in Constance . Thereupon he returned to Reutlingen, where the city council had set up a predicature at the Marienkirche, which was occupied by him. Now Alber began to impart the knowledge of Luther's teachings that he had acquired in Freiburg . Thereupon Archduke Ferdinand put pressure on the city council in 1524 : Alber should preach according to the imperial laws and not proclaim Luther's doctrine. The council protected Alber but obliged him to preach in accordance with the Scriptures.

Constance vicar general checks the sermons

A review of his sermons began in April 1524. This examination, carried out by the Vicar General of Constance, did not go as they intended, to the displeasure of the Reutlingen Council and Albers. A fire-triggered assembly of the population on the market square in Reutlingen around Whitsun 1524, after a particularly committed sermon by Albers, gave his community an oath to protect the gospel . This Reutlinger Markteid was repealed on June 1, 1524 by the Swabian Federation . However, this showed that the pressure on the forces of the Counter Reformation increased. When the Bishop of Konstanz, Johann von Weeze , asked the Swabian Federation to stop Alber's reformatory ideas, the Federation was forced to take a position on Alber. As a result, the Württemberg forces in Stuttgart pronounced an economic trade boycott against Reutlingen.

Justification before the Reich Regiment in Esslingen

Alber was summoned to the Reichsregiment in Esslingen am Neckar on December 13, 1524 , where he was interrogated from January 10 to 12, 1525 for violating the Edict of Worms . His attempt to turn the matter into a disputation failed . However, he was able to evade conviction, which meant that his opponents could not prevail against his Lutheran teaching. As a result of the interrogation, the reorganization of the service in Reutlingen was approved. From now on, Alber read the mass in German undisturbed and celebrated the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist , communion , without a previous confession .

Order to reorganize the service

In 1526, the Reutlingen Council commissioned Alber to reorganize the worship service. He restricted this to reading the Bible , sermon , discussing the psalms, and songs. On the advice of Luther, he deviated from the Wittenberg model on the question of the Lord's Supper . Even during the phase of the Peasant War , Alber had already represented Luther's position and rejected fraternization with the peasants. This rapprochement with Luther's position made it possible for Alber to achieve a further implementation of his reformatory ideas after the Peasants' War. In doing so, he came closer to Luther's interpretations without breaking with the Upper German reformers around Ulrich Zwingli . When the Anabaptists , especially from Esslingen , appeared in Reutlingen in 1527, he brought them to abandon their ideas through mild discussions and teachings.

Accountability for breach of celibacy and excommunication

At the instigation of the Constance Curia , Alber and eleven other clergymen were summoned to the court in Radolfzell on January 22, 1528 to answer for breach of celibacy . Thereupon took place on May 9th 1528 Albers excommunication . Alber, however, did not allow himself to be dissuaded from his path and so it is not surprising that, at Alber's insistence, Reutlingen was the only southern German city besides Nuremberg that signed the Protestant creed, the Confessio Augustana , at the Augsburg Reichstag in 1530 . Further efforts by the curia at the court in Rottweil led to the pronouncement of eight in 1531 . Also in 1531 Alber drew up his Reutlingen church ordinance , which was supposed to build a presbyterial church. Three councilors and preachers and six representatives of the congregation were to meet for the "senatus ecclesiae" to examine the clergy to be employed, to elect them or to remove them if they violated the doctrine of the congregation. This Senate was also responsible for the visitations , the marriage court and it was supposed to decide on dunning and ban proceedings. In a convention, the clergy were only supposed to adapt doctrine, sermon order and life to one another; they were not functionally assigned to the authorities and the church senate, just as the convent or authorities did not have an independent function in the church government . After Alber had preached for nine years that the images that were worshiped illegally in the church should be removed out of consideration for the weak, this was granted by the council in 1531. Negotiations with Zwingli also took place in the same years, but there were only differences over the question of the Lord's Supper.

Alber, who was initially not particularly involved in the events of the Reformation, but whose handwriting cannot be excluded from the Reutlingen representatives, preached in 1534 in Duke Ulrich's field camps in Untertürkheim and Güterstein, but also in the cities of Urach , Pfullingen and Nürtingen . On May 21, 1536 he went to Wittenberg to take part in the negotiations for the Wittenberg Agreement as one of the representatives of the Upper Lands. After he signed this Agreement on May 28th, he preached on baptism in the Wittenberg town church . In 1537 he took part in the Urach Götzentag . Alber went back to the University of Tübingen in 1539 , where, after a disputation on November 7, 1539, together with Johann Forster , on December 8, 1539, he was awarded the academic degree of Doctor of Theology.

Departure from Reutlingen

Alber completed the process of Reformation change in Reutlingen by 1548. Since Reutlingen was forced to accept the Augsburg interim in 1548 , Alber was dismissed from his office on August 17th. He gave up the income from his preaching office on September 4, 1549 after Duke Ulrich had appointed him preacher at the Stuttgart collegiate church on July 13, 1549 . He initially wanted to stay with his community in order not to lose his rights to his income from the pastor's office in Reutlingen, but did not return because he moved to Stuttgart with his family and household in 1549. To what extent he was able to develop his own effectiveness in the theological department of the church council alongside and after Johannes Brenz , who valued him as a colleague and deputy, cannot be precisely said. He participated in personnel decisions for church and school, prepared theological reports as part of the Synodus (Conventus) 1552, which flowed into the Confessio Virtembergica . He also carried out visitations, the results of which he processed and from which the visitation and church regulations emerged in 1553. His participation in the religious discussion of the colloquium in Worms in 1557 should also be mentioned.

Abbot of the Blaubeuren monastery

On April 23, 1563, Alber was elected the first Lutheran abbot of the Blaubeuren monastery . As a prelate with a seat in the Landtag, he took part in the Landtag in 1565, and was given the task of running the monastery school founded in 1556. After seven and a half years of painful illness, Alber died and was buried on December 3, 1570 in the town church of Blaubeuren.

Matthäus Albers theology

Luther portrait by Lucas Cranach the Elder , 1529

Alber's theology proves to be an independent appropriation of the early Reformation theology of Martin Luther , in the consistent application of the principle of writing, which permeates and transforms the late scholastic tradition. There are distinct accents in Luther's reception. Like Luther, Alber wants to preach Christ from the Scriptures. This deepens the humanistic biblical approach to the theology of the word. In accordance with these fundamental Reformation doctrines, Alber does not recognize the authorities outside of Scripture, the ecclesiastical laws, the teaching tradition and the decisions of the council. Scripture is the measure of church reform.

Alber also rejects the fairness of work and the mass as opus operatum. The solus Christ also determines his doctrine of the Church. Alber implements this insight in the draft church ordinance . Church ordinances are intended to promote true worship and prevent future harm after God's temple is cleansed. The people of God who cleanse the temple and rebuild the city (Nehemiah) are the image of the whole church. In the church order, the people of God testify to the acceptance of the covenant with God. The rejection of hierarchical structures also results from the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, which is based on the blood of Christ and baptism. With the rejection of tradition, the number of sacraments also falls. Only baptism and the Lord's Supper are sacraments in the sense of Scripture. In the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, Alber follows Luther's line. Alber did not follow Zwingli's doctrine of the Lord's Supper.

Matthäus Albers attitude to witchcraft and witch hunt

Hans Baldung Grien : Witches doing damage magic ; Woodcut around 1508 subsequently colored. Source: R. Decker Frontispiece Witches 2004

In the doctrine of witches , Alber continues the line of the Tübingen school and is thus in a number of Württemberg Lutheran theologians, where it says " God also acts through witches ". In his critical stance on the belief in witches and the persecution of witches , Matthäus Alber stands in line with other Tübingen theologians and Württemberg Lutheran theologians, such as Jacob Heerbrand , Johannes Brenz , (Theodor) Dietrich Schnepf , Jacob Andreae , Wilhelm Bidembach , Wilhelm Friedrich Lutz or Theodor Thumm (1586–1630), who see God's omnipotence so comprehensively that there can be no magic spell , because ultimately evil and misfortune is also directed by God himself in order to punish sinners and test the righteous . Witches can only be punished by God for their apostasy . This worked in terms of less rigorous procedures and milder punishment.

Alber's religious studies consideration of the doctrine of predestination

In the doctrine of predestination , Alber's image of God emerges more sharply when he interprets providence as a predestination for good and evil, for faith and unbelief, and bases it on the freedom of God, who is not accountable and to which man is at the mercy. Only obedience to God's commandments is paramount. Therefore he can also affirm resistance to the emperor, who is taken into service by the Pope as the Antichrist.

Matthäus Alber progenitor of a large offspring

In the genealogy of Württemberg, Alber is known alongside Johannes Brenz as the “ main source of inheritance ” or “ Massenahn ”.

The lineage of the ancestors of Matthäus Alber

Since 1331, the Alber namesake can be traced back to a family of craftsmen who belonged to Matthäus Alber's ancestors. Matthäus Alber's grandfather was a chamberlain and judge (1451). In 1559 a Johannes Alber from Reutlingen enrolled as a pauper in Vienna. Matthäus Alber's uncle Max Alber sat in the small council of Reutlingen, he was the guild master of the forge . His brother Ludwig Allber was a councilor . His mother came from a Reutlinger class family .

The descendants of Matthäus Alber

From his marriage with Klara Baur, daughter of the Reutlingen citizen Jacob Baur, in 1524 he had 6 sons and 4 daughters. An ancestral line leads from his daughter Klara to Friedrich von Schiller . Many other well-known personalities can derive their genealogical roots from Matthäus Alber.

In addition to many not mentioned, Matthäus Alber's descendants include Christoph Alber , Konsistorialrat in Ludwigsburg; the legal scholar Matthäus Enzlin , Privy Councilor, professor at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen ; Philipp Matthäus Hahn , pastor and self-taught mechanic, designer and builder of important clockworks; the early deceased writer Wilhelm Hauff , a main representative of the Swabian school of poets , author of well-known fairy tales; Carl Friedrich Haug , theologian and professor for universal history in Tübingen; the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ; Wilhelm Maybach , designer of the famous Mercedes-Simplex , a racing car with a 35 hp four-cylinder engine and two carburetors; the composer and sound artist David Moufang , winner of the Karl Sczuka Prize 2008 together with Thomas Meinecke ; Karl Christian Planck , natural philosopher and representative of pure realism ; Ernst Reuter , politician and local scientist and his son Edzard Reuter ; the puppeteer Albrecht Roser , one of whose most legendary creations is the knitting grandma , she regularly swabbed with her little dog in the former SDR ; the poet, literary scholar, politician and lawyer Ludwig Uhland ; Friedrich Theodor Vischer , literary scholar , philosopher , writer and politician; the Palatinate - Württemberg lineage of the Weizsäcker family , including Viktor von Weizsäcker , he is considered to be the founder of psychosomatic medicine and medical anthropology , and his nephews Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker , physicist , philosopher and peace researcher and Richard Freiherr von Weizsäcker former federal president , counting; the theologian and philosopher Eduard Zeller . Also Gracia Patricia Princess of Monaco born. Grace Kelly and her children Caroline Princess of Hanover , Albert II of Monaco and Stephanie Princess of Monaco are direct descendants of Matthäus Alber's.

Memorials

  • After Alber, also called Aulber, the Aulberstraße in Reutlingen was named, which begins at the Marienkirche, Alber's main place of work. It leads 700 meters to the foot of the Achalm on Silberburgstrasse.
  • Furthermore, the Matthäus-Alber-Haus in Reutlingen, Lederstraße 81, the inner-city parish hall with a large event hall, community and youth rooms as well as offices of various evangelical offices.
  • An Alber linden tree was planted in Reutlingen's Volkspark for the Reformation anniversary on October 31, 2017. A plaque embedded in the floor reminds of Matthäus Alber, whose family coat of arms was also adorned with a tree.

Works

  • The right use of the eternal fear of God. Augsburg 1525.
  • Letters . In : Württembergische Kirchengeschichte NE, Volume 2 for 17, 1913, p. 181 ff.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sven Gallas: Matthäus-Alber-Haus. Retrieved October 11, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Every hundred years again - the city puts a lime tree in the public park for its reformer Matthäus Alber. In: Reutlinger Generalanzeiger. Retrieved November 2, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Alber, Matthew
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aulber, Matthew
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German reformer
DATE OF BIRTH 4th December 1495
PLACE OF BIRTH Reutlingen
DATE OF DEATH December 2, 1570
Place of death Blaubeuren