Volker Leppin

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Volker Leppin (2013)

Volker Leppin (born December 29, 1966 in Helmstedt ) is a German Protestant theologian and professor of church history at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen . His research focuses on the Middle Ages , the Reformation and the Enlightenment , on the topics of scholasticism and mysticism, and on the person and theology of Martin Luther .

Life

Volker Leppin grew up as the son of a pastor at the Elisabeth Church in Marburg . Here he attended the ancient language grammar school Philippinum . From 1985 he studied theology and German studies in Marburg, funded by the German National Academic Foundation, at the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem and in Heidelberg . In 1994 he received his doctorate in Heidelberg with Gottfried Seebaß with a thesis on the theology of Wilhelm von Ockham . In 1997 he completed his habilitation in Heidelberg. Between 1998 and 2000 he held the chair in Frankfurt am Main, before accepting a professorship at the University of Jena in 2000 . At the beginning of 2009, Leppin turned down a call to the University of Leipzig . In the summer of 2010 he accepted a position at the University of Tübingen (successor to Ulrich Köpf ), where he has been teaching since the winter semester 2010/11. Since 2014 he has been the spokesperson or co-spokesperson for the graduate school "Religious Knowledge in Premodern Europe (800–1800)".

Leppin is a member of various societies and associations, he has been a member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences since 2006, and a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences since 2012 . He is also co-editor of the journal for church history , the work on the history of church and theology, research on the history of the church and dogma, the studies on Christian religious and cultural history and main editor of the late Middle Ages, Humanism and Reformation series . Since 2008 he has been the scientific director of the Ecumenical Working Group of Protestant and Catholic Theologians (ÖAK), and since 2012 a member of the board of the Evangelical Federation of Württemberg . He has been a member of the EKD Theology Chamber since 2016. From 2011 to 2017 he was also President of the interdisciplinary Medieval Association .

Volker Leppin is married and has four children. His brother Hartmut Leppin is a professor of ancient history at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main .

research

Leppin is one of the few Protestant theologians who had a pronounced research focus in the Middle Ages. In addition to the scholasticism and mysticism of the late Middle Ages, the biography and theology of Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli as well as the Enlightenment are among his areas of interest. The theoretical guiding concept of his interpretations is "transformation", which should include "not only the moment of continuity, but also that of change". With him, he turns against ideas of a fractional renewal through the Reformation and instead pleads for the "idea of ​​gradual change".

Of his numerous books and essays, his theses-rich Luther biography from 2006 deserves special mention, which went into its third edition in 2017. In it he deals with the autobiographical tradition of the reformer in a sharp source-critical manner and places it in his late medieval background. Its deviations from the Protestant mainstream are often exposed to sharp, polemical criticism and thus have an impact on the dispute about the interpretation of the Reformation . But they have also sparked fundamental debates about the relationship between biography and theology. An overview of his view of the importance of late medieval theology and piety for the Reformation is provided by his collection of essays Transformations from 2015 and, for a broader audience, his book The Foreign Reformation from 2016.

Against the background of his historical research, he advocated an ecumenical design of the Reformation anniversary early on. Accordingly, he co-edited the study Reformation 1517-2017 of the ÖAK, which paints an overall ecumenical picture of the Reformation, and was involved in the development of the study Healing Remembrance - Jesus Christ Witness , which describes the process of a "Healing of Memories" between EKD and Germans Bishops' Conference established. More recently, he has also vigorously advocated drawing conclusions from the criticism of Luther's attitude towards the Jews for an evangelical understanding of Judaism as a sibling religion.

In his book on Francis of Assisi , published in September 2018, he emphasizes the difficulty of finding a historical Francis among the many sources. He attaches particular importance to the reformer's ecclesiastical nature.

Honors

Fonts (selection)

  • Believed truth. The understanding of theology by Wilhelm von Ockham (= FKDG. Vol. 63). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1995, ISBN 3-525-55173-8 .
  • Reformation (= history of church and theology in sources. Vol. 3). Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2005, ISBN 3-7887-2120-0 .
  • Luther private. Son, father, husband. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2006.
  • Theology in the Middle Ages (= church history in individual representations. Vol. I / 11). Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 3-374-02516-1 .
  • Christian mysticism. CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-406-53615-8 .
  • The Wittenberg Reformation and the process of transformation from cultural to institutional polarities (= session reports of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig. Philological-historical class. Vol. 140/4), Leipzig / Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 3-7776-1587-0 .
  • De connexione virtutum, Latin-German, On the connection of virtues. Wilhelm von Ockham, translated and introduced by Volker Leppin. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 2008, ISBN 978-3-451-28711-4 .
  • The age of the Reformation. A world in transition. Theiss Verlag, Darmstadt 2009, ISBN 3-8062-2108-1 .
  • Thomas von Aquin (= approaches to thinking in the Middle Ages. Vol. 5). Aschendorff, Münster 2009, ISBN 3-402-15671-7 .
  • “Cusa is also a Lutheran here?” Theology and reform in Nikolaus von Kues - an evangelical approach (= Trier Cusanus Lecture. Vol. 15). Paulinus, Trier 2009, ISBN 978-3-7902-1483-3 .
  • Martin Luther 2nd edition. Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 2010, ISBN 3-89678-576-1 .
  • History of the Christian Churches. From the apostles to today. CH Beck, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-406-60573-4 .
  • History of Medieval Christianity. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-16-150677-2 .
  • William of Ockham. Scholar, warrior, beggar monk. 2nd edition Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 2012, ISBN 978-3-89678-476-6 .
  • Inaugural address by Volker Leppin at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences on July 21, 2012. In: Yearbook of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences for 2012. Heidelberg 2013, pp. 152–154 ( online ).
  • The Reformation. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2013, ISBN 978-3-534-15122-6 .
  • Transformations. Studies on the processes of change in theology and piety between the late Middle Ages and the Reformation. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-16-152820-0 .
  • The foreign reformation. Luther's mystical roots. CH Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-69081-5 .
  • Francis of Assisi. Wbg Theiss, Darmstadt 2018, ISBN 978-3-806238174

Web links

Commons : Volker Leppin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Volker Leppin: My approach to church history. In: Bernd Jaspert (Hrsg.): Church history as science. Münster 2013, p. 105.
  2. ^ Announcements from the University of Jena .
  3. ^ GK Religious Knowledge. Retrieved January 25, 2017 .
  4. ^ EKD: Chamber for Theology. Retrieved January 25, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Volker Leppin: Transformations. Studies on the processes of change in theology and piety between the late Middle Ages and the Reformation. Mohr, Tübingen 2015, p. VI.
  6. ↑ Volker Leppin: Martin Luther. 3. Edition. Darmstadt 2017.
  7. ↑ See the reviews of Dorothea Wendebourg in: Süddeutsche Zeitung . February 19, 2007; Thomas Kaufmann: The Foreign Reformation. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . 19th March 2016.
  8. ↑ Dietrich Korsch, Volker Leppin (ed.): Martin Luther - Biography and Theology. Tübingen 2010.
  9. ↑ Volker Leppin: 2017 - an anniversary. In: Ökumenische Rundschau , No. 61 (2012) pp. 23–35.
  10. ↑ Volker Leppin, Dorothea Sattler (ed.): Reformation 1517–2017. Ecumenical Perspectives. Göttingen 2014.
  11. ↑ Healing Memory - Witnessing Jesus Christ: Members of the Working Group. Retrieved January 15, 2017 .
  12. ↑ evangelisch.de. Retrieved January 25, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Leppin, Volker
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Protestant theologian and professor of church history
DATE OF BIRTH December 29, 1966
PLACE OF BIRTH Helmstedt