Abstract
The place to begin is in Halle, in the year 1806. Following his first tenure in Berlin, Schleiermacher eventually took a teaching post at the University in Halle. It was there that Schleiermacher composed and published his short dialogue on the themes of Christmas, entitled Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation, the piece often considered to be Schleiermacher’s first articulation of his mature Christology. It was from the vantage of Halle that Schleiermacher witnessed the Napoleonic invasion in late 1806, as the French army laid waste to the city. Significantly, Schleiermacher was forced to house French soldiers in his own home for a number of months, a humiliation that effectively radicalized his politics. As a result of the invasion, the University was closed, eventually forcing Schleiermacher to return to Berlin. There, incensed by the occupation, he took part in training exercises with the local militia, and in 1808 he became involved in a fruitless plot to assassinate Napoleon. He briefly became a spy for the Prussian cause, and for a period in 1813 he became the editor of a nationalist newspaper, The Prussian Correspondent.2 During the entire occupation, Schleiermacher consistently argued for strengthening the communal bonds of Prussia and of Germany more widely, to better resist humiliating incursions from outside German borders. That emphasis eventually led Schleiermacher to become one of the first to articulate a full-bodied vision of a unified German state.
When I consider the manifold gifts of life and assess the worth of each one, the loveliest of all still remains this, that a person can be at home.
Schleiermacher1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
As quoted in the Editor’s Postscript, by Terrence N. Tice, in Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Household: A Sermonic Treatise, trans. Dietrich Seidel and Terrence N. Tice, (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellon Press, 1991), p. 161.
I am referring here to details contained in Martin Redeker’s biography of Schleiermacher, entitled Schleiermacher: Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973), pp. 86–92. In addition, Theodor Vial’s article “Schleiermacher and the State” provides helpful details about these events. Contained in The Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher, ed. Jacqueline Marina, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 269–285.
James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770–1866 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 379. As cited in Theodore Vial, “Schleiermacher and the State,” in The Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher, p. 284.
It is interesting to note that in 1831, immediately after the July Revolution in France, a series of fictitious letters circulated in a French journal purporting to be from Berlin. Significantly, they associated Schleiermacher with revolutionary politics, an association he went out of his way to refute, arguing that he was a loyal subject of the king. And yet, given all that Schleiermacher did to win autonomy for Germany, and given the constant suspicion and surveillance he was subjected to by conservative monarchists who feared his democratic tendencies, one can understand and appreciate the evaluative judgment made by the letters’ author(s). See Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Life of Schleiermacher, as Unfolded in His Autobiography and Letters, Vol. 2, trans. Frederica Rowan (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1860), pp. 318–320.
Jacqueline Rose, States of Fantasy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 3.
Ibid, p. 3.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso Press, 2006), p. 6.
A fuller treatment of this topic would have to include Schleiermacher’s collection of nine household sermons, preached in Berlin in 1818. The topics under consideration concern the proper arrangement of the social relations of households, treating marriage, raising children, domestic servants, and the practices of hospitality and charity. Those sermons exhibit the wider spatial patterns I am describing, and certain passages do indeed make the relationship between households and nations explicit. But in the interests of space, so to speak, I am choosing to concentrate on more dramatic moments within Schleiermacher’s overarching concern with dwellings.
Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christmas Eve: Dialogue on the Incarnation, trans. Terrence Tice (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1967), p. 82.
Ibid., p. 83.
Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), p. x (foreword to the 1994 edition by John R. Stilgoe).
Ibid., p. 4.
All of the aforementioned quotes take place in Christmas Eve, p. 27.
Ibid., p. 33.
Bachelard, p. 6.
Christmas Eve, p. 46.
Ibid., p. 25.
Both quotes, ibid., p. 49.
Ibid., p. 59.
Ibid., p. 58.
Ibid., p. 59.
Ibid., p. 60.
Ibid., p. 46.
Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Life of Schleiermacher, as Unfolded in His Autobiography and Letters, trans. Frederica Rowan, (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1860), p. 62.
Anderson, p. 7.
Friedrich Schleiermacher, Schleiermacher’s Werke, II.1, Predigten von Friedrich Schleiermacher (Berlin, Germany: Reimer, 1843), p. 218. Translations my own.
Ibid., p. 218.
Ibid., p. 219.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 220.
Ibid., p. 221.
Ibid., p. 222.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 222–23.
Ibid., p. 228.
Ibid., p. 229.
Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Household: A Sermonic Treatise, eds. and trans. Dietrich Seidel and Terence N. Tice (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), p. 169.
Ibid., p. 199.
Ibid., p. 200.
Terrence Tice, Schleiermacher’s Sermons: A Chronological Listing and Account (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1997), pp. 50–51.
Ibid., p. 49.
Ibid., p. 54.
Friedrich Schleiermacher, Selected Sermons of Schleiermacher, trans. Mary F. Wilson (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1890), p. 84.
Ibid., p. 85.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 86.
Ibid., p. 87.
Ibid., p. 88.
Ibid., p. 90.
Ibid., p. 98.
Ibid., p. 102.
Ibid., p. 104.
Ibid., p. 105.
Ibid., p. 106.
Ibid., p. 109.
Ibid., p. 112.
Ibid., p. 113–114
Ibid., p. 116–17.
Ibid., p. 71.
Ibid., p. 73.
Schleiermacher’s Sermons, p. 54.
Selected Sermons, p. 67–68.
Ibid., p. 68.
Ibid., p. 69–70.
Ibid., p. 71.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 72.
Ibid., p. 73–74.
Ibid., p. 74.
Ibid., p. 75.
Ibid., p. 76.
Ibid., p. 77.
Ibid., p. 79.
Ibid., p. 81.
Ibid., p. 78. Italics mine.
Ibid., p. 82.
As quoted in Sheehan, 379.
CF, p. 425. Italics mine.
Ibid., p. 427.
B. A. Gerrish, A Prince of the Church: Schleiermacher and the Beginnings of Modern Theology (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), p. 35.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 428.
Ibid., p. 426.
Ibid., p. 429, italics mine.
CF, p. 27.
Ibid, p. 440.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 443, italics mine.
Quoting the title of the 1806 political sermon analyzed above.
CF, p. 466–467.
Ibid., p. 467.
Ibid., p. 467.
Ibid., p. 470.
Ibid., p. 471.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 472.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 472–473.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 472.
Ibid., p. 473, italics mine.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 154.
Ibid., p. 156.
Copyright information
© 2012 Steven R. Jungkeit
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jungkeit, S.R. (2012). The State of Theology. In: Spaces of Modern Theology. New Approaches to Religion and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137269027_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137269027_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-44373-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-26902-7
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)