Abstract
LATE MODERN EUROPEANKatholischer Historismus? Zum historischen Denken in der deutschsprachigen Kirchengesthichte um 1900. Heinrich Schrors - Albert Ehrhard - Joseph Schnitzer. By Gregor Klapczynski. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag. 2013. Pp. 472. euro69,90 paperback. ISBN 978-3-17-023426-0.)Nineteenth-century German Catholic scholars could hardly disengage themselves from what Ernest Troeltsch referred to as the crisis generated by critical historical studies: Die Krisis des Historismus. For Troeltsch, the issue was, in no small part, how in the flux and flow of history one can establish normative values to direct one's life. But the broader issue on how to interpret history was a matter of significant importance and probed how history, truth, and value are related.Gregor Klapczynski's book is a slightly revised version of his 2012 dissertation at the Catholic Faculty of the Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat in Munster. He pursues this question among Roman Catholic historians: how can one understand and professionally pursue church history as an academic discipline, and can one do so without placing absolute claims of the content of tradition or doctrine, still neoScholastic in form, at risk? His strategy is to present three notable Catholic theologians-Heinrich Schrors (1852-1928), Albert Erhard (1862-1940), and Joseph Schnitzer (1859-1939)-considered to represent three positions in late-nineteenth-century Catholic thought in relation to what was perceived to be relativism.Klapczynski has provided criteria for his choices from a large field of otherwise excellent candidates: each of the three was attentive to both the theory and praxis of historical research; represents the right, center, or left of a spectrum that runs from conservative to modernist, i.e., relativist; was investigated by church officials for modernist impulses; and left a pool of sources adequate for substantive analysis.Chapter 1 sketches, in the context of the political and social changes that mark the period, the evolution of philosophies of history, from organic-idealist concep tions at the outset (a la Wilhelm von Humboldt and Leopold von Ranke, but also Johann Sebastian von Drey and Johann Mohler), to scientific-objective-realist aspirations by century's end. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 dedicate roughly equivalent amounts of space to the three figures, outlining their Lebenslauf, academic contributions, philosophies of history, intellectual interlocutors, and brushes with church authorities (only Schnitzer is excommunicated, primarily for a booklet challenging the divine origins of the papacy). …
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