Paul Sturm

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Paul Sturm (born January 10, 1891 in Bad Liebenstein near Meiningen, † June 6, 1964 in Jena ) was a German philosopher and theologian.

Paul Sturm

biography

His father Ernst Berthold Sturm ran an agency for barite mines and was among other things co-founder of the commercial school in Thuringia. Sturm's parents' house was spiritually and musically influenced and so Sturm had already made an "alliance for life" in early childhood, primarily with poetry and music. As a child he enjoyed an education in piano and organ playing, he also appeared early with compositions. As a schoolboy, his first poems appeared in newspapers, in 1910 the volume Schatten und Sonne , then the war prayers . After attending the grammar school in Nordhausen , the one-year volunteer followed and from 1910 the years of study. At the father's request, Sturm first enrolled in law at the University of Erlangen . After his father's death, he immediately switched to philosophy, theology and medicine at the University of Göttingen , and later he studied composition as an autodidact. Heinrich Maier , Edmund Husserl , Leonard Nelson , David Katz were among his professors of philosophy . Sturm dealt with religious questions such as the problem of piety very early on, inspired by studies of Friedrich Schleiermacher's church-critical work On Religion in lectures by his liberal teacher Rudolf Otto and Immanuel Kant's book The Religion Within the Limits of Mere Reason . Even during his studies, Sturm had in mind the draft of a new doctrine of the Christian faith, to which he then dedicated his life. Before 1914 he wrote a textbook on dogmatics, which he gave the subtitle Genius and Mass . He was the first student to receive the Beireis scholarship for multi-talented students from his maternal ancestor, Gottfried Christoph Beireis (1730–1809).

Even before completing his studies, Sturm was drafted in 1914, seriously injured in the war from a lung bullet with right arm paralysis and lifelong consequences. With his health, Sturm also lost a large part of his friends who were fighting for his idea. He continued his studies immediately and passed both theological exams in Meiningen in 1918. In 1919 he took over the pastor's office in Hochdorf near Weimar in Thuringia.

In 1921 he received his doctorate in philosophy with Paul Hensel in Erlangen on the topic of the antinomy problem and acquired the faculties in the secondary disciplines of German, pedagogy and history. A second work on the criticism of proofs of God was accepted by Richard Grützmacher at the theological faculty in Erlangen, later by Lincke, University of Jena. Sturm did not take advantage of Hensel's offer to do his habilitation with him on the subject of The Antinomies - a Sophisma for an academic career because of the economic consequences of the war and the early death of his father and preferred to work in the quiet in the country.

During his studies, Sturm wanted to initiate a religious revival of Christianity from his point of view. So he put under all his writings during this time: "My goal is to elevate the newly reformed Christianity to the world religion" and in 1923 founded the Institute for World Religion in Hochdorf near Weimar with the publication of the theses of a new Reformation and its guidelines for a new one Reformation . The hyperinflation of these years also brought Sturms' patron, Consul Christian Lassen, to lose his fortune.

During this time, Thuringia had the reputation of being particularly liberal and open to modern thinking, which prompted Sturm to settle there near the cultural city of Weimar . He believed that he would be able to realize his reformatory efforts unhindered within the free Thuringian national church . On October 31 and November 14, 1923, he initiated his reform initiative in Weimar with a service in the Herder Church and a call for the Reformation. This was followed in the following years by Reformation lectures in cities of Thuringia as "storm evenings" [poetry, religious philosophy and own compositions, performed by oneself or with other artists], which reached beyond Thuringia through the press. This included two lectures on November 1, 1930, Religion and Religious Substitution in the Stadthaus-Saal Weimar and a Nietzsche evening on April 1, 1930 in the Mühlhausen theater in Thuringia . Sturm endeavored to bring Friedrich Nietzsche , the Thuringian philosopher, artist and church critic, closer to his intellectual and artistic greatness in public lectures. The wish for a Nietzsche chair remained unfulfilled.

Court preacher Paul Graue , with whom he was in lively intellectual exchange in the press at this time, formulated: “In Sturm there is a very original sense of genuine piety that asserts itself with elementary force.” And the Swiss poet Carl Spitteler [Nobel Prize Winner 1919] described Sturm as a "religious appearance of an individual, personal nature". He did not accept the call as pastor at Bremen Cathedral in 1928 in order to be able to concentrate on his life's work.

During the years in Hochdorf and the following years in Ulla near Weimar and from 1949 in Jena, an extensive work on the philosophy of religion was created, parts of which are available for publication. Storm's public work came to an end during the Nazi era. He was always a lone fighter, both in politics and in his mission as a renewer of Christianity. It was no different in the Jena era of the GDR regime until his death, as he had already lost a large part of his intellectual comrades in the First World War. Even after 1949 in Jena, two world wars, the inflation in between, and two dictatorships made public activity or publications impossible at the university. The picture-piano aphorism collection was published posthumously in 1991 .

His extensive legacy in the Sturm family archive includes, in addition to the religious-philosophical work, which consists of 70 scriptures, a literary work with poems, aphorisms, two plays and also a compositional work with songs, chorales, temple hymns, music for wind orchestra, chamber music. Another volume with aphorisms is in preparation. Readings of his aphorisms were given on WDR and Radio Bremen.

Works

• Shade and sun . F. Jung publishing house, Erlangen 1910.
• Guidelines for a New Reformation . Verlag J. Keipert, Weimar 1924, DNB 577486276 .
• Collected leaves . J. Keipert Publishing House, Weimar 1923.
• The optical delusion of the antinomies or the refutation of the so-called antinomies and the psychological justification of their appearance. A philosophical treatise following Kant and with special reference to Schopenhauer . Dissertation. Erlangen 1930.
• Picture piano . Berlin 1991.
• The miracle of being. New Reformation. Theses. In: tabularasa-jena.de newspaper for society and culture
• Picture piano aphorisms satires . Extended new edition for the 50th anniversary of death. Shaker Media Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-95631-188-8 .
• The miracle of being. New Reformation. Theses . Shaker Media Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-95631-192-5 .
• Flashlights aphorisms satires . Shaker Media Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-95631-300-4 .
• "The miracle of the spirit", Shaker Media Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-95631-394-3 .
• "Sun and Shade", Shaker Media Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-95631-472-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ S. autobiography in the Sturm archive.
2. ↑ Is listed in the ancestral passport of the Beireis family, in the Sturm family archive.
3. ↑ See Dedication to Lassen in Guidelines for a New Reformation .
4. ^ Programs and posters in the Sturm archive.
5. ↑ See Collected Sheets .
6. ↑ See Collected Sheets .
7. ↑ http://www.tabularasa-jena.de/artikel/artikel_5071/ (published on the 90th anniversary of Sturm's attack on the theses for a new Reformation in Weimar, Herderkirche on October 31, 2013).