Wilhelm Hüls

Wilhelm Hüls (also Wilhelmus Hüls or Wilhelm Hulsius ; born September 8, 1598 in Hilden , † April 6, 1659 in Wesel ) was a German Reformed theologian .

Life

Wilhelm Hüls was born in Hilden in 1598 as the second eldest son of the farmer Anton Hüls and his wife Katharina von Venne. Wilhelm Hüls was first sent by his father to a Latin school, probably in Elberfeld , and then began studying theology at the pedagogy and the Illustre grammar school in Bremen from 1613 . In 1622 he moved to Herborn and completed his studies in Geneva at the beginning of 1624 , from where he also undertook a study trip to southern France , especially to Avignon and Narbonne . From the autumn of 1624, Hüls worked for several years as a vicar and auxiliary preacher in Hilden.

In the spring of 1628 the city of Wesel appointed him preacher to the Walloon community there, whose members were descended from Calvinist refugees from the 16th century. Entrusted with such a relatively small community, Hüls wrote a large number of theological writings and was also involved in various associations and church bodies, some of which he chaired. He also temporarily chaired the Klevian Synod and three times the Reformed General Synod of the Duchies of Jülich-Kleve-Berg and the County of Mark . In the context of these offices, Hüls regularly took on church political tasks and became the contact person for the Protestants in the duchies of Jülich and Berg who were oppressed by the Counter Reformation . Hüls collected their complaints in order to present them partly to the Brandenburg government in Kleve, but especially to the Dutch government, which saw itself as the “protective power” of Protestantism on the Lower Rhine , and made numerous trips to The Hague for this purpose . At the request of the General Synod, Hüls also went on a six-month trip to Königsberg in autumn 1645 in order to obtain Friedrich Wilhelm's approval for the establishment of a fund from church income to support needy communities in Jülich and Berg, in whose administration Hüls subsequently played a major role. Hüls had previously been commissioned to set up an archive for the general synod, through which he collected and cataloged a wealth of materials on the Reformed church history on the Lower Rhine. Furthermore, Hüls was co-author of the church regulations for the Reformed Church on the Lower Rhine, although he did not live to see it come into force in 1662. Hüls died in Wesel in 1659.

Honors

A primary school is named after him in his hometown Hilden .

literature

• Ernst Huckenbeck: Wilhelm Hüls (1598–1659); a contribution to the history of the Rhenish church in the 17th century . Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne 1990; Habelt, Bonn 1990. ISBN 3792711451
• Ernst Huckenbeck:  Hüls, Wilhelm. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 24, Bautz, Nordhausen 2005, ISBN 3-88309-247-9 , Sp. 878-882.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Hüls in the catalog of the German National Library
• Publications by and about Wilhelm Hüls in VD 17 .