Wilhelm Maurenbrecher

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Wilhelm Maurenbrecher (1886)

Karl Peter Wilhelm Maurenbrecher (born December 21, 1838 in Bonn , † November 6, 1892 in Leipzig ) was a German historian . In the 19th century he was one of the most important researchers in the field of Reformation history.

Life

Maurenbrecher comes from the old Düsseldorf postmaster family of the Maurenbrecher . He was the son of the legal scholar Romeo Maurenbrecher (1803–1843) and his wife Alwine, b. Rittershausen. A cousin on my father's side was the left-liberal politician and publicist Eugen Richter .

Maurenbrecher studied in Bonn (mainly with Albrecht Ritschl and Heinrich von Sybel ), in Munich (with Heinrich von Sybel and Bernhard Windscheid ) and in Berlin , where his most important teacher was Leopold von Ranke . He also studied with Siegfried Hirsch . Maurenbrecher obtained his doctorate in Bonn in 1861 with von Sybel, where he also qualified as a professor in 1862 . He was a history professor in Dorpat from 1867 to 1869, in Königsberg from 1869 to 1876 and in Bonn (1877-1884) and Leipzig (1884-1892). In Königsberg he was the sole director of the historical seminar from 1873 when Karl Wilhelm Nitzsch left for Berlin. In Bonn he held this position from 1877. From 1884 he was director of the historical seminar in Leipzig. His focus was on the history of the Reformation and the religious struggles. Nevertheless, he also worked in the field of history of the Middle Ages and the history of the 19th century from the time of the Wars of Liberation . In 1885 he was elected a full member of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences .

Maurenbrecher was an unreserved supporter of Otto von Bismarck . He had no doubts about Prussia's leading role . His lectures at the Leipziger Kaufmännischer Verein, published in 1892 as an anthology, are eloquent testimony to this. In 1879 his Bonn students included the Crown Prince and later German Emperor Wilhelm II. He had a formative influence on his view of history. Since 1889, Maurenbrecher was in appointment negotiations with the Berlin Friedrich Wilhelms University . But despite the benevolence of Karl Friedrich von Gerber and Friedrich Althoff , this did not materialize due to the vehement resistance of Heinrich von Treitschke . Maurenbrecher received the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle IV and III. Class awarded. He was a member of the Royal Saxon Society for Science in Leipzig and the Societas Jablonoviana .

family

Maurenbrecher was married to his cousin Mary Maurenbrecher and had four sons: the classical philologist Berthold Maurenbrecher , the actor Wilhelm Maurenbrecher , the artistic director Otto Maurenbrecher and the theologian Max Maurenbrecher . The songwriter Manfred Maurenbrecher is his great-grandson.

Act

Maurenbrecher originally wanted to research the age of Philip II of Spain , the actual Counter-Reformation . Through his studies in Simancas, Spain, and other archives such as Madrid and Vienna , he increasingly came to the realization that the Counter-Reformation had precursors in the Catholic reform efforts. He recognized that despite the opposing aims of the Erasmian ( humanistic ) Reformation , Lutheran Reformation, “Catholic Reformation” and finally the Counter-Reformation, their common root was the need for reform of the late medieval church constitution . This perspective, presented in his History of the Catholic Reformation, published in 1880 , aroused contradictions at a time when - also in historiography - denominational demarcation was the norm: on the Catholic side by Alfons Bellesheim and Franz Dittrich , on the Protestant side by August Ebrard and Hermann Baumgarten . Hermann Baumgarten, Ludwig von Pastor and - later - Hubert Jedin criticized his term "Catholic Reformation" because the word "Reformation" was used terminologically by the Lutheran movement. They advocated speaking of “Catholic restoration” (pastor) or “Catholic reform” (Jedin, as Baumgarten did before). The term counter-reformation prevailed with Moriz Ritter . The Counter-Reformation, however, which began in the course of the Council of Trent , means the gradual, also violent, pushing back of Protestantism in the Protestant and partly Catholic territories by Catholicism. But that the reform movements have their origin here remains undisputed. Maurenbrecher saw the role of the Spanish tradition and thus the empire Charles V and Ferdinand I as well as the Spanish kingship under Philip II as primarily important in the spread of the movement opposing the Lutheran movement . Pastor, on the other hand, acknowledges the origin of this movement in Spain, but sees the expansion of the Italian forces, and thus the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church, as the more important supporters of the Counter-Reformation. Maurenbrecher wrote a few essays about the time of the actual Counter Reformation, especially Philip II of Spain. His copies from the Simancas archive remained his essential source base. His pupil Walter Goetz published an edition in the 5th volume in the contributions to the history of the empire (Vol. 1-3 August von Druffel , Vol. 4 Karl Brandi , Vol. 5 Walter Goetz), where these copies are used. Most of the copies have been preserved and are in the manuscript department of the Leipzig University Library .

Influenced by his training in Berlin with Leopold von Ranke and Heinrich von Sybel in Munich and Bonn, he always tried to deal with his historical subject as objectively as possible, i.e. here in the understanding of the so-called Prussian school, on the basis of source criticism and source interpretation . His historiography was primarily political history, which in his opinion should also be the priority. On this basis he came to a completely different understanding of how the Reformation and thus Luther was to be confronted, as well as Protestantism and thus Elector Moritz of Saxony . So far, Luther and the Reformation have generally been viewed from a dogmatic-theological point of view, from which Lutheranism, or rather Protestantism, is generally affirmed or denied as in Catholicism . It is the same with Moritz von Sachsen, who, however, is rejected by parts of Protestant as well as Catholic historiography for such considerations. In contrast to many historians from both the Protestant and the Catholic spectrum, Maurenbrecher is not concerned with serving political, church or theological interest groups, but with historically founded facts. In his view of history he was closer to Leopold von Ranke than Heinrich von Sybel and Heinrich von Treitschke . As for Martin Luther and the Reformation as well as Elector Moritz von Sachsen, he provided approaches that mark the beginning of the dissolution of a dogmatic-theological view of history in favor of a historical perspective based on the traditional sources. He was well ahead of his time, which was marked by denominational disputes. This did not change the fact that contemporaries, with exceptions such as Georg Voigt for Moritz von Sachsen, paid little attention to it and later almost forgot it.

He also dealt with topics related to the history of the 19th century. This was expressed not only in the history of the founding of the German Empire or in the volume on Prussian church policy and the related Cologne church dispute , but also in his source-critical comments on the memoirs of Theodor von Schön , which u. a. appeared in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie as well as in " Die Grenzboten ".

Major works

  • Charles V and the German Protestants. Düsseldorf 1865.
  • England in the age of the Reformation. Düsseldorf 1866.
  • Studies and sketches on the history of the Reformation period. Leipzig 1874.
  • History of the Catholic Reformation. Volume I. Nördlingen 1880.
  • Prussian church politics and the Cologne church dispute. Stuttgart 1881.
  • History of the German royal elections. Leipzig 1889.
  • History of the establishment of the German Empire 1859–1870. Leipzig 1892.

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Wilhelm Maurenbrecher  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georg von Below , Marie Schulz (ed.): Letters from K. W. Nitzsch to Wilhelm Maurenbrecher (1861-1880). In: Archives for cultural history . 8, 1910, pp. 305-366.
  2. ^ Alfredo Alvar Ezquerra: Intercambios culturales intangibles: Maurenbrecher en Simancas (1862–1863), la Dieta de Augusta y el epistolario de Cantonay (1566) . In: Lutero, su obra y su época (= Colección del Instituto Escurialense de Investigaciones Históricas y Artísticas . Volume 55). Edited by F. Javier Campos. San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Madrid RCU Escorial-Mª Cristina, Servicio de Publicaciones, Madrid 2017, ISBN 978-84-617-9687-8 , pp. 179–209 ( PDF; 3.9 MB ; PDF-p. 168– 198).
  3. ↑ Leipzig University Library: Ms 01086-01094. Copies from Simancas by KPW Maurenbrecher. In: Catalog of the manuscripts of the Leipzig University Library. New episode. Vol. I, part 3 (Ms 0601-01220), described by Detlef Döring . O. Harrassowitz, Leipzig 2003, ISBN 3-447-04754-2 , p. 155.
personal data
SURNAME Maurenbrecher, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maurenbrecher, Karl Peter Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1838
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 1892
Place of death Leipzig