Eduard Herzog
Eduard Herzog ( born August 1, 1841 in Schongau, Canton of Lucerne, † March 26, 1924 in Bern ) was the first Old Catholic bishop in Switzerland.
Life and work
The son of a farmer visited in 1855 in Lucerne high school and began studying theology, which led him to the University of Tübingen to Karl Joseph von Hefele and in the summer of 1866 at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau in summer 1865 and in winter 1865/1866 there. He completed his studies at the seminary from Solothurn. On March 16, 1867 Duke was ordained a priest. He was a religion teacher at the teacher training college in Rathausen and - for additional academic preparation in autumn 1867 at the University of Bonn among others Franz Heinrich Reusch - in the fall of 1868 professor of exegesis and church history in Lucerne.
During the First Vatican Council, he founded in April 1870, the existing until the end of that year critical magazine Catholic voice from the forest sites. During erupted in July 1870 Franco-German War he served as a military chaplain in the Bernese Jura.
To break with the Roman Catholic Church came in the wake of the Old Catholic Congress from 19 to 22 September 1872 in Cologne; He testified he in a farewell letter to Bishop Eugène Lachat, he published The federal government in the Bernese newspaper.
On September 27, 1872 Eduard Herzog was elected pastor of the Old Catholic community of Krefeld and rely on operating Walther Munzinger on 9 March 1873 as pastor to Olten. From 1876 he worked as a pastor at the Church of St. Peter and Paul in Bern as well as a professor of the newly founded Christian Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Bern.
In 1876 he was awarded an honorary doctorate of the University of Bern.
In the second session the Christian Catholic National Synod in Olten on 7 and 8 June 1876, he was elected the first Old Catholic bishop in Switzerland. He received episcopal consecration on 18 September 1876 in the St. Martin Church of Rheinfelden by the Old Catholic Bishop of Bonn, Joseph Hubert Reinkens. On December 6, 1876, Pope Pius IX. in a bull about Duke excommunication and anathema from.
1884 Duke gave to the parish to a year to become president of the University of Bern. During his 48 years -long episcopate ( until his death in 1924 ) made Duke a significant contribution to the theological and organizational consolidation of the Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland, and was involved in relationships with Anglican, later also with Orthodox churches.