Josef Weber: A Transitional Figure of the Bavarian Enlightenment and Romantik

Zusammenfassung

In this paper I wish to portray the transition in Catholic Bavaria from Enlightenment to Frühromantik, as it is reflected in the work of the Bavarian priest and physicist Josef Weber. Weber’s career at Dillingen and at Landshut, in the vicinity of Munich, covers the period from 1778 to 1827, which is just the period of transition in Bavaria. The decade of the 1780’s under the power of enlightened thought strongly influenced by Kantian rationalism and criticism, was followed in the 1790’s by a growing religious enthusiasm inimical to rationalism and the appearance of the romantic philosophy of Fichte. A bitter struggle began just around the turn of the century between enlightenment Kantians, who supported the State’s desire for control over the Church in absolutist fashion, and religious romantics who found in Schelling’s philosophy foundation for the deepening of religious sentiment. The final triumph of the romantics came in 1827, when Schelling was called to the University at Munich.