Religious edict of July 9, 1788

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The Prussian Minister of State Johann Christoph von Woellner , head of the Spiritual Department from 1788 to 1798

The religious edict of July 9, 1788 tightened the supervision of the Prussian state over the churches and the school system with the aim of curbing enlightenment tendencies. It was issued by King Friedrich Wilhelm II , and State Minister Johann Christoph von Woellner, as head of the spiritual department , had a great influence on its design . Together with the censorship decree of December 19, 1788 issued a few months later, it marks the end of Frederick II's state policy of tolerance .

prehistory

In the 1780s, Prussia was the venue for sharp religious conflicts. On the one hand, this was due to the fact that, since the First Partition of Poland , the traditionally Protestant state also included areas with a predominantly Catholic population, which now had to be integrated. On the other hand, the broad intellectual current of the Enlightenment that shaped the second half of the 18th century did not stop at the churches either. Many Lutheran or Reformed theologians in Prussia took rationalist positions, adhered to Christian Wolff's philosophy of natural law , or rejected a literal interpretation of the Bible. As a result, they came into conflict with Lutheran orthodoxy , which clung to the revelatory character of the Bible and also tolerated or protected religious or superstitious practices of popular piety . Even if neological theology clung to religion as a pillar of morality and had cooperated with the Prussian state church without conflict under Friedrich II, the new King Friedrich Wilhelm II and his minister for the spiritual department, Woellner, saw a need for action: They wanted in the spirit of the sovereign church regiment to pacify the religious disputes, control the church more closely and take the lead from rationalism. Woellner was a high member of the anti-Enlightenment secret society of the Rosicrucians , whose superior he consulted on questions of religious policy.

The religious edict was prompted by the establishment of the so-called Oberschulkollegium, which in March 1788 approved a reform that freed schools from the supervision of the clergy. The initiative came from the Enlightenment circle around Minister Karl Abraham von Zedlitz . Woellner urged the king to dismiss Zedlitz as head of the spiritual department. Thereupon Friedrich Wilhelm II put his favorite in the place of Zedlitz. Woellner was now responsible for the Prussian church, school and pen system. This created the basis for the elaboration of the religious edict. At this point in time Woellner already had a specific concept of religious policy. As early as 1785, while Frederick II was still alive, he had handed over the draft of a “General Reflection” to Friedrich Wilhelm. In it he referred to Prussia as the "land of religious scoffers", in which the people undermined the holy authority of God and the monarchy. For him, the religious edict was a “state-political necessity” in order to “return church and society to early Christian purity”.

content

The edict comprised 14 paragraphs and began with a declaration of tolerance: All three Christian denominations represented in Prussia, namely the Reformed, the Lutheran and the Catholic, were granted religious freedom . Everyone was assured general tolerance "as long as everyone calmly fulfills his duties as a good citizen of the state, but keeps his special opinion to himself". “Publicly tolerated sects ”, meaning Jews and special religious communities , confirmed the sovereign protection granted until then. Missionary work was forbidden both to them and to the Catholics. Protestant clergymen were obliged, without prejudice to their own freedom of conscience, to maintain the liturgy and Christian doctrine , since some of them “allow themselves completely unrestrained freedoms, with the intention of the doctrinal concept of their confession” and “essential pieces and basic truths of the Protestant Church and the Christian religion in general deny away ”. This meant enlightenment ideas, namely deism , naturalism and doubts about the verbal inspiration of the Bible . Violations face impeachment, expulsion, fines and imprisonment. Care should be taken to ensure that all theology professorships, parish and school positions are only accessible to applicants with firm faith.

Effects

The edict of religion immediately met with great rejection. Obviously, Woellner and the king understood state measures in an absolutist way as ecclesiastical, the church was only the executive organ. Against this and also against the condemnation of the Enlightenment, five senior consistory councilors protested , namely Johann Joachim Spalding , Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack , Johann Samuel Diterich , Wilhelm Abraham Teller and Anton Friedrich Büsching , all of whom represented a neological theology. Her protest letters of September 10th and October 1st, 1788 were rejected as " insubordination ". But this no longer ensured that the churches themselves would enforce the religious edict, which is why an immediate examination commission was set up in Berlin in 1791, which examined all candidates for the preaching office for their theological orthodoxy and largely disempowered the senior consistory in terms of church, school and university policy . Twelve examination committees were subordinate to the Immediate Examination Commission in the Prussian provinces. In order to keep neologically oriented theologians out of the Prussian churches and schools, the candidates had to give trial sermons before these commissions. Newly appointed teachers at high schools and city schools had to sign a lapel in which they distanced themselves from educational ideas. Since 1793 the Immediat-Examenskommission also undertook visitation trips to the universities and higher schools in the country. For the rural and lower schools of Prussia, an instruction was issued in 1794 that gave religious instruction top priority and limited all other knowledge to be imparted to the children to what was necessary.

But because both the universities and the municipal authorities of the cities resisted the exclusion of enlightenment candidates, the factual effect of the religious edict remained small. A single suspension due to the religious edict is on record, namely in 1791 that of the Gielsdorf preacher Johann Heinrich Schulz , who caused a scandal before the higher court because of royal interference in the subsequent process . Friedrich Wilhelm II. Demanded a tougher approach, but Woellner successfully resisted it. Since 1794 the relationship between the two men was broken.

Over a hundred publicists published critical statements against the religious edict. This was one of the reasons for the king to issue a censorship decree on December 19, 1788 . It was soon applied to critics of Woellern's religious policy: the Berlin journalist and later Jacobin Heinrich Würzer had personally attacked the king in a mocking tone: he had been betrayed by his advisors and the edict violated human rights . For this he was to imprisonment convicted. The pastor Karl Friedrich Bahrdt , who resigned after the publication of the edict from his office on his own, published in 1789 in the form of a comedy is a biting satire on - he received imprisonment. The Württemberg scholar Friedrich Karl von Moser, on the other hand, found it merely outrageous that the Brethren , to which he was close, was lumped together with Mennonites and Jews. Especially after the French Revolution, the public criticism of Woellner and his edict became sharper: Now there was talk of “theological despotism ”, the minister was publicly cursed as a “vile and treasonous villain”. Positive voices such as those from Johann Salomo Semler , Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart and the anti-enlightenment magazine The latest religious events remained in the minority.

After the death of Friedrich Wilhelm II in 1797, the religious edict came under his successor Friedrich Wilhelm III. without ever being formally canceled, increasingly out of use. An unauthorized attempt by Woellner to again oblige the competent authorities to strictly adhere to it, led to a sharp cabinet order from the new king against this measure. Woellner was subsequently released without a pension. The promises of tolerance of the edict became part of the general land law for the Prussian states in 1794 .

Scientific evaluation

In historical studies, the edict of religion has been judged extremely negatively for decades. Friedrich Christoph Schlosser suspected in 1860 that the fun-loving king wanted to atone for his “sins of the flesh” and called Woellner's religious policy a “rage against rationalism”; In 1912, the liberalism researcher Oskar Klein-Hattingen saw the edict as state funding for “hypocrisy and hypocrisy”. It was only during the First World War that the historian Otto Hintze came to the judgment that it was “better” “than its reputation”, also with a view to the tolerance granted by the edict. In 1953, the conservative historian Fritz Valjavec praised the edict as one of the "most important steps to protect the concept of teaching" and placed it in a row with the prohibition of the Radical Enlightenment Order of Illuminati by the Bavarian Elector Karl Theodor the year before. The historian Elisabeth Fehrenbach , on the other hand, criticizes the edict of 1987 as an indication of the " reactionary course" that Prussia took after the death of Frederick II. The Australian historian Christopher Clark, on the other hand, sees the edict rather positively: the aim was not the introduction of a new Lutheran orthodoxy, but "the consolidation of the existing confessional structures and thus the preservation of the pluralistic compromise." The historian Brigitte Meier sees light and shadow: she emphasizes that in other states of the late 18th century it was by no means a matter of course to guarantee the free practice of religion for Jewish citizens. The religious edict already shows a high degree of tolerance in this regard. At the same time, however, the Protestant religious communities were subjected to rigid state control. The Prussian government clearly did not strive for complete freedom of conscience and religious self-determination.

literature

  • Uta Wiggermann: Woellner and the religious edict. Church politics and ecclesiastical reality in Prussia in the late 18th century. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-16-150186-9 (not viewed)
  • Dirk Kemper (Ed.): Abused Enlightenment? : Writings on the Prussian religious edict of July 9, 1788. 118 writings on 202 microfiches . Hildesheim: Olms, 1996 (not viewed)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christopher Clark: Prussia: Rise and Fall 1600-1947 . Pantheon, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-570-55060-1 , p. 319.
  2. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wehler : Deutsche Gesellschaftgeschichte, Vol. 1: From Feudalism of the Old Empire to the Defensive Modernization of the Reform Era 1700–1815. CH Beck, Munich 1987, p. 274 ff.
  3. ^ Wolfgang Neugebauer : Brandenburg-Prussia in the early modern period . In: the same (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Prussischen Geschichte , Vol. 1: The 17th and 18th centuries and major subjects of the history of Prussia . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2009. ISBN 978-3-11-021662-2 . P. 367 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  4. ^ Wilhelm Bringmann: Prussia under Friedrich Wilhelm II. (1786-1797). Peter Lang. Bern 2001. ISBN 978-3-631-37427-6 . P. 206.
  5. ^ Uwe A. Oster: Prussia. Story of a kingdom. Piper, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-492-05191-0 , p. 199.
  6. ^ Fritz Valjavec : The Woellner religious edict and its historical significance . In: Historisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 72 (1953), pp. 386–400, here pp. 386 f .; Wolfgang Neugebauer: Brandenburg-Prussia in the early modern period . In: the same (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Prussischen Geschichte , Vol. 1: The 17th and 18th centuries and major subjects of the history of Prussia . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2009. ISBN 978-3-11-021662-2 . P. 369 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online); Albrecht Beutel : Forensics. Studies on the identity history of Protestantism. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2013, p. 34.
  7. ↑ Rudolf von Thadden : Church in the Shadow of the State? On the problem of the Protestant Church in Prussian history . In Geschichte und Gesellschaft , special issue 6: Preußen im Rückblick (1980), pp. 146–175, here p. 156.
  8. ↑ Mark Pockrandt: Biblical Enlightenment. Biography and theology of the Berlin court preachers August Friedrich Wilhelm Sack (1703–1786) and Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack (1738–1817). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 978-3-11-090820-6 , p. 462; Wolfgang Neugebauer: Brandenburg-Prussia in the early modern period . In: the same (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Prussischen Geschichte , Vol. 1: The 17th and 18th centuries and major subjects of the history of Prussia . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2009. ISBN 978-3-11-021662-2 . P. 370 f. (both books accessed via De Gruyter Online); Uta Wiggermann: Wöllner and the Wöllner religious edict . In: Religion Past and Present . Study edition, UTB, Stuttgart 2008, Vol. 8, Sp. 1688.
  9. ↑ Wolfgang Neugebauer: Absolutist state and school reality in Brandenburg-Prussia. (= Publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin, Vol. 62). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1985, ISBN 3-11-009920-9 , p. 193 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  10. ^ Wolfgang Neugebauer: The education system in Prussia since the middle of the 17th century. In: Otto Büsch (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Prussischen Geschichte , Vol. 2: The 19th Century and Great Subjects of the History of Prussia. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-083957-9 , p. 656 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  11. ^ Hans Martin Sieg: State service, state thinking and service attitude in Brandenburg-Prussia in the 18th century (1713-1806). Studies on the understanding of absolutism (= publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin, vol. 103). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 978-3-11-089868-2 , p. 293 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  12. ↑ Uta Wiggermann: Wöllner and the Wöllner religious edict . In: Religion Past and Present . Study edition, UTB, Stuttgart 2008, Vol. 8, Sp. 1688
  13. ↑ Ursula Koch: French Revolution and Prussian Daily Journalism 1789. In: Otto Büsch and Monika Neugebauer-Wölk (eds.): Prussia and the revolutionary challenge since 1789 (= publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin, vol. 78). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1991, ISBN 978-3-11-012684-6 , p. 226. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  14. ↑ Mark Pockrandt: Biblical Enlightenment. Biography and theology of the Berlin court preachers August Friedrich Wilhelm Sack (1703–1786) and Friedrich Samuel Gottfried Sack (1738–1817). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 978-3-11-090820-6 , p. 461 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  15. ^ Hans Martin Sieg: State service, state thinking and service attitude in Brandenburg-Prussia in the 18th century (1713-1806). Studies on the understanding of absolutism (= publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin. Vol. 103). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 978-3-11-089868-2 , p. 295; Ursula Koch: French Revolution and Prussian daily journalism 1789. In: Otto Büsch and Monika Neugebauer-Wölk (eds.): Prussia and the revolutionary challenge since 1789 (= publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin, vol. 78). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1991, ISBN 978-3-11-012684-6 , p. 226. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  16. ^ Hans Martin Sieg: State service, state thinking and service attitude in Brandenburg-Prussia in the 18th century (1713-1806). Studies on the understanding of absolutism (= publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin. Vol. 103). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 978-3-11-089868-2 , p. 295 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  17. ^ Marion Schulte: About the civil conditions of the Jews in Prussia. Goals and motives of the reform period (1787–1812) . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-030603-3 , p. 53 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  18. ^ Fritz Valjavec: The Woellner religious edict and its historical significance . In: Historisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 72 (1953), pp. 386–400, here p. 387 f.
  19. ^ Wolfgang Neugebauer: Brandenburg-Prussia in the early modern period . In: the same (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Prussischen Geschichte , Vol. 1: The 17th and 18th centuries and major subjects of the history of Prussia . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2009. ISBN 978-3-11-021662-2 . P. 372 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  20. ↑ Otto Hintze : The Hohenzollern and their work. 500 years of patriotic history. Parey, Berlin 1915, p. 412.
  21. ↑ Uta Wiggermann: Wöllner and the Wöllner religious edict . In: Religion Past and Present . Study edition, UTB, Stuttgart 2008, Vol. 8, Sp. 1688.
  22. ^ Fritz Valjavec: The Woellner religious edict and its historical significance . In: Historisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 72 (1953), pp. 386–400, here pp. 389–392.
  23. ↑ Quoted from Gerd Heinrich : Geschichte Preußens. State and dynasty. Propylaea, Frankfurt am Main 1981, p. 267.
  24. ^ Fritz Valjavec: The Woellner religious edict and its historical significance . In: Historisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 72 (1953), pp. 386–400, here p. 393 f.
  25. ^ Elisabeth Fehrenbach: From the Ancien Régime to the Congress of Vienna. (= Oldenbourg floor plan of the story , vol. 12). 5th edition, Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-70108-1 , p. 58 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  26. ↑ Christopher Clark: Prussia: Rise and Fall 1600-1947 . Pantheon, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-570-55060-1 , p. 319.
  27. ^ Brigitte Meier: Friedrich Wilhelm II. King of Prussia. A life between rococo and revolution . 2007, ISBN 978-3-7917-2083-8 , p. 209.