Paul Wilhelm Schmidt (theologian)

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Paul Wilhelm Schmidt (born December 25, 1845 in Berlin , † June 12, 1917 in Riehen near Basel ) was a German theologian , mostly teaching in Basel . To this day he is considered to be one of the most important Swiss representatives of the liberal Protestant trend in theology and the church at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

Life

Paul Schmidt was the second eldest son of the first teacher at the French Cathedral School Berlin Eusebius Schmidt and - like this one from Woldenberg in the Neumark - Auguste Meyer (1819-1871) and the brother of the Berlin high school professor Johannes ES Schmidt (1841-1925). Together with his four siblings, Schmidt grew up in the rooms of the French Cathedral, in whose rooms facing Jägerstrasse his father had been assigned a service apartment. He attended the French Cathedral School and then the French Gymnasium , where he passed the school leaving examination at the age of 16. His brother Johannes describes him as a highly gifted, "precocious" boy - also in singing and acting - "who, as a four-year-old, eager to learn, trotted to school next to his father, who strode quickly."

After graduating from high school , Schmidt studied theology and philosophy at the universities of Berlin and Halle (Saale) . In Halle he received his doctorate in 1865 for Dr. phil . In 1869 he qualified as a professor at the Berlin theological faculty for the subject of the New Testament . From 1869 to 1876 he was a private lecturer in the Berlin faculty. As editor of the liberal Protestant church newspaper he then attacked not only the ecclesiastical conditions in the capital but also the professors of the theological faculty so sharply that he lost the prospect of a professorship in Berlin ”.

In 1875 Schmidt was appointed full professor of the New Testament at the theological faculty of the University of Basel . This vocation was not without controversy; In a contemporary documentation it was said that the professorship had been assigned to Schmidt “by the government council in overcoming a majority motion of the board of trustees in consideration of the freer direction of Mr. Schmidt corresponding to the majority of the local population”. In 1885 the Theological Faculty of the University of Strasbourg awarded him the title of Doctor of Theology. In 1887/88 he was rector of the university and from 1896 to 1905 a member of the cantonal education council. From 1896 to 1911 he also devoted his services to the city's humanistic grammar school as inspection president. In 1893 he turned down an offer to Zurich . A few years before the outbreak of World War I , he took on Swiss citizenship . In his personality, Schmidt is often described as a "warm-hearted, supportive teacher". “Tending to uncompromising sharpness in the polemical argument, he also had integrative qualities.” Schmidt held office in Basel for more than four decades until his death in June 1917.

Fonts

  • Spinoza and Schleiermacher. The history of their systems and their mutual relationship. An attempt at the history of dogma, Berlin 1868
  • Protestant New Testament Bible. With the participation of Dr. Bruch et al. published by Paul Wilhelm Schmidt and Franz von Holtzendorff, Leipzig 1872 (third edition Leipzig 1879)
    • Translation: A short Protestant commentary on the books of the New Testament. With general and special introductions. Edited by Paul Wilhelm Schmidt and Franz von Holtzendorff. Translated from the third edition of the German by Francis Henry Jones. Three volumes, London 1882/1883/1884
  • About the acceptance of the theological studies. Report presented at the 8th German Protestant Conference in Wiesbaden, Berlin 1874
  • What separates "the two directions" in the Evangelical Church? A contribution to the estimation of the ecclesiastical contrasts , Berlin 1880
  • New Testament hyper-criticism of the latest attack on the authenticity of the Philippians examined for its method. Along with an explanation of the letter, Berlin 1880
  • Notes on the composition of the Revelation Johannis , Freiburg im Breisgau 1891
  • The story of Jesus , Freiburg im Breisgau 1899 (and other editions)
  • The Acts of the Apostles in De Wette-Overbeck and Adolf Harnack , Basel 1910
  • Free Christianity, its ecclesiastical law and its religious task , Berlin 1913

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johannes ES Schmidt: The French Cathedral School and the French Gymnasium in Berlin. Student memories 1848–1861 . Edited and commented by Rüdiger RE Fock. Publishing house Dr. Kovac, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8300-3478-0
  2. ↑ See BBKL entry on Schmidt.
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt, Paul Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theologian, mostly teaching in Basel
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1845
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 1917
Place of death Riehen near Basel