Friedrich Schleiermacher

Friedrich Schleiermacher (born November 21, 1768, Breslau, Silesia—died February 12, 1834, Berlin) was a German theologian, preacher, and classical philologist, generally recognized as the founder of modern Protestant theology. His major work, Der christliche Glaube (1821–22; 2nd ed. 1831; The Christian Faith), is a systematic interpretation of Christian dogmatics.

Childhood and education

Schleiermacher was the son of Gottlieb and Katharina-Maria (née Stubenrauch) Schleiermacher. His father, a Reformed (Calvinist) military chaplain, and his mother both came from families of clergymen. He had an elder sister, Charlotte, and a younger brother, Carl.

From 1783 to 1785 he attended a school of the Moravian Brethren (Herrnhuters), an influential Pietistic group, at Niesky. In this milieu, individualized study was combined with a piety based on the joy of salvation and a vividly imaginative relation with Jesus as Saviour, rather than (as in the Pietism centred in Halle) on a struggle to feel sorrow and repentance. Here Schleiermacher developed his lifelong interest in the Greek and Latin classics and his distinctive sense of the religious life. Later he called himself a Herrnhuter “of a higher order.”

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Yet the lifeless and dogmatic narrowness of the Moravian seminary at Barby, which he attended from 1785 to 1787, conflicted with his increasingly critical and inquiring spirit. He left in 1787 with the reluctant permission of his father, who had at first harshly rebuked him for his worldliness and accused him of hypocrisy, and at Easter he matriculated at the University of Halle. There he lived with his maternal uncle, Samuel Stubenrauch, a professor of theology, who could understand his restlessness and skepticism.

A diligent and independent student, Schleiermacher began, along with his theological studies, an intensive study of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy. In his epistemology (theory of knowledge), though not in his ethics and religion, he remained a Kantian throughout his life. After two years he moved to Drossen (Ośno), near Frankfurt an der Oder, where his uncle had assumed a pastorate, and began preparing for his first theological examinations. Though he read more in ethics than in theology, he took his examinations in Reformed theology in 1790, achieving marks of “very good” or “excellent” in all fields except dogmatics, the one in which he was later to make his most original contribution.

Early career

Schleiermacher then took a position as tutor for the family of the Graf (count) zu Dohna in Schlobitten, East Prussia. Besides tutoring, he preached regularly, chiefly on ethical themes, and continued his philosophical study, particularly of the question of human freedom. After taking his second theological examinations in 1794, the same year in which his father died, Schleiermacher became assistant pastor in Landsberg and then, in 1796, pastor of the Charité, a hospital and home for the aged just outside Berlin. In that city he found his way into the circle of the German Romantic writers through the creator of early Romanticism, Friedrich von Schlegel, with whom he shared an apartment for a time, began a translation of Plato’s works, and became acquainted with the new Berlin society.

In Über die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern (On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers), written in 1799 as a kind of literary confession, Schleiermacher addressed the Romantics with the message that they were not as far from religion as they thought, for religion is the “feeling and intuition of the universe” or “the sense of the Infinite in the finite” and Christianity is one individual shaping of that feeling. This work, perennially attractive for its view of a living union of religion and culture, greatly impressed the young theologians of the time. The Monologen (1800; Soliloquies), written in a somewhat artificial rhythmic prose, presented a parallel to religion in the view of ethics as the intuition and action of the self in its individuality. The individuality of each human being is here seen as a unique “organ and symbol” of the Infinite itself.

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A six-year courtship of Eleonore Grunow, unhappily married to a pastor in Berlin, ended in 1802, when Schleiermacher accepted a call to a small Reformed congregation in Stolp, Pomerania (now Słupsk, Poland), and she decided to remain with her husband, but until 1805 he continued to hope she might still consent to become his wife. In this pastorate he became aware of the deep cleavage between a church preacher and a modern man, but at the same time he came to acquire a great fondness for preaching.

Halle and Berlin

In 1804 he accepted a call to be a university preacher, becoming a member of the faculty of theology at the University of Halle. As the first Reformed theologian on that Lutheran theological faculty and as a spokesman for Romantic idealism, he met a cool reception. But the situation changed, and after a year he was made ordinary professor of theology.

In Die Weihnachtsfeier (1805; Christmas Celebration), written in the style of a Platonic dialogue, Schleiermacher adopted the definition of religion he later incorporated into Der christliche Glaube. Instead of speaking of religion as “feeling and intuition,” he now called it simply “feeling”—namely, the immediate feeling that God lives and works in us as finite human beings.

Napoleon’s invasion of Prussia forced Schleiermacher to leave Halle in 1807. He moved to Berlin, giving lectures on his own and traveling about to encourage national resistance; he also assisted Wilhelm von Humboldt in laying plans for the new university to be founded in Berlin. He married Henriette von Willich, the widow of a close friend of his, in 1809. In that same year he became pastor of Dreifaltigkeitskirche (Trinity Church) in Berlin and in 1810 professor of theology at the new university; this latter position he retained to the end of his life.

His activities in the years following were many and varied. He lectured on theology and philosophy; he preached in Dreifaltigkeitskirche almost every Sunday until the end of his life; he was a member (from 1800) and permanent secretary of the Berlin Academy of Sciences; he carried on an extensive correspondence; and he was active in promoting the Prussian Union, which brought Lutheran and Calvinist churches into one body. His major publications during this period were the Kurze Darstellung des theologischen Studiums (1811; Brief Outline of the Study of Theology), presenting a curriculum in which the function of theology is to shape and direct the church as a religious community, and Der christliche Glaube.

His relations with the Prussian king were tense until 1831, partly because of differences of view concerning the Prussian constitution and the relation between church and state and partly because of machinations of his personal rivals. At one stage, an edict of banishment was issued against him, but it was not carried out.

He preached his last sermon on February 2 and gave his last lecture on February 6, 1834. He died a few days later from inflammation of the lungs. His death stirred the populace of the whole city; Leopold von Ranke, a renowned historian, estimated that there were 20,000 to 30,000 people in the long funeral procession through the streets of Berlin. Schleiermacher was buried in the cemetery of Dreifaltigkeitskirche.

Influence

Schleiermacher’s thought continued to influence theology throughout the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. Between about 1925 and 1955 it was under severe attack by followers of neoorthodox theology (founded by Karl Barth and Emil Brunner) as leading away from the gospel toward a religion based on human culture. Since then, however, there has been a renewed study and appreciation of Schleiermacher’s contributions, partly because the critique was one-sided and partly because of a new interest in 19th-century theology.