Friedrich Schleiermacher
born Nov. 21, 1768, Breslau, Silesia
died Feb. 12, 1834, Berlin
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 older 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.”
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.
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, Pol.), 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 travelling 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 Feb. 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 from 20,000 to 30,000 people in
the long funeral procession through the streets of Berlin.
He 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.
Robert P. Scharlemann
