Ludwig Theodor Elze

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Ludwig Theodor Elze

Ludwig Theodor Elze (born July 17, 1823 in Dessau , † June 27, 1900 in Venice ) was a German church historian , Slavist and Protestant clergyman.

Life

Ludwig Theodor Elze was born as the son of the Dessau pastor Karl Wilhelm Elze and his wife Louise, née De Marées. His brother was the English scholar Karl Elze . First he attended elementary school and then a high school in his hometown. In 1839 he made a trip through the Harz Mountains . After all, he studied Protestant theologian at the University of Tübingen from 1842 under Ferdinand Christian Baur and in 1844/1845 at the Humboldt University in Berlin . He also studied medicine for a semester and was a candidate for a preacher on the side . During his studies he also traveled to Switzerland and the Netherlands .

After he had passed his theological examination in Dessau in 1845, he became educator of Franz von Reinas , the son of Prince Georg von Anhalt-Dessau , in the autumn of that year . He was also court preacher, although he was refused ordination by the church authorities. During this time he stayed in Germany, but also partly in Austria and Italy . He also traveled to Rome with Franz . At that time he was still a simple candidate for preacher, but in June 1847 he buried the late painter Johann Christian Reinhart after his colleagues had asked Elze to do so. This was a violation of the consistory's rules as Elze was still not ordained.

At the end of 1847 Elze traveled to Mannheim with the prince's son and made a similar formal mistake there. The consistory found itself at the end of its patience and all further requests for ordination were initially rejected. In 1849 he took revenge for this by publishing a pamphlet in which he described the negotiations with the consistory. Nevertheless, the desired ordination could still not be achieved. He worked as an educator until 1851, when Franz was 19 years old in that year and joined the Austrian Navy.

On April 21, 1851, Elze was elected pastor in Laibach . There he was supposed to become the first Protestant pastor of the Christ Church in Laibach , because the Protestant Christians there had already tried for 24 years to be recognized as an independent diaspora community . On May 24th of that year he married in Zerbst with the Liverpool- born poet Mary Zoe Turner, who had previously been married to a clergyman from England and died in 1893. Finally, his election as pastor was confirmed by the sovereign, so that he was actually introduced to the office on January 6 of the next year. In 1865 he moved to Meran in this office and from June 6, 1868 to Venice . Contemporary witnesses described his work in Meran and Venice as very positive, although he was unable to establish a constitution in Meran .

The University of Tübingen awarded Elze in 1877 for his signature the University of Tuebingen and the students from Krain the honorary doctorate , then he also served as Councilor . He retired from the vicarage in Venice in 1891 and died there on June 27, 1900.

Act

In his free time Elze occupied himself with poetry , numismatics , folklore and cultural history , but also with the newer languages. He was fluent in English , French and Italian , and he was also fluent in Slovenian so that he could understand Jurij Dalmatin's translation of the Bible . During his time in Ljubljana, he dealt with the history of the Reformation in Carniola and Slovenia , as he had access to the Ljubljana archive. He is one of the first experts in this special field and made a contribution to the field of Slovenian literary and cultural history. He also researched the history of Protestantism in Carniola. Thus he was an important philologist in Slavic territory.

Elze was a member of the Ljubljana historical association. This had its own archive, its own library and published communications. Together with the association, he devoted himself to the history of the Carniolan Reformation and wanted to write a book about it. He did not succeed in doing this, however, because he was looking at more and more materials and time passed, and he did not have sufficient knowledge of the South Slavic languages .

Although he searched for his work in the Ukrainian archives, he sometimes had difficulties because of his Protestant denomination. When he finally realized that he could not find any other important documents in the archives there, he continued collecting in Germany, especially in Stuttgart and Tübingen . In this way he was able to collect valuable books and also those that were considered lost.

Elze also painted smaller pictures and dealt with the history of coins in Anhalt . He published many writings, poems or essays. But there is none among his works that are large and significant. He also wrote nine articles for the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie .

He was a talented and versatile man who had shown poetic tendencies since his student days and associated with well-known poets. However, most of his poems were left unprinted at his own request.

Publications

  • Brief history of the evangelical community of Laibach in the 19th century (Villach 1856).
  • Speech at the burial of Her Highness Luise Princess von Windischgrätz, Duchess of Mecklenburg [-Schwerin] , at Wagensberg Castle on March 21, 1859. Kleinmayr & Bamberg, Laibach 1859.
  • A visit to the Cordon on the Bosnian border (Laibach 1862).
  • The superintendent of the Evangelical Church in Carniola during the sixteenth century (Vienna 1863; digitized version ).
  • The imperial festival in the Adelsberg Grotto on March 11, 1858 (Laibach 1864)
  • May flowers (poem dedicated to his wife on the occasion of his 25th wedding anniversary on May 24, 1876 in Tübingen)
  • The University of Tübingen and the students from Krain (Tübingen 1877; digitized ).
  • On the history of the English theater around 1624. In: Yearbook of the German Shakespeare Society. Vol. 12, 1877, pp. 315-318 .
  • History of the Protestant movements and the German Evangelical Congregation in Venice (Bielefeld 1883; digitized version ).
  • The 16th century Slovenian Protestant pamphlets (Venice 1896).
  • Venetian sketches for Shakespeare (Munich 1899; digitized version ).

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Ludwig Theodor Elze  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Elze, Ludwig Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant clergyman, church historian and Slavist
DATE OF BIRTH July 17, 1823
PLACE OF BIRTH Dessau-Rosslau
DATE OF DEATH June 27, 1900
Place of death Venice