Joachim Wach

Joachim Wach ( born January 25, 1898 in Chemnitz, † August 27 1955 in Orselina ), a great-grandson Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was a German or American religious scholar and sociologist.

Study

After the grandson of Adolf guard and son of Felix wax had 1916 Notabitur stored, he served as a soldier in the First World War. Starting 1917, he was but enrolled at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Leipzig. He continued his studies in Munich, Berlin and Freiburg, before waking 1920 returned to Leipzig, where he was in 1922 " The idea of ​​redemption and its interpretation " doctorate with his work. He then studied in Heidelberg, where he habilitated in 1924 with his outstanding introduction to an epistemological foundation of the science of religion.

Teaching

Again, in Leipzig in 1927 was awake a lectureship in the sociology of religion. Two years later, professor of religious studies. After he had been active in teaching until 1935, the Nazis wax withdrawn due to its origin, the right to teach.

Guard managed to emigrate to the United States where he Biblical literature read at Brown University from 1935 to 1939 as a visiting professor, then from 1939 to 1946 as an associate professor. In 1945 he went to his job as a professor in at the Department of Religious Studies at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. In 1946 he received the U.S. citizenship. Guard died on 27 August 1955 in Orselina at Locarno in Switzerland.

Appreciation

Wax had a religious studies - in some ways still not reached again - offered epistemological foundation as an empirical discipline. He went to far above its relevant teacher (or sources) addition: Rudolf Otto, Ernst Troeltsch, Max Weber, Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Edmund Husserl. Religious studies was there at the time only to emancipate itself from theology, the path to an empirical research was a distant utopia. But Leipzig was here at the most advanced in Germany. 1912 Nathan Soderblom had been called to Leipzig in 1914 received the Religious Studies there a cultural and scientific institution. But it should also be about philosophical discussion, not just to objektierende research. With his great work on the history of hermeneutics Understanding guard stood in this respect, the question of method. According to his teaching Leipzig he established the sociology of religion as a part of religious studies. His colleague Gustav Mensching, this resulted later at the University of Bonn on, as well his student Demosthenes Savramis, but this in sociology. Forced to emigrate as a guard, he found in the United States an open climate for his religious studies without fear of contact for civil Theological such esoteric. Wax was original in the treatment of fabrics and made ​​it his own attitude to the religious questions by look, full of sympathy for a free and peaceful spirituality. About the project of Comparative Religion, he offered a theology across special finds from different religions and cultural areas. His types of religious experience are a legacy of the much too early perfected.

The English translation (1988 ) and the reprint (2001) of his habilitation thesis contributed to the growing recognition of its paramount importance for the religion basic scientific theory.

Works

  • The idea of ​​redemption and its interpretation. Hinrichs, Leipzig 1922
  • About the Methodology of the general religious studies. Journal of Missions and Religious History ZRMG 38, 1923, pp. 33-55
  • Religious Studies. Prolegomena to its epistemological foundations. Hinrichs, Leipzig 1924 New ed. and introduced by Christoffer H. Grundmann. Spenner, Waltrop 2001
  • Engl: Introduction to the History of Religions. 1988
  • German: Sociology of Religion. 1951
  • The Comparative Study of Religions. Columbia UP, NY 1958 German: Comparative religious studies. Introduction J. M. Kitagawa. Übers Hans Holländer. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1962 *** review, Joachim Matthes in KZfSS 15, 1963, pp. 174-176
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