Volume 9, Issue 1

The forthcoming critical edition of Schleiermacher's ‘Vorlesungen über die Dialektik’ presents the publication of a newly available anonymous transcript of the lecture from 1818/19. The first part of the essay deals with the importance of transcripts from this lecture in general and especially the anonymous transcript for understanding Schleiermacher's ‘Dialectic’. The second part presents some extracts of this transcript, referring to the history of dialectic, the relationship between religion and philosophy, the ideas of God and world and the problem of hermeneutics.

In Göttingen, an extensive part of the unpublished works of Friedrich Lücke, the most important of Schleiermacher's scholars, has been made available to the public. Until now, the documents, consisting of letters, were thought to have gone missing. By focusing on several passages that are relevant to the reception of Schleiermacher, the following article affords a glance into the recently found records which are of great import for the history of theology and other academic disciplines. Included is also an annotated edition of two individual letters.

Heidelberg's intellectual milieu of the early twentieth century can be characterised as a ‘laboratory of the modern age’. Here scholars intensively discussed the crisis of the modern age and in numerous historical and systematic studies attempted to determine the ‘cultural significance’ of religion for modernity. This article takes a look at exemplary aspects of the debates on religion of the jurist Georg Jellinek, the sociologist Max Weber and the Protestant theologian Ernst Troeltsch. Jellinek investigated the significance of religious ideas for the genesis of modern human rights, Weber analysed the ascetic-Protestant, i.e. Puritan roots of the modern capitalism and Troeltsch examined the differences between the social ethos of German Lutheranism and that of the Calvinist world of thought. The primary concern of all was the relevance of religion to present times. For this reason it is necessary that the theories set forth by Jellinek, Weber and Troeltsch also be read with regard to their possible ‘cultural significance’ for the present day.

Zusammenfassung Der Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit den religiösen und politischen Leitvorstellungen Friedrich Naumanns (1860–1919), dessen Lebensweg im Wilhelminischen Deutschland reich an konzeptionellen Neuorientierungen zu sein scheint. Nach seinem anfänglichen Engagement für die christlich-soziale Bewegung, die den Reich-Gottes-Gedanken zu einem Konzept sozialer Gerechtigkeit nutzte, trat Naumann ab 1898 im Sinne des politischen Liberalismus verstärkt für eine Trennung von Religion und Politik ein, um schließlich unter Betonung nationaler und sozialdarwinistischer Interessen eine Zivilreligion zu formulieren. Diese Veränderung, daß dem christlichen Glauben für die politische Ethik nur noch eine marginale Bedeutung eingeräumt wurde, wird meist als ein größerer Bruch in Naumanns Biographie bewertet. Der Aufsatz vertritt demgegenüber die Auffassung, daß trotz aller Wandlungen in der Auffassung von Religion und Politik Naumanns Ziel immer dasselbe blieb, nämlich einen Beitrag zur Förderung menschlicher Gemeinschaft zu leisten.

The contribution takes a closer look at the relations between Hannah Arendt and Paul Tillich, and focuses on the controversy surrounding Emil Ludwig's ideas on a possible ‘re-education’ of postwar Germany which was published mainly in the New York journal Aufbau of 1942. The letters and other documents used from 1942 to 1965 also shed light on the personal life and work of those embroiled in this dispute, as well as their involvement in the public discussions of their day.

This edition presents the hitherto largely unpublished correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Paul Tillich, and is supplemented by further important documents, taken from the Andover-Harvard Theological Library, the Library of Congress in Washington and the New York Public Library. This is the first time these documents have been published in full.

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Vorlesungen über die Lehre vom Staat, hg. von Walter Jaeschke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe Zweite Abteilung (Vorlesungen) Band 8 (KGA II/8), Berlin/New York (Walter de Gruyter) 1998, LXIII + 968 S., ISBN 3-11-015644-X, € 248,00. (Albrecht Geck) Angelika Dörfler-Dierken, Luthertum und Demokratie. Deutsche und amerikanische Theologen des 19. Jahrhunderts zu Staat, Gesellschaft und Kirche, Göttingen (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht) 2001, 448 S., ISBN 3-5255-5183-5, € 69,00 (Friedrich Wilhelm Graf) Il modernismo tra cristianità e secolarizzazione. Atti del convegno internazionale di Urbino (1–4 ottobre 1997) [Fondazione Romolo Murri Urbino; Centro studi per la storia del modernismo], a cura di Alfonso Botti e Rocco Cerrato, Studi e testi 6, Urbino (Quattro venti) 2000, 925 S., ISBN 88-392-0545-4, € 49,00. (Claus Arnold)