Wilhelm Schneemelcher

Wilhelm Viktor Gustav Adolf Schneemelcher ( born August 21, 1914 in Berlin, † August 6, 2003 in Bad Honnef ) was a Protestant theologian and 1954-1979 Professor of New Testament and History of the Ancient Church ( Patristics ) at the University of Bonn.

Family

Wilhelm Schneemelcher was the son of Protestant theologian Wilhelm Schneemelcher sen. (1872-1928) in Berlin.

He married on May 31, 1940 Eva Ackermann ( † 15 March 1999) and had four children.

Life

Schneemelcher studied at the Humboldt University of Berlin during New Testament scholar and church historian Hans Lietzmann (1875-1942), where he received his doctorate with a thesis on the history of liturgy licentiate in theology in 1938. Therefore, he also faced life in the liberal tradition of Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) and Lietzmann.

By Lietzmann Schneemelcher received first at the Prussian Academy of Sciences employment as a research assistant at the famous church fathers Commission, where he einarbeitete in the specific problems of editions of Greek and Latin texts from the time of the early church. However, since he was considered politically unreliable, he was released in 1939 and had to complete a bookseller, which was temporarily interrupted by his military service.

Only after the Second World War, he was next to his activities as a country parson in Stöckheim, a district of Northeim ( Lower Saxony), to continue his academic career. He received a teaching position at the University of Göttingen, where he habilitated in 1949 with a source-critical work on the history of dogma of the 4th century and then was assistant. In 1953 he was appointed Associate. Appointed professor before he joined first as an associate professor since 1956 as a professor in Bonn on the erected there second church history department the following year.

Taught at the Rheinische Friedrich- Wilhelms- University Bonn and researched Schneemelcher until his retirement in 1979. Between 1967 and 1968 he was its rector. In this time of student unrest, the Bonn University celebrated its 150th anniversary. On the eve of the ceremony on 12 July 1968, the students demonstrated against two Greek professors with a fascist past. Despite destroyed discs Schneemelcher remained calm: "You see, despite our 150 years, we are a modern university. " Calls to Jena (1954) and Hamburg (1955 ) he refused.

In Bonn Schneemelcher also served as President of the Faculty Day and as Chairman of the theologian days in Berlin in 1958 and 1960 and was instrumental in the founding of the Patristic Commission of the Academies of Sciences. In 1956 he called the " Bibliographia Patristica " to life and led next to it on the by the early death of Hans -Georg Opitz standstill in critical edition of the works of Athanasius the Great. Since 1963 he has been with Kurt Aland the " Patristic Texts and Studies " out; next he was co-editor of the "Journal of Ecclesiastical History " (since 1956) and the "Protestant Staatslexikon " (1966). Also in 1963 he was appointed to the Science Council, where he served until 1967. In 1973 he was elected to the Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, which he was president from 1982 to 1985. 1986-1995 he was a representative of the Evangelical Church in Germany in the " working group of social groups " the Foundation "House of the history of the Federal Republic of Germany " and its chairman. For the EKD he also participated in numerous dialogue meetings with Orthodox churches, as with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople Opel and the Romanian Orthodox Church.

International fame gained Schneemelcher mainly by repeatedly translated into English " Hennecke Schneemelcher ," the two volumes of the " New Testament Apocrypha in German translation " (Tübingen from 1959 to 1997 ), which he twice completely revised as a continuation of an earlier collection of Edgar Hennecke. It Gospels and other texts were obtained, which have found no inclusion in the Biblical canon, but in some ways as old as the New Testament writings are. The " Hennecke Schneemelcher " made ​​this literature not only professionals, but also a wider audience known.

His last years spent Prof. Dr. Franz- Schneemelcher in Dahl - pin in Bad Honnef.

Honors

  • Honorary Doctor of the University of Göttingen (1954 )
  • Honorary Doctor of the University of Strasbourg (Alsace ) ( 1966)
  • State Prize of North Rhine -Westphalia (1995 )

Medals and Decorations

  • Great Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1984 )
  • Order of Merit of North Rhine -Westphalia (1986 )

Writings (selection )

  • Documents on the history of the Arian controversy of the enthronement of Athanasius to the death of Constantine. Habil Göttingen 1949
  • Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher: New Testament Apocrypha. Tübingen 1959/64, ISBN 3-16-132242-8
  • Collected Essays on the New Testament and patristics. 1974
  • Early Christianity, 1981
  • ( as editor ): Dama Papandreou: Orthodoxy and Ecumenism, 1986
  • Speeches and essays. Contributions to the history of the Church and ecumenical dialogue, 1991
  • Flashbacks, memories and reflections. In: Dietrich Meyer ( ed.), Church history as autobiography. Vol II, 2002, pp. 257-326.
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