Research Grants for a Heisenberg-Professorship (W 2) in the Department of Protestant Theology of the Goethe-University Frakfurt/Main

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Keßler
• Subject Area: Protestant Theology
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 389116054

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

The project enabled the establishment of a Heisenberg professorship for modern church history with a focus on the history of interpretation and digital humanities in the Department of Protestant Theology at the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main. The concept of the history of interpretation encountered in the nomination of the professorship is of fundamental importance in the self-understanding discourse on the theological significance of church history. It allows opportunities for co-operation with other disciplines of theology as well as interdisciplinary references to related humanities, social and cultural sciences. Of great importance for the use of the concept of interpretation in church history is the postdoctoral lecture by the Protestant theologian Gerhard Ebeling (1912-2001), which was published in 1947 under the title "Kirchengeschichte als Geschichte der Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift". Ebeling's handwritten preliminary work was edited to clarify the assumed concept of interpretation and the references to sources and literature that were not identified in the publication. Individual projects focussed on two epochs. Studies on Johannes Oekolampad concerned the Reformation period. To this end, an update of the Oekolampad bibliography presented by Ernst Staehelin in 1918 was prepared on the basis of the VD16 and other pamphlet catalogues. A second focus was on "Sermons of the Goethe Era", with Johann Gottfried Herder's sermon dispositions taking centre stage. The historiographical source value of sermon dispositions as a serial genre was considered very fundamentally in a study. Then, for the first time after the posthumous edition of Herder’s collected works, the so-called Cotta Vulgate, and a contribution by August Jacobsen in the critical edition of Suphan’s of 1889, Herder sermon dispositions of Herder’s were edited. The author of the first theological Herder monograph of the 19th century, August Werner, was subject to a study of his life and work, which shows the comparatively typical path of a theological liberal between scholarly ambitions and pastoral conflicts. The final months of the funding period, which lasted just 13 months in total, brought with them studies on the history of theology and research in the 20th century. These included a monograph on vernacular editions of Luther planned in the 1930s and 1940s, which was published in 2019. Collaborations in the Frankfurt department also resulted in an anthology that explores the concept of constellations in its heuristic and interpretative potential for the 20th century.

Publications

• August Werner – Autor der ersten theologischen Herder-Monografie. Leben und Werk eines liberalen Theologen in den Konflikten seiner Zeit, in: Liisa Steinby (Hg.): Herder und das 19. Jahrhundert. Herder and the Nineteenth Century. Beiträge zur Konferenz der Internationalen Herder-Gesellschaft Turku 2018, Heidelberg 2020, ISBN: 978-3-947960-06-4, S. 240-282
  Martin Keßler
  
• Das Luthertum um 1918 im Spiegel seiner Zeit. Lutherjahrbuch 86. Jahrgang 2019, 174-228. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
  Keßler, Martin
  
• Klare Schrift oder helle Vernunft. Zu den Anfängen des reformatorischen Schriftprinzips, in: Claritas scripturae? Schrifthermeneutik aus evangelischer Perspektive, Im Auftrag der Vereinigten Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche Deutschlands (VELKD) herausgegeben von Christina Constanza, Martin Keßler und Andreas Ohlemacher, Leipzig 2020, ISBN: 9783374066469, S. 13-35
  Martin Keßler
  
• Luthers Schriften für die Gegenwart. Mohr Siebeck.
  Keßler, Martin
  
• „Kirchengeschichte als Geschichte der Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift“. Gerhard Ebelings handschriftliche Vorbereitung seiner Habilitations-Probevorlesung (1946), in: Claudia Kampmann, Ulrich Volp, Martin Wallraff und Julia Winnebeck (Hg.): Kirchengeschichte. Historisches Spezialgebiet und/oder theologische Disziplin, Leipzig 2020 (Theologie – Kultur – Hermeneutik, Bd. 28), ISBN: 9783374063277, S. 283-320.
  Martin Keßler
  
• „Was eigentlich Reformation gewesen“. Herders Predigtdisposition zum Reformationstag 1800, in: Herder Jahrbuch. Herder Yearbook, hg. v. Rainer Godel und Johannes Schmidt, Bd. 15 (2020), ISBN: 9783947960088, S. 175-193
  Martin Keßler
  
• Herder, Johann Gottfried, in: Stewart Goetz und Charles Taliaferro (Hg.): The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion, Bd. 2, Hoboken, New Jersey 2021, ISBN: 9781119010951, S. 1029–1032
  Martin Keßler
  
• Johann Gottfried Herders letzte Investiturrede. Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 119(1), 55-72.
  Keßler, Martin
  
• Theologische Positionierung zum Nationalsozialismus - Konstellationen im Jahr 1932, in: Stefan Alkier, Martin Keßler und Stefan Rhein (Hg.): Evangelische Kirchen und Politik in Deutschland. Konstellationen im 20. Jahrhundert, Tübingen 2023 (Christentum in der modernen Welt / Christianity in Modern World 5), ISBN: 9783161614880, S. 43–58
  Martin Keßler
  
• Predigtdispositionen als serielle Quellengattung, in: Markus Wriedt (Hg.): Differenz und Wahrheit. Theologische Transformationen konfessioneller Glaubensreflexion zwischen 1750 und 1914, Tübingen 2024 (Christentum in der modernen Welt / Christianity in Modern World 7), ISBN: 9783161618857, S. 109–121
  Martin Keßler