Wilhelm Hieronymi

Wilhelm Hieronymi 1809 - 1884 pastor of the German Catholic community in Mainz, founded in 1847

Wilhelm Hieronymi (born September 2, 1809 in Holle , † September 14, 1884 in Mainz ) was a German Catholic theologian and pastor.

Life

Wilhelm Hieronymi grew up in Holle near Hildesheim as the eldest son of a Protestant family. He studied theology, philosophy and history in Göttingen. After working as a private tutor and completing his studies, he devoted himself to painting, gave lectures in a theological association and also preached.

He became aware of Johannes Ronge and his open letter to Bishop Arnoldi on the occasion of the Heilig-Rock pilgrimage to Trier in 1844 and was interested in the emerging German-Catholic movement . In 1845 he became a member of the German Catholic community in Magdeburg, in the same year he attended the first German Catholic council in Leipzig and sympathized with the rationalistic direction of German Catholicism. After his ordination as a German-Catholic pastor, he was elected a preacher by the German-Catholic community in Darmstadt in 1845. There he met the poet, writer and founder of the community Eduard Duller . In 1851 he moved to the German Catholic parish of Mainz - later the Free Religious Parish of Mainz , after the authorities had banned Duller, who had lived in Mainz since 1847, "that further appearance as a pastor". At the same time he preached in Darmstadt.

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For almost 30 years, until the end of his life, Hieronymi worked in both communities and published numerous religious and political articles in daily newspapers and in the German Catholic Sunday Gazette , which appeared in Wiesbaden , and of which he was a permanent collaborator. In particular, he took a stand against ultramontanism , e.g. B. in his brochure Mr. Reinike Fuchs in Mainz in 1863 , in which he polemicized against the "clerical hustle and bustle" of the Mainz Catholics.

He wrote against the new religion of indifference, against the old religion of authority and obedience, against revelation, against spiritual rigidity and immobility as well as against clergy, hell, devil and belief in redemption. As a representative of this worldly religiosity, he pleaded for a religion of action: here and now, in this one life.

In his collection of sermons, Religion of Knowledge (1874), he provided a picture of free religion and the free religious movement : he contrasted the old belief in revelation and the new materialism with a free religious understanding of religion and consciously adhered to this term. For him religion had nothing to do with supernatural divine revelation, sacred rituals, pious prayers or belief in traditional teachings. On the other hand, he set knowledge as the cipher of a religion in which redemption does not come down from heaven, but rests in man's own powers.

In his numerous publications he devoted himself to the concept of God, the processing of the scientific worldview and the further development of free religious thought.

Wilhelm Hieronymi died in Mainz on September 14, 1884 and was buried there in the same grave as his friend Eduard Duller in the main cemetery , near the crematorium.

Font selection

• No papacy! No compulsory symbols! Reasons and reason for my transfer to the German Catholic Church in front of the parish in Magdeburg, 1845
• What do we want? 1845
• The Hegelians as friends of light or two documents from the latest Marburg church philosophy, 1846
• The dangers of German Catholicism and its near future, 1847
• Evidence of the German-Catholic spirit. Sermons. 1847
• In memory of Dr. Eduard Dullers, 1853
• The revival of the devil in Darmstadt, 1858
• Should the bishops be alone in the church? A counter question to Mr. Wilhelm Emanuel v. Ketteler, 1861
• Freedom or Authority, 1862
• Our hope and its reason. Speech given at the inauguration of the German Catholic Church in Mainz on October 30, 1864
• On the concept of God in a free religion, 1864
• Differentiation Doctrines and Basic Ideas of the Free Religious Congregations, 1872
• On the (im) possibility of a free religious creed, 1875
• The Religion of Knowledge, 1874

literature

• Ferdinand Kampe: History of the religious movement of the modern times , Vol. 2, Leipzig 1853.
• H. Haupt (Ed.): Hessische Biographien , Vol. 2, Darmstadt 1927.
• Eckhart Pilick (Ed.): Lexicon of free religious persons, Rohrbach, pp. 74–77.
• Elke Gensler: Knowledge is redemption - about Wilhelm Hieronymi . In: Paths without Dogma 11/1992.
• Jürgen Späth: History of the Free Religious Congregation Mainz , Mainz 2007.
• Lothar Geis: Freireligöses Quellenbuch 1844–1926 http://tabularium-f.bplaced.net/Freirel_Quellensammlung%201844-1928.pdf