Georg Friedrich Schlatter

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Georg Friedrich Schlatter (16 December 1799 in Weinheim, Bergstraße – 3 November 1875 in Weinheim) was a Protestant pastor and the Alterspräsident (senior president) of the Baden revolutionary parliament of 1849. Because of his role in the revolution, he was convicted of high treason and dismissed from clerical service.

Early life and education

Schlatter's ancestors originated from the Swiss canton of Appenzell. His great‐great‐grandfather Bernhard Schlatter initially settled in Frankenthal, but fled with his family to Weinheim after Frankenthal town was destroyed during the Palatine Succession War. There, his son Johann Lorenz Schlatter (married Anna Catherina Göpfinger in 1701) worked as a dyer. The trade was continued by his grandfather Johann Georg Schlatter (1708-1773) and his father Johann Georg Schlatter (1742-1813). Georg Friedrich Schlatter was born from his father's second marriage to Anna Magdalena Christmann (1756-1825). After his father's death, his mother sold both the family house and the dyeing workshop. Schlatter attended the Gymnasium in Heidelberg and studied Protestant theology at the University of Heidelberg from 1818 to 1820. During his studies he was particularly influenced by Carl Daub, a speculative theologian closely associated with Hegel. From Friedrich Heinrich Christian Schwarz, a more traditional supranaturalist theologian, he adopted pedagogical ideas insprired by Pestalozzi. From Johann Friedrich Abegg - whom Schlatter regarded as a mystic - he adopted the practice of preaching without manuscripts. He was least persuaded by the rationalist theology of Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus, as he later noted in his autobiographical fragments.

At the beginning of his theology studies, Schlatter joined the Alte Heidelberger Burschenschaft, which sought to overcome the division of students into regional corps and, in the aftermath of the Wars of Liberation, advocated the national unification of the German states.

Pastoral posts

After passing his examination in 1820 - in which he ranked second out of eleven candidates - he became a vicar in Dallau, serving under the nearly deaf pastor Joseph. Two years later he married Joseph’s daughter Johanna Louise. In 1826, Johanna Louise gave birth to a stillborn child and died shortly thereafter.

Schlatter applied for several pastoral positions and finally in 1827, by decision of the church authorities, was appointed pastor of the parish of Linkenheim on the Rhine, in the Karlsruhe-Land church district. Prior to assuming the post, he married Eva Margaretha Ludwig, the daughter of a Dallau innkeeper and a member of the church council.

In Linkenheim, Schlatter entered into serious conflict with a circle around former Catholic priest Aloys Henhöfer who had converted to Protestantism in 1823 and initiated a revivalist movement. In the so-called Baden Catechism Dispute, Henhöfer, adhering to a strict biblicist theology, strongly opposed the introduction of a new state catechism, which he considered rationalistic. Acting on behalf of the church authorities, Schlatter defended the new catechism.

In 1832, Schlatter was appointed to the parish of Heddesheim. In 1834, he became district school inspector, and in 1837 - after the demission for health reasons of Dean Johann Friedrich Allmang - he was appointed provisional administrator of the deanery of Ladenburg. During the 1830s, together with his Weinheim friends Friedrich Härter, Adam Philipp Scheuermann and Friedrich Diesbach, Schlatter moved closer to the liberal opposition. This political orientation increasingly brought him into conflict with both ecclesiastical and secular authorities. As a result, in 1839 he was removed from both the district school inspection post and the deanery administration.

In 1843, Oberamtmann Christian Bernhard Gockel of Weinheim accused Schlatter of interfering in elections to the Second Baden Chamber. Although the disciplinary investigation ordered by Carl August Baumüller, the newly‐appointed director of the Upper Church Council, could not substantiate these accusations, it cited other alleged offenses, including the public reading of an oppositional poem and claims that Schlatter had neglected his clerical duties by visiting taverns. Consequently, he was transferred to the less well-paid parish of Mühlbach near Eppingen.

In Mühlbach, Schlatter maintained a low public political profile but supported the establishment of a democratic people’s association. In addition to several church‐political essays, he worked on a treatise on the constitution of the Protestant Church in Baden, which was published in the spring of 1848. In the same year, Schlatter was twice elected to the Baden Estates Assembly; however, but due to census-based regulations, he was unable to assume his mandate.

Participation in the Revolutionary Parliament

Following the flight of the Grand Duke and the assumption of power by the people’s associations, Schlatter was elected to the Constituent Baden State Assembly. As Alterspräsident, he opened the assembly and contributed significantly to shaping its resolutions. After the suppression of the revolution by Prussian troops, Schlatter was arrested in Mühlbach following a church service on 8 July 1849. He was initially imprisoned in the town hall tower of Karlsruhe and later transferred to the local prison in Durlach.

Conviction, imprisonment and consequences for the family

After several months of pretrial detention, Schlatter — although not involved in any violent uprising — was sentenced to ten years of penal labor for high treason. By law, this sentence was commuted to six years of solitary confinement in the newly established men’s penitentiary in Bruchsal. The conviction also led to his dismissal from clerical service and the loss of all pension entitlements.

While imprisoned, Schlatter was compelled to produce shoes made of woven bast for twelve and a half hours per day. At the same time, solitary confinement afforded him the opportunity to borrow and read books extensively. During this period, he devoted himself to the study of solitary confinement and compiled extensive notes on creation theology as well as on contemporary theories and discoveries in the natural sciences (including astronomy, geology, and paleontology), ethnology, and archaeology. After his release, he published these reflections under the title Zuchthausstudien in six volumes.

Convinced that he had been wrongly convicted, Schlatter refused to submit a petition for pardon, which would have required him to emigrate. As a result, his family - who had found refuge with friends in Mühlbach - was largely forced to support itself. The Ministry of the Interior granted an annual allowance of 160 gulden only for the minor children. Between 1827 and 1850, Schlatter’s wife Eva Margaretha gave birth to eighteen children, six of whom died in childhood, while four later emigrated to the United States.

Three of Schlatter’s children settled in Hoboken, New Jersey, where they founded families. Auguste (1828-1920), who married a man named Heydt, and Julius (1839–1909) were among them. Julius, together with his wife Mary, operated a well-known restaurant in Hoboken, was active in several local associations, and maintained close personal connections with General Franz Sigel and Carl Schurz.

In 1853, Schlatter’s ailing sister Anna Margaretha, who lived in his household, died. A year later, his wife Eva Margaretha also passed away. The eldest daughter, Auguste, who had trained as a milliner, assumed responsibility for the younger siblings until her father’s release. The eldest son, Eduard, worked as a manager of a potato-flour factory in Mühlburg near Karlsruhe.

After release from prison

Schlatter was released from imprisonment on 1 October 1855 as a result of a general amnesty. He moved with his two adult daughters, Auguste and Emma, and his younger children to Mannheim, where he earned a living by teaching Latin and publishing several books. His poetry collection Kerkerblüthen was confiscated and led to a sentence of six weeks’ fortress imprisonment in Rastatt.

In his later writings, Schlatter advocated the emancipation of Jews, opposed the reintroduction of the death penalty, and articulated a wide range of theological and religious views. His most extensive work sought to demonstrate that humanity did not descend from a single original pair (monogenism) but rather from multiple original pairs (polygenism). Politically, he supported the “Small German solution” to national unification favored by the democratic movement.

Over time, rising living costs exceeded his declining income from publications. Schlatter’s health steadily deteriorated as a consequence of his prolonged imprisonment, and he became increasingly dependent on state assistance. From the period of the so-called “New Era” beginning in 1860, such assistance was granted more generously; nevertheless, he was denied a pension until his death. After all his children had left home, Schlatter returned in 1871 to his birthplace of Weinheim, where he died on 3 November 1875. Although his grave has not been preserved, there is strong evidence that he was buried in the cemetery of St. Peter’s Church in Weinheim.

Theology

Theologically, Schlatter — without developing a distinct profile of his own — aligned himself with the speculative theology of his academic teacher Carl Daub and his fellow student Richard Rothe, as well as with the exegetical approach of the “mythical school” represented by Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette, particularly regarding the biblical creation narratives in Genesis 1 and 2. In addition, he adopted the Gattungschristologie (type Christology) of David Friedrich Strauß in the moderated form presented in the third edition of Strauss’s Life of Jesus.

Throughout his life, Schlatter rejected the normative authority of creeds, which he regarded merely as historical expressions of the theology of their authors. His sustained interest in the natural sciences is also noteworthy. In 1861, he published his philosophical-historical study on the improbability of the descent of the human race from a single common original pair (Die Unwahrscheinlichkeit der Abstammung des Menschengeschlechts von einem gemeinsamen Urpaare .

He also published critical writings on the death penalty: The Injustice of the Death Penalty (Das Unrecht der Todesstrafe) and Voices Against the Death Penalty (Stimmen gegen die Todesstrafe).

Legacy

While the "Forty-Eighters" in in the United States preserved an honorable memory of the former member of the Baden Revolutionary Parliament, Schlatter remained largely forgotten in Germany for many decades. Only in 1999, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Revolution of 1848/49, did Margit Fleckenstein, Synodal President of the Evangelical Church in Baden, publicly acknowledge Schlatter as a representative of the “friends of the democratic movement of 1848/49 within and outside the church,” who had suffered under what she described as a still uncomprehending and excessively harsh approach by the authorities.

Today, Schlatter is commemorated by plaques on his birthplace in Weinheim and on the former evangelical vicarage in Mühlbach (Eppingen). In Heddesheim, the main hall of the Protestant community center bears his name, as do streets in both Mühlbach and Heddesheim.

Works

• Die preußische Kirchenagende im Verhältnis zu der evangelisch-protestantischen Kirche überhaupt und zu der vereinigten Kirche Badens insbesondere; nebst Beurtheilung der provisorischen Einführung der Agende in der Stadt- und Landdiözese Karlsruhe [The Prussian Church Agenda in relation to the Evangelical Protestant Church in general and to the united church of Baden in particular; together with an assessment of the provisional introduction of the agenda in the city and rural diocese of Karlsruhe] (Mannheim, 1830)
• Vertheidigung des Neuen Katechismus der vereinigten Kirche Badens gegen die Angriffe einiger Geistlichen, nebst Beurtheilung der theologischen Glaubensmeinungen derselben [Defense of the New Catechism of the United Church of Baden against the attacks of some clergymen, together with an assessment of their theological beliefs] (Karlsruhe, 1831)
• Zwanzig Predigten, als Zeugnisse christlicher Rechtgläubigkeit gegen pietistische Verketzerungen [Twenty sermons, as testimonies of Christian orthodoxy against Pietist heresies] (Karlsruhe, 1832)
• Pietismus, Mystizismus und Orthodoxismus in ihrer Verwandtschaft und ihrem Unterschiede [Pietism, Mysticism and Orthodoxy in their affinity and differences] (Mannheim, 1845)
• Die Verfassung der evangel.-protestantischen Kirche in Baden, wie sie ist und wie sie sein soll [The constitution of the Evangelical Protestant Church in Baden, as it is and as it should be] (Karlsruhe, 1848)
• Das System der Einzelhaft in besonderer Beziehung auf die neue Strafanstalt in Bruchsal: Stimme eines Gefangenen über Zuchthäuser [The system of solitary confinement with special reference to the new penitentiary in Bruchsal: A prisoner's voice on penitentiaries] (Mannheim, 1856)
• Kerkerblüthen, Humoristische Gedichte [Prison Blossoms, Humorous Poems] (Mannheim, 1856; confiscated in 1857)
• Zuchthausstudien, die Frucht einer sechsjährigen Einzelhaft [Prison Studies, the Fruit of Six Years of Solitary Confinement] (6 volumes, Mannheim, 1857-1860)
• Das Unrecht der Todesstrafe [The Injustice of the Death Penalty] (Erlangen, 1857)
• Die Emanzipation der Israeliten. Eine Forderung der Gerechtigkeit, Staatsweisheit, Humanität und rettenden Liebe [The Emancipation of the Israelites. A Demand of Justice, Political Wisdom, Humanity, and Saving Love] (Mannheim, 1858)
• Staat, Kirche und Konkordat. Eine politisch-kirchliche Betrachtung [State, Church and Concordat. A political-ecclesiastical analysis] (Ulm, 1860)
• Die Unwahrscheinlichkeit der Abstammung des Menschengeschlechts von einem gemeinschaftlichen Urpaare: Eine philosophisch-historische Studie [ ]] (Mannheim, 1861)
• Daß die staatsrechtliche Existenz der evangelisch-protestantischen Kirche keineswegs von Glaubensbekenntnissen und symbolischen Büchern abhängig sei [That the constitutional existence of the Evangelical Protestant Church is by no means dependent on creeds and symbolic books] (1862)

References

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