Volume 30, Issue 1

Schleiermacher’s anonymous Soliloquies of 1800 were written as a Supplement to his likewise anonymous book On Religion, Speeches to its Cultured Despisers of 1799. They are addressed to the circle of intellectuals around the early Romantic periodical Athenaeum , to the „Holy family“ (Friedrich Schlegel), and moreover to the despisers of Transcendental philosophy whose state of discussion is reflected. Thus they belong to the history of modern individual thought. The form of the book follows the contemporary imitation of classical poetic form (Hölderlin) which was prevalent among the Athenaeum Circle as well. Schleiermacher discusses the separation of philosophy and life (Fichte), the forming one’s self and the forming of artistic works (Goethe), i. e. the dichotomy of individuality and artistry. He confesses himself not to be an artist. Schleiermacher’s intention in Soliloquies was to give philosophical idealism a personal depth beyond intellectual speculation. Looking back in 1803 he realizes, in the draft of a poem, that he had idealized his empirical self in his literary self. Except for a few remarks by Schlegel, who at first did not umask the author‘s anonymity, there was no reaction whatever from the Athenaeum Circle. Soliloquies later became a popular Protestant book for spiritual edification.

Ursula Streckert, a mother of five and a succesfull teacher, started to write a doctoral thesis after her retirement. It dealt with Ferdinand Christian Baur and German politics in the years before the bourgeois revolution of 1848, with a special focus on Wurttemberg. At her plea, I agreed to be her Doktorvater, all the more as I was highly impressed by her strong interest and drive to discover new sources. Indeed, thanks to her intensive research in many German and British archives, she succeeded in finding hitherto unknown letters of F. C. Baur, among them letters to his brother, academic scholars and academic colleagues of various German theological faculties. She investigated Baur’s activities in favour of the Philhellenic movement and his support for Polish revolutionaries fighting against Russian Czarism. Tragically, shortly before completing her doctoral thesis, Ursula Streckert succumbed to her fatal illness. The letters she discovered shed new light on Baur’s self understanding as a citical and, in the broadest sense, liberal theologian and on his commitment as a self-confident „Bürger“.