Franz Xaver Kraus

Franz Xaver Kraus ( born September 18, 1840 in Trier, † December 28, 1901 in San Remo ) was a German art historian and church.

Life

Franz Xaver Kraus was born into a middle class family in Trier. His father worked as an art teacher at the Municipal Gymnasium. After finishing school in 1858 Kraus came under the influence of his religious mother in the Trier seminary. Between 1860 and 1862 he interrupted his studies at the seminary for health and financial reasons; He earned his living during this time as a private tutor in French aristocratic families. He was the opportunity to educate yourself to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris independently scientifically. While still in Paris, he sent a paper on Synesius at the Albert -Ludwigs- University of Freiburg to in absentia ( in absence) the title of Dr. phil. whether eximiam eruditionem to purchase ( due to special scholarship ), a method, which was then not uncommon, but not eligible for admission to an academic career. Then he returned to Trier to continue his theological studies. In 1864 he completed his studies and was ordained by Bishop Matthias Eberhard priest. In the fall of 1864 Kraus involved the University of Freiburg, where he in 1865 under the church historian Johann Baptist Alzog acquired the theological doctorate in Church History. On September 1, 1865 Kraus took the place of an early knife in Pfalzel near Trier. Personal ambitions, a teacher at the seminary of Trier to take over in church history, were not fulfilled, because he had made himself unpopular with the clergy because of critical writings on the venerated in Trier relic of St. nail and the apostolic origin of the Diocese of Trier. 1872 received Kraus in the philosophical faculty of the University of Strasbourg, an extraordinary chair of Christian art history. An appeal to the University of Breslau in 1874 failed at the resistance of the Prince-Bishop Heinrich Förster Breslauer. In 1878 he resigned as professor of church history at the succession of his former teacher Alzog in Freiburg. In his Freiburg tenure, which lasted until his death, Kraus wrote important works on Christian art history and the poet Dante. 1887, on the occasion of the 500 anniversary of the University of Heidelberg (1886 ), he was commissioned by the Baden government known to him from his Paris student days in Heidelberg Holy Spirit ( Manesse ) before the return of the original at the University of Heidelberg in a facsimile edition ( light pressure) in Strasbourg with Karl Trübner out. He is considered one of the founders of the modern Christian Archaeology.

With its strictly scientific attitude he became the model and with his critical and polemical journalism the figurehead of the reform Catholicism, but without joining a self- organization or party.

Shortly before his death, Franz Xaver Kraus was appointed in his hometown of Trier for his scientific achievements as an honorary citizen. He bequeathed to the city of Trier valuable works of art and part of his library of 12,000 volumes; they went into the city library. Also its written heritage ( and others, the most extensive correspondence ) of the Municipal Library was handed over - but sealed: Kraus had decreed that he should not be opened until 50 years after his death, which happened in 1951. The then head of the Trier city library, Hubert Schiel published in the following years, parts thereof, and others, the diaries Kraus '. Other parts of his library and his assets donated Kraus establishing a Chair and an Institute of Christian Archaeology at the University of Freiburg.

Kraus was a member of the Catholic Student Association K.St.V. Arminia Bonn in CT.

The in his later years often seriously ill Kraus died, only 61 years old, during his holiday in San Remo from stomach cancer; buried, he is at the Freiburg main cemetery.

Effective history

On the Kraus Kraus Society, the endeavored to a Catholic reform convened.