Franz Joseph Dölger

Franz Joseph Dölger ( born October 18, 1879 in Sulzbach am Main, † October 17, 1940 in Schweinfurt, Germany ) was a Catholic theologian, church historian, religious scholar and Christian archaeologist.

Life

After graduation in 1898 at the New School in Wurzburg, he studied theology at the University of Würzburg and received on 3 August 1902, the ordination. There followed years as a chaplain in Amorbach and Würzburg. In addition to pastoral activity, he worked on his dissertation The Sacrament of Confirmation illustrated historical- dogmatic, due to which he on June 18, 1904 Dr. theol. received his doctorate ( printed Vienna 1906).

While working on his dissertation, he realized how deeply many of the forms in which the new Christian faith expressed in the floor of his non-Christian environment, both the Greco- Roman as well as Jewish, were rooted. So he went to study in Rome as a Fellow of the study funds Aschaffenburg in the winter and spring of 1904 / 05, " bring a clear understanding of how early Christianity has dealt with the ancient culture " with the goal to. This question was the subject of his scientific life's work; he even talks about it briefly in the introduction to the first of the six volumes of " antiquity and Christianity ," in which he successively published the results of his detailed studies from 1929 until his death.

After his return again followed pastoral ministry in Bad Kissingen, next he prepared his habilitation before that on July 12, 1906 due to the work The Taufexorzismus in Christian Antiquity ( published under the title The Exorcism in the early Christian baptismal ritual. A religious-historical study [ Paderborn 1909 ] ) was performed. With its novel research direction Dölger fell into the disputes about modernism and reform Catholicism, and he gladly took the opportunity to escape to a " curate " at the Campo Santo in Rome Teutonico the hostility and further his research.

1912 Dölger was appointed to a newly erected Extraordinariat of General History of Religion and Comparative Religion in the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster; In 1918 he was appointed professor of Old Church history, Christian archeology and general history of religion. This was followed by professorships at universities of Breslau (1927-1929) and Bonn (1929 until his death).

Dölger 1925 was elected a member of the Pontifical Commission for Christian Archaeology, 1934 Member of the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeological Museum.

At the completion of his 60th year of life to him his friends and students dedicated the Festschrift pisciculi (Münster in 1939, where list of publications ).

The research begun by Dölger the dispute between and mutual influence of nascent Christianity and surrounding non- Christian cultures put his students Helmut Kruse and Theodor Klauser and the Leiden Latinist Jan Hendrik Waszink with the of them started Reallexikon for Antiquity and Christianity continued, now in Franz Joseph Dölger Institute of the University of Bonn will continue.