Christian Brentano

Christian Friedrich Franz Brentano Damian ( born January 24, 1784 in Frankfurt am Main, † October 27, 1851 ) was a Catholic spiritual writer and publicist.

Life

He was the sixth child of wealthy Frankfurt merchant and dignitary Peter Anton Brentano Brentano di Tremezzo from the house and his second wife Maximiliane of La Roche, daughter of kurtrierischen Chancellor Georg von Lichtenfels and writer Sophie von La Roche.

He is a brother among others of George and Clemens Brentano and Bettina von Arnim, half-brother of Franz Brentano Dominicus.

1791 to 1793 he attended high school in Tauberbischofsheim. After his mother's death on 19 November 1793 in Frankfurt am Main, his father moved to the residence of the Elector Clemens Wenceslaus of Koblenz Saxony and withdrew from his trading house in Frankfurt back. The education of the children took various relatives. Frequent changes of school and moves, characterized his childhood. After the start and termination of a business apprenticeship in Hamburg, he began in 1803 in Marburg to study medicine, but soon moved to Jena. An examination he underwent not.

From 1808 to 1815 he was administrator of the estate Bukowan, in Bohemia, which his family owned. Under the impression of an encounter with Johann Nepomuk Ringeis he was from 1816 to the strictly dogmatic Catholics and laid on his birthday in 1817 a general confession to become a clergyman. In the summer he traveled with his brother Clemens Brentano to Dülmen the then-known mystic Anne Catherine Emmerich. After a year in Lucerne, he was held in 1823 to Rome, where he moved in the circle of the Nazarene. In 1835 he married in Nice Emilie Brentano, born Genger, one of the two heads of girls' school in the former monastery of Marienberg, Boppard, which he was the since 1830.

He joined the school in 1837 and moved to Aschaffenburg. Here in his home died on July 28, 1842 his brother Clemens Brentano, who appointed him as heir. Especially his wife Emilie Brentano secured the inheritance and gave 1852 Joseph Merkel, the collected writings as the first complete edition of the works of Clemens Brentano out.

He had eight children, three of which only a few weeks or months have been old. Two of his sons were Franz Brentano (1838-1917), philosopher and Lujo Brentano (1844-1931), economist, leader of the socialists and co-founder of the Association for Social Policy.

His final resting place took Christian Brentano on the Aschaffenburg Old Cemetery.