Ralph-Peter Crimmann

Crimmann in 2011

Ralph-Peter Crimmann (born March 15, 1949 in Hersbruck ) is a German non-fiction author and high school teacher .

Life

His father was an architect in Nuremberg and chairman of the Bavarian Association of Architects, his mother was a housewife, art teacher and kindergarten teacher. Crimmann attended the Realgymnasium in Nuremberg, formerly Egidiengymnasium , of which Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was one of the most famous headmasters . In 1966 Crimmann was at the artistic Wolfram-von-Eschenbach-Gymnasium in Schwabach, where he passed his Abitur in 1969. After studying at the Church University in Berlin and studying religious philology with the subjects of German, philosophy, and Protestant religious teaching in Kiel and Erlangen, he became a trainee teacher at the Friedericianum grammar school in Erlangen, and received his doctorate in 1975 with Joachim Staedtke and Hans-Joachim Schoeps on the young Karl Barth .

The fundamental investigation is included in Georg Pfleiderer's Munich habilitation thesis on Karl Barth's practical theology , where it is placed in a frame of reference for the philosophy and sociology of the 20th century. Crimmann published this doctoral thesis in 1981 in an expanded form under the title Karl Barth's early publications and their reception . Although Crimmann joined the Prackenfelser circle around Friedrich Mildenberger at that time, he nevertheless tried to get beyond the separation of reason and revelation, metaphysics and God's word, philosophy and theology, literature and biblical narration, which was held in high regard in this group. With his work on literary theology in particular, he opened up new ways of correlating literature and theology and sought to establish a new subject called “literary theology” within Protestant theology. This led to breaks with authors who tend to follow the traditional track of Christian dogmatism and the historical correlation of motifs, such as Gisbert Kranz.

The correlation between literature and theology or philosophy and theology also determined Crimmann's further field of activity. In 1981/82 he became Albrecht Weber's assistant at the University of Augsburg . This gave him access to the philosophy of education. This resulted in works that relate the philosophy of education to religious education and theology. The title of the monograph on Erich Less and Oskar Hammelsbeck makes it clear that the relatively autonomous pedagogy is entitled to its rights, but that on the other hand the presence of religion in schools must not be restricted to religious niches. Hammelsbeck's clear Lutheran legacy, which he changes in the Evangelical Church Struggle and which is reflected in the continuation of the Barmer Theological Declaration of 1934, must not be gambled away in the further course of the history of practical religious education. The cuddly religious education with its borrowings from psychology, meditation and self-discovery workshops let the findings of the church struggle fall into oblivion. Crimmann's theory of religious education repeatedly draws attention to the potential of this church struggle religious education.

Since 1982 Crimmann has been a grammar school teacher and specialist supervisor for Protestant religious teaching at grammar schools in Erlangen, Vaterstetten and Prien am Chiemsee.

Since the end of the 80s he turned back to literature and philosophy. However, he is always concerned with working out the relationship to the core elements of the Christian tradition, for example in his studies on Franz Kafka or the history of literature and philosophy . An autobiographical work can also be found in the series of his publications, namely Würfeln um Küsse (2005). Finally, his contribution Bettler vor Gott (2005) testifies to the interest in Reformation theology . All of this must be seen in the context of efforts to establish a dialogic religious education. The concern of such religious education has recently been increasingly taken up from other sources, for example by Karl Ernst Nipkow , who seeks dialogue with the natural science subjects (2010), or by Annegret and Georg Langenhorst (2010), who explore the possibilities for cooperation between the subject didactics of religion and subject didactics Reflect on German and also fall back on Crimmann.

Crimmann's work Urszenen der deutschen Literatur (2013) seeks contact with literary psychology and is therefore open to questions of depth psychology in literary interpretation in the sense of dialogical religious education.

His work "The apostolic creed, interpreted historically and critically. Against the forgetting of time in questions of faith" (2016) deals with the ever-increasing fundamentalism and the rejection of the historical-critical method . The two works published in 2018 bring together studies and lectures on the subjects of literature, freedom and history.

Crimmann has four sons, is married and lives in Prien am Chiemsee .

Works (selection)

• The young Karl Barth in the crossfire of criticism. An investigation into the background, echo and impulses of Barth's theology from 1909 to 1927. Dissertation, Philosophical Faculty of the University of Erlangen, 1975.
• Literary theology. Studies on the problem of mediating between German and theology, poetry and faith, literary didactics and religious education. Frankfurt am Main 1978.
• Karl Barth's early publications and their reception. (with a pedagogical-theological appendix) Bern 1981.
• Dialogic religious education. Studies on literature, education and church history from a religious pedagogical point of view. Frankfurt am Main 1985.
• Erich Less and Oskar Hammelsbeck. An examination of their pedagogical and theological views with special consideration of the norm problem. Weinheim 1986.
• Metaphysics and practice. Ethical considerations. Essen 1992.
• Kafka and Katorga. A literary didactic study. Frankfurt am Main 1996.
• “Every epoch is a terrible one.” Studies on German literary history by epoch. Hamburg 2001.
• Frank Kafka. Attempt at a cultural-philosophical interpretation. Hamburg 2004.
• Roll for kisses. Thirty stories from the life of P. Leipzig 2005.
• Philosophy for our time. No betrayal of Immanuel Kant. Hamburg 2009.
• Utopias, hopes, designs. On the political philosophy of modern times. Hamburg 2011.
• Primal scenes of German literature. Goethe - Schiller - Hoffmann - Büchner - Fontane - Kafka. Hamburg 2013.
• Karl Ludwig Sand and Georg Büchner. A contribution to zeitgeist research. Hamburg 2015.
• Art. Sand Karl (Carl) Ludwig. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon , ed. Bautz, 2015.
• The creed interpreted historically and critically. Against the forgetting of time in matters of faith. Hamburg 2016.
• Philosophy and Literature - Collected Lectures on Franz Kafka, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Max Frisch. Hamburg 2018.
• Freedom - Martin Luther, Karl Barth, Karl Ludwig Sand and Erlangen 1968. Studies on the intellectual history of modern times. Hamburg 2018.
• Kohelet - God's time and human time. Lectures on theology and philosophy. Hamburg 2019.
• Paul's letter to the Philippians. Theological and philosophical lectures. Hamburg 2020.

Other literature

• Gisbert Kranz: Christian literature as a provocation. On more recent works in literary theology. In: Voices of the Time , 1982/200, pp. 274–284.
• Gisbert Kranz: What is Christian Poetry? Theses, facts, data. Munich 1987.
• Georg Langenhorst: Theology and Literature. A manual. Darmstadt 2005.
• Annegret Langenhorst, Georg Langenhorst: Subject Didactics Religion and Subject Didactics German. Opportunities and limits of cooperation. In: ML Pirner, A. Schulte (Ed.): Religionsdidaktik im Dialog. Religious instruction in cooperation. Jena 2010, pp. 47-72.
• Karl Ernst Nipkow: Belief in creation, creationism and natural science. Requirements for the discussion of religious education with natural science subjects. In: ML Pirner, A. Schulte (Ed.): Religionsdidaktik im Dialog. Religious instruction in cooperation. Jena 2010, pp. 293-320.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See the descriptions in Georg Langenhorst: Theologie und Literatur. Pp. 45, 61, 192-194, 220
2. ↑ Cf. Crimmann: Is it permissible to speak of Christian literature? and Kranz Gisbert: Christian literature as provocation and Kranz Gisbert: What is Christian poetry?
3. ↑ See Crimmann 1983; 1987; 1988a
4. ↑ Crimmann 1983; 1985; 1986; 1988b; 1992; 2002
5. ↑ Crimmann 1996; 2004
6. ↑ Crimmann 1986; 2001; 2009; 2011