George Cross · 4 of 40

A. A Sketch of Schleiermacher’s Life. · HIS STUDENT LIFE

The Paedagogium at Niesky was of the nature of a gymnasium or preparatory college for young men who wished to enter the Christian ministry, particularly the Moravian. At that time it enjoyed a wide, reputation. Among the students were members of aristocratic German families, children of absent missionaries, representatives of eastern German provinces, and youths from Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, and England. It was a student-cloister unlike any other, whether Protestant or Catholic. The entering students became members of a new family. The teachers held a sort of graded parental relation to them, and brotherly affection was the dominant feature of the mutual relations of all the inmates. The organization and administration of the institution were on the same lines as those of its prototype at Halle, where Zinzendorf was educated. Connection with the out side world was severed. The refining and ennobling influences of female society were excluded. A strict supervision was exercised over correspondence with relatives or friends. Incoming and outgoing letters were subjected to censorship. This may partly account for the fewness of Schleiermacher’s letters which are preserved from this portion of his life.

The instruction given to students was fairly broad. It aimed at breadth rather than learnedness in a single field, at a many-sided intellectual activity with some love for science, a keen appreciation of Latin and Greek literature, and some taste for the fine arts. Schleiermacher relates how he and his room-mate von Albertini--who held afterward for a long time a first place among the Brethren as scholar, preacher, and poet--ranged at will over the field of classic literature, and even tried to work up a knowledge of Semitics. At the same time the aim of the institution was mainly heart-culture. Coldness, hard-heartedness, lack of feeling were regarded as the worst faults, There was an attempt to play on the heart strings in a thousand ways. A developed phantasy, a powerful soul-life was the presupposition of religiosity. The culmination of the education given was found in soul-intercourse with the Savior, and to that end it was supposed to be necessary to exercise one’s self in world-denial, to avoid the society of women, and any thing that might stimulate the lower affections.

This meant, of course, that the works of many contemporary writers were sternly proscribed as being out of harmony with the views of the Brethren. Moreover, the greatest care was taken to impress students with the unquestionableness of Protestant orthodoxy, especially the doctrines of Christ’s deity and his substitutionary sacrifice, of human depravity, miraculous grace, and future punishment. No effort was spared to give the students an inward attestation of the truth of these doctrines by the cultivation of a religious experience corresponding with the doctrinal teaching. This artificial devotion to mysticism stimulated doubts of the worth of this religious intercourse in the minds of some young men who hesitated to submit themselves to a compulsory divine service.

At the same time the relations between teachers and students and of students with one another were characterized by a happy and wholesome intimacy. With hard study were combined the cultivation of an acquaintance with poetry and music and the enjoyment of birthday parties and other festivals. Religious meetings recurred with great frequency. The hymn-singing for which the Brethren were famous was a notable feature of these gatherings. In later years in -connection with his own conduct of public worship Schleiermacher used to contrast the dull monotonous liturgy of the state church with the lively, inspiring worship in Moravian congregations, and to express his thankfulness for what he had learned on this subject when he was among them.

There can be no doubt as to the intentions of Schleiermacher’s godly parents in sending him to this school. They admired the religious life of the Herrnhuters and they feared the rationalistic tendencies of the times. They were not unaware of the strength of the great movement of thought which was sweeping over Europe. European society was then stirred to its depths over many questions. Ideas and institutions hoary with age were subjected to the keenest and most unrelenting criticism, and particularly in the ecclesiastical and religious realm. The skepticism of Bolingbroke and Hume in England, of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists in France, of Fredrick the Great and the “Illuminants” in Prussia, had delivered a fearful polemic against current orthodoxy and the church. Science and philosophy seemed to corroborate its arguments. Political institutions traditionally associated with established religion were threatened with a general overturn. The very codes of morality were being torn to shreds. The ominous rumblings of the approaching revolution in France were heard all over western and central Europe. The foundations of the great deep were breaking up, To Schleiermacher’s parents the institutions of the Moravians seemed an ark of safety for their children, and especially for their gifted son. Mainly, perhaps, they were in the right. His sympathetic, sensitive spirit, united with a keen intelligence, might not have withstood at that time the unmediated shock of a fierce onset of rationalism. With his habit of introspection he might have been driven to a moody mysticism, or with his penetrating intellect to a blank skepticism.

The immediate outcome was gratifying. At Niesky he yielded himself heartily to the surrounding religious influences. At the end of three months he was admitted by lot to membership in the society, to the great joy of his parents and his sister Lotte, who took a similar step about the same time. A period of religious, elevation ensued. His mother writes, in October, 1783, “Let us therefore, my dear son, cling firmly to him alone who is the faithful shepherd of our souls; let us give up our hearts entirely to him; let us pour out all our gifts to him; let us speak to his heart and pray daily to him to cast out and take away everything that tends to separate us from him.” His eager participation in these sentiments appears in a letter to Lotte just then: “When I find that I do not love the Savior enough, that I do not sufficiently honor him; when the daily intercourse with him does not go on uninterruptedly, then I am distressed.” And later: “The heart may feel the peace and love of Jesus, as I can assert from my own experience, thanks be to his mercy.” By the advice of his spiritual guardian he became, in February, 1784, a candidate for admission to the Supper--for actual entrance within the circle of the reborn. The way in which he speaks of the prospect brings out his warmth of feeling, but at the same time the superstitious regard for the Supper, which Lutheranism and Moravianism inherited from Catholicism. “On Maundy-Thursday I am to partake of the Savior’s flesh and blood in the Holy Supper.” The very sight of the celebration fills him with holy reverence. At this time he voices his feelings to his sister in such utterances as, “Ah, did but the love of Jesus fill our hearts day and night!” “Think of me and love thy Jesus.” He speaks also of longings for the world beyond. There is nothing in his correspondence at this time to suggest that it is from the hand of a youth of sixteen. It is altogether unnatural and one is tempted to treat it as nothing better than mere sentimentalism. But it was very pleasing to his father and the Brethren. His Uncle Stubenrauch alone seems to have had some misgivings, and in a letter he gently cautions his nephew against the spirit of intolerance which the Moravians, with all their warmth of religious passion, shared with most Christians at the time. The letter includes an admonition against overlooking “the great amount of evil that has resulted through many centuries from the early established principle, ‘Outside of the church, no salvation.’”

His stay at the Paedagogium lasted two and a quarter years. In the autumn of 1785 he was promoted to the theological seminary at Barby. The conditions there were much the same as at Niesky. Every thing was arranged with a view to the promotion of religious development in the pietistic sense. The twenty-two students, divided into two equal sections, lived in the “choir-house” of the single brethren under one roof with their spiritual censor. Three religious meetings were held daily, and all must attend. No intercourse was allowed with outside families, the town pastors, or the town church. “Useless” and light reading material was supposed to be kept out. Modern philosophical and theological works--even Kant and Lavater--were banned. Yet there were fewer restrictions on liberty than at Niesky. Students found it quite possible to evade the rules about reading. Copies of leading liberal periodicals and of the works of such writers as Lessing, Kant, and Herder were surreptitiously obtained without difficulty by those who desired them. An acquaintance with a wider world of thought was sure to arouse in independent-minded young men doubts of the trustworthiness of what they had been taught. There was soon a rapid falling away. Some of the older students went so far as to play the part of free-thinkers among their young comrades. Schleiermacher soon came distinctly under the influence of this new spiritual atmosphere and the consequences were as might have been expected.