Church Unity, Luther Memory, and Ideas of the German Nation, 1817-1883
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That All May be One? Church Unity, Luther Memory, and Ideas of the German Nation, 1817-1883 Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Landry, Stan Michael Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 23/09/2021 16:04:45 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193760 THAT ALL MAY BE ONE? CHURCH UNITY, LUTHER MEMORY, AND IDEAS OF THE GERMAN NATION, 1817-1883 by STAN MICHAEL LANDRY _____________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2010 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we Certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Stan Michael Landry entitled: "That All May be One? ChurCh Unity, Luther Memory, and Ideas of the German Nation, 1817-1883" and reCommend that it be aCCepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy _________________________________________________________________________________ Date: 8 Feb. 2010 Susan A. Crane _________________________________________________________________________________ Date: 8 Feb. 2010 Susan Karant-Nunn _________________________________________________________________________________ Date: 8 Feb. 2010 Peter W. Foley Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final Copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby Certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direCtion and reCommend that it be aCCepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. _________________________________________________________________________________ Date: 8 Feb. 2010 Dissertation Director: Susan A. Crane 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his or her judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED: Stan Michael Landry 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I owe enormous debts of gratitude to Drs. Susan A. Crane, Susan Karant-Nunn, Peter W. Foley, Suzanne L. Marchand, and George S. Williamson for reading early, piecemeal, and final drafts of this dissertation, and for their many comments, conversations, and insights. Dr. Crane provided just the right combination of encouragement and admonishment. Nietzsche quipped that a student repays a teacher poorly if one always remains a student. My own evolution from student to scholar is a testament to her excellence as an advisor. In our conversations, Susan Karant-Nunn made the sixteenth century present, while Peter W. Foley kept me firmly grounded in nineteenth-century German religion and theology. I must also thank Manfred P. Fleischer for his advice in researching the history of German ecumenism, and for generously sharing his notes and research with me at the beginning of this process. In addition, I owe thanks to Thomas A. Brady for his suggestions in conceptualizing this project in its early stages. Attendees of meetings of the American Society of Church History, the German Studies Association, and an informal works in progress seminar at the University of Arizona also offered invaluable comments on my research. I should also thank the library staffs at the University of Arizona, the Pitts Theology Library at Emory University, the Eberhard-Karls University of Tübingen, and the Bavarian State Library, and the archivists and librarians at the German Evangelical Church (EKD) archives in Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, and Karlsruhe for their tireless help and for their patience with my less-than-perfect spoken German. Research was made possible by the generous financial support of a University of Arizona Barbara Payne Robinson Fellowship, a University of Arizona Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute dissertation research grant, and most of all, a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) dissertation research grant. I will always remember Anke, Leo, and Veit for their wonderful hospitality in Tübingen and for lessons in preparing Swabian food. Finally, I must thank my wife Jen, our pug Dancer, and my family for their extraordinary patience with me on those many days in which I would work from the time I awoke until it was time for bed. This dissertation is dedicated to them. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...7 PROLOGUE: IN THE BEGINNING WAS LUTHER……………………………………………………..9 A Note on the Meaning and Use of the Term “Ecumenism”…………………………………...35 CHAPTER 1 – A LUTHER FOR EVERYONE: ECUMENISM AND ORTHODOXY AT THE 1817 AND 1830 REFORMATION ANNIVERSARIES………………………………………………37 The Ecclesiastical and Political Contexts of the 1817 Reformation AnniVersary…….41 The 1817 Reformation AnniVersary FestiVals……………………………………………………...44 Luther Memory and Intra-Protestant Unity at the 1817 Reformation AnniVersaries…………………………………………………………………………………………………….51 Luther Memory and Interconfessional Unity at the 1817 and 1830 Reformation AnniVersaries…………………………………………………………………………………………………….68 1817 Redux: The 1830 AnniVersaries of the Augsburg Confession and Intra- Protestant Unity…………………………………………………………………………………………………82 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………….100 CHAPTER 2 – A “MODERN SECESSION FROM POPERY”: THE REVOLUTIONARY ECUMENISM OF THE PROTESTANT FRIENDS AND THE GERMAN-CATHOLIC MOVEMENT……………………………………………………………………………………………………..104 The Ecclesiastical Context of the Vormärz Era…………………………………………………...110 Two Revolutionary-Ecumenical Religious Communities of the Vormärz: the Protestant Friends and the German-Catholic Movement…………………………………….115 The Free Congregations and German Unity……………………………………………………….130 Marriage as a Model for Unity: the German Catholics, Women, and Mixed Marriages………………………………………………………………………………………………………...144 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………….152 CHAPTER 3 – THE ECUMENIZATION OF THE NATIONAL IDEA: LUTHER MEMORY, THE GERMAN NATION, AND THE REACTIONARY ECUMENISM OF THE 1860 ERFURT CONFERENCE……………………………………………………………………………………..154 The Context and Reception of the Erfurt Conference………………………………………….158 6 The Reactionary-Ecumenical Notion of Church Unity…………………………………………165 Confessional Reunion and German National Unity……………………………………………..172 The Reactionary-Ecumenical Reclamation of Luther Memory…………………………….179 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………….184 CHAPTER 4 – THAT ALL MAY BE ONE? THE UT OMNES UNUM GROUP, CHURCH UNITY, GERMAN NATIONAL IDENTITY, AND THE LUTHER ANNIVERSARIES OF 1883………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..188 The Confessional and National Contexts of Early Wilhelmine Germany………………194 “In Necessariis Unitas, in Dubiis Libertas, in Omnibus Caritas”: the Confessional DiVide, Ecumenism, and German National (Dis)Unity………………………………………...200 “Triumph und Trauer”: Ut Omnes Unum and the Luther AnniVersaries of 1883….214 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………….228 EPILOGUE: THE GREAT WAR AND THE PRECLUSION OF THE KONFESSIONALFRAGE……………………………………………………………………………………..231 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………………………...242 7 ABSTRACT The early nineteenth century was a period in which the German confessional divide increasingly became a national-political problem. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire (1806) and the Wars of Liberation (1813-1815), Germans became consumed with how to build a nation. Religion was still a salient manifestation of German identity and difference in the nineteenth century, and the confessional divide between Catholics and Protestants remained the most significant impediment to German national unity. Bridging the confessional divide was essential to realizing national unity, but one could only address the separation of the confessions by directly confronting, or at least thinking around, memories of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. This dissertation examines how proponents of church unity used and abused memories of Luther and the Reformation to imagine German confessional and national unity from 1817 through 1883. It employs the insights and methods of collective memory research to read the sermons and speeches, pamphlets and poems, histories and hagiographies produced by ecumenical clergy and laity to commemorate Luther and the Reformation, and to understand how efforts toward church unity informed contemporary ideas of German confessional and national identity and unity. Histories of nineteenth-century German society, culture, and politics have been predicated on the ostensible strength of the confessional divide. This dissertation, however, looks at nineteenth-century German history, and the history of nineteenth-century German nationalism