Autobiographical and Social Essays [Reprint 2015 ed.] 9783110814767, 9783110145199

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Rudolf Otto

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History of Religions in Translation

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General Editors Luther H. Martin, University of Vermont Jacques Waardenburg, University of Lausanne Donald Wiebe, Trinity College, Toronto

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Rudolf Otto Autobiographical and Social Essays

Translated and edited by Gregory D. Alles

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin-New York 1996

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Divisori of Walter de Gruyter &C Co., Berlin.

® Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

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Otto, Rudolf, 1869-1937. [Essays. English. Selections] Autobiographical and social essays / Rudolf Otto; translated and edited by Gregory D. Alles. p. cm. - (History of religions in translation; 2) "A bibliography of O t t o in English", p. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 3-11-014519-7 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 3-11-014518-9 (pbk.) I. Otto, Rudolf, 1869-1937. 2.Theologians - Germany - Biography. 3. Otto, Rudolf, 1869 -1937 - Political and social views. I. Alles, Gregory, D. II.Title. III. Series. BX4827.079A3 1996 2 0 0 ' . 9 2 - dc20 [B] 96-12907 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek

- Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

Otto, Rudolf: Autobiographical and social essays / Rudolf Otto. Transi, and ed. by Gregory D. Alles. - Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1996 (History of religions in translation ; 2) ISBN 3-11-014518-9 brosch. ISBN 3-11-014519-7 Gb. NE: G T

© Copyright 1996 by Walter de Gruyter Sc Co., D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Disk conversion: Lewis & Leins GmbH, Berlin. Printing: Ratzlow-Druck, Berlin. Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin. Cover design: Sigurd Wendland, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Acknowledgments

I would be extremely remiss if I did not express my gratitude to several groups of people: Martin Kraatz, director of the Religionskundliche Sammlung, Marburg, and U. Bredehorn, of the University Library, Marburg, who have tirelessly made documents pertaining to Rudolf Otto available to me; Carol Quinn, Cheri Smith, Vicki Mattingly, and Susan Bonsteel of the interlibrary loan office, Western Maryland College, who have managed over the past several years to procure for me in one format or another almost all of Otto's published writings; Kurt and Christel Rudolph, Renate Zimmerman, Carsten Koch, Fritz Heinrich, Martin Schröder, Alf Ozen, and Christine Wackenroder, who have in various ways facilitated several visits in Germany; Luther Martin and the people at Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, who proposed this volume and patiently saw it to completion; the persons and publishers who have given permission to publish the translations in this volume: Martin Kraatz once again, this time as trustee of Rudolf Otto's estate, which holds the copyright to Otto's published articles; the University Library, Marburg, for permission to translate the first selection in "My life" and "Early political involvement"; the University Archives, Göttingen, for permission to publish the second selection in "My life"; N. G. Elwert publishers, Marburg, for permission to translate "The idea of the modern university"; Ernst Reinhardt, GmbH & Co KG, Munich, for permission to translate "Gandhi, saint and statesman"; C. H. Beck, Munich, for permission to translate "Zinzendorf discovered the sensus numinis" and "Buddhism, Islam, and the irrational"; and J. C. B. Möhr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen, for permission to translate "Autonomy and theonomy". I must also acknowledge the late Peter Büttner, Mohamed Esa, Julie and Heshmat Badiee, Larry Wu, Colette Henriette, Carsten Koch, Fritz Heinrich, Constanze Härtung, Alf Ozen, and David Zucker, who helped answer questions on languages, cultures, and persons, as well as Landessuperintendent Hans-Christian Drömann (Lüneburg), Ulrich Hunger (University Archives, Göttingen), Helga-Maria Kühn (City Archives, Göttingen), Nina Kühn (University Archives, Erlangen), and Hans Otte (Archives, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hannover), who provided at a transatlantic distance information otherwise totally inaccessible; Ira Zepp, Ivan

vi

Acknowledgments

Strenski, Steven Ballard, and most especially Eric Ziolkowski, who read and commented on the introduction and translations; and finally the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Faculty Development Committee of Western Maryland College, and Del Palmer, my former dean, who funded earlier work on Otto that eventually led to this book. A special word of thanks is due to my family, immediate and extended. But their contributions can never be adequately acknowledged by three lines in a book.

Contents

Acknowledgments

ν

Introduction 1. Otto's scholarship 2. Otto among the theologians 3. Otto and the humanistic science of religion 4. Otto's humanistic critics 5. The present collection References

1 2 3 15 26 38 43

A. Autobiographical fragments 1. My life (1891, 1898) 2. Letters from North Africa (1911) (Selections) 3. Letters from India and Egypt (1927-1928 [1938]) 4. A letter from Greece (1891 [1941])

50 50 61 92 100

B. Politics and society 5. Early Political Involvement (1903 [1938]) 6. Germany as a cultural colonial power (1912) 7. Rudolf Otto, National Liberal candidate (1913) 8. Election reform (1918) 9. A League of Nations is not enough (1920, 1921, 1923) 10. A service to celebrate the fatherland (1925)

102 102 104 115 128 142 150

..

C. The academy and the study of religions 11. The idea of the modern university (1927) 12. Zinzendorf discovered the sensus numinis (1932) 13. Buddhism, Islam, and the irrational (1932) 14. Gandhi, saint and statesman (1933)

162 162 179 186 194

D. The work of the church 15. Establish church offices for women (1903) 16. Liberal Protestants need practice in ministry, too (1910, 1911)

206 206 214

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17. The creed set to music (1911, 1913) 18. The church's mission in a secular society (1919)

219 228

E. Ethical reflections 253 19. On feeling guilty (1931) 253 20. The autonomy of values and theonomy (posthumous) . . . . 274 A bibliography of Otto in English References Index

289 291 299

Introduction

The assessment of Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) stands at a crucial juncture. That is the reason for this book. Otto is best known today for the analysis of religious experience contained in his masterwork, The idea of the holy, and for books in which he developed the insights advanced there, India's religion of grace and Christianity, Religious essays: A supplement to 'The idea of the holy', and Mysticism east and west.1 These books are widely regarded as making up one of the most significant influences on the academic study of religions in the twentieth century. Indeed, some rank Otto as one of the founders of that study. Until now, critical studies of Otto have focused almost exclusively on the content of his theological and philosophical thinking. They have paid little attention to either the conditions and circumstances under which he thought or the broader activities of which his intellectual efforts were a part. At best, those who recognized Otto's non-academic activities have tended to dismiss them. For example, John Harvey (b. 1889) wrote in his preface to the second edition of The idea of the holy (1950: xi): "(Otto's) heart was not, I am sure, in politics." But Harvey's statement, intended to reassure a British public in 1950, is dubious at best. For significant periods of his life, Otto's heart was decidedly in politics. It was in many other social and ecclesiastical projects, too. In fact, Otto's scholarship appears to have been only a part, although a significant part, of a broader, multi-faceted public program. As a result, his comparative study of religions encapsulated the political loyalties of a religiously committed, politically active, moderate left-liberal. The present collection does not make that case. It lays the groundwork for doing so. It makes the most important documentary evidence available to readers of English. So far as I can tell, every selection is translated here for the first time.

1

For publishing details see "A bibliography of Otto in English", below.

2

Introduction

1. Otto's scholarship By profession, Otto was a systematic theologian. He taught Protestant theology at the Universities of Göttingen (1898-1915), Breslau (19151917), and Marburg (1917-1929). 2 It was as a theologian that he developed his influential ideas on the world's religions. All German liberal theologians were more or less indebted to Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). The relationship between Otto and Schleiermacher was particularly close. In 1899 Otto edited the one hundredth anniversary edition of Schleiermacher's early and influential book, On religion: Speeches to its cultured despisers (1799 [1899], cp. 1958). The book's fundamental contention - religion is neither metaphysics nor morals but something sui generis, a feeling for the infinite - set the tone for Otto's later work. But Otto did not remain a rigid disciple of Schleiermacher. In 1904, after conversations with the Göttingen instructor in philosophy, Leonard Nelson (1882-1927), he began to shift to the positions of Jakob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843), a successor of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Fries insisted that people obtained valid knowledge not simply from reason and experience but also from intuition (Ahnung) or feeling (Gefühl), in fact, that the very validity of rational and experiential knowledge presumed an intuition or feeling of truth. From his student days, Otto had been vexed by natural scientists, particularly followers of Darwin like Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), who threatened the traditional religiosity with which he had grown up. 3 Schleiermacher, then Fries, provided him with weapons for opposing these "forces of irreligion". By contrasting religious-idealistic and naturalistic worldviews, Otto was able to claim an autonomy and validity for the former and to identify (alleged) conceptual deficiencies in the latter. His book, The philosophy of religion based on Kant and Fries, developed the rational, philosophical implications of this point of view for theology. The idea of the holy turned to religion's irrational side and its relations with the rational. In doing so, it developed Otto's classic account of numinous experience as the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. To Otto, 2

3

For some reason, most of the dates given for Otto's career in the "Translator's preface" to second edition of The idea of the holy (1950) are wrong. For correct dates, see Lüdemann - Schröder (1987: 75-77). The best, singlevolume introduction to Otto's thought in English is Almond (1984). Otto eventually came to see his traditional beliefs as intellectually untenable. See "1. My life", below.

2. Otto among the theologians

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this "experience" was not psychological but dimly empirical, analogous to "touching" but not "seeing". But since the experience was not strictly empirical, it also provided the religious a priori for which others, too, had been searching, most notably Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923). Like Schleiermacher, Otto found religious intuition in all religions. He was especially attracted to the religions of India. He undertook translations of Sanskrit texts into German, and he wrote classic accounts comparing two varieties of Christian and Indian religion, Mysticism east and west and India's religion of grace and Christianity. But Otto did not simply develop his theoretical analysis by considering affairs abroad; he also applied it to practice at home. His best known efforts concerned the Christian liturgy. He emphasized silent worship as the most appropriate response to the presence of "the holy", and he spearheaded efforts to reform German Lutheran liturgical practice in that direction. For a time, Otto's ideas and efforts evoked considerable enthusiasm. For example, within roughly ten years of its initial German publication The idea of the holy appeared in English, Swedish (Otto 1924), Spanish (Otto 1925), Italian (Otto 1926), Japanese (Otto 1927), Dutch (Otto 1928), and French (Otto 1929) translations. Indeed, Otto's distinctive vocabulary made such an impression on the English-speaking world that it has passed into general cultural currency. The word "numinous" has become standard English for anything that has a vaguely spiritual or mystical aura (Simpson - Weiner [ed.] 1989) The initial enthusiasm for Otto helped define the manner in which his ideas were discussed. The major issue was the extent to which we theologians, scientists of religion, others with an interest in religions should adopt Otto's ideas. But this discussion seems to have run its course. The idea of the holy remains a "must read", but Otto is no longer on the leading edge of thinking about religions. The story of his effects - his Wirkungsgeschichte, if you will - is one of a gradual waning. That is what makes a new approach to Otto opportune.

2. Otto among the theologians Otto's fate as a systematic theologian was particularly unfortunate. Some theologians - C. A. Campbell (b. 1897), John Macquarrie, Bernard Meland (1899-1994), James Luther Adams (1901-1994) - found inspiration

4

Introduction

in his w o r k , but O t t o r e a c h e d the p i n n a c l e of his c a r e e r just w h e n p o w erful t h e o l o g i c a l m o v e m e n t s m a d e his m a n n e r o f thinking seem o b s o l e t e . A s E r n s t Benz ( 1 9 7 1 : 3 2 - 3 3 ) recalled in c o m m e m o r a t i n g the o n e h u n d r e d t h a n n i v e r s a r y o f O t t o ' s birth: When I came to Marburg in 1 9 3 5 , the battle [between Otto's supporters and opponents] had already been decided. Over against the small number of [Otto's] students stood a large group of others. They loudly proclaimed an immature, simplified Barthianism, enthusiastically embraced existentialism and Bultmann's theology, and never missed a chance to ridicule the ideas that Rudolf O t t o expounded in his lectures and to make jokes about the "temple of idols" that he had founded, the Religionskundliche Sammlung [Museum of the world's religions]. 4 In p e r s o n a l t e r m s , O t t o ' s sharpest critic w a s a c o l l e a g u e of his a t M a r b u r g f r o m 1 9 2 1 o n , the N e w T e s t a m e n t s c h o l a r R u d o l f B u l t m a n n ( 1 8 8 4 - 1 9 7 6 ) . In t e r m s o f positive t h e o l o g y , B u l t m a n n agreed w i t h O t t o o n o n e p o i n t , a n d p e r h a p s on o n e p o i n t only: G o d is " w h o l l y o t h e r " . B u l t m a n n first a d o p t e d this phrase f r o m O t t o in a s e r m o n p r e a c h e d in 1 9 1 7 " C o n c e r n i n g the hidden a n d revealed G o d " ( B u l t m a n n 1 9 6 0 : 3 4 ) . In t h e midst o f w a r , B u l t m a n n ( 1 9 6 0 : 2 9 ) t o l d his listeners:

23"We

will a l w a y s see G o d as wholly o t h e r t h a n w e t h o u g h t h i m to b e . " L a t e r , in p a r t u n d e r the influence o f M a r t i n H e i d e g g e r , he developed the t h e m e o f G o d ' s o t h e r n e s s in a n existentialist direction. H i s 1 9 2 5 essay, " W h a t d o e s it m e a n t o speak o f G o d ? " ( J o h n s o n [ed.] 1 9 8 7 : 7 9 - 9 0 ) , is a g o o d e x a m p l e . In it, B u l t m a n n never m e n t i o n e d O t t o by n a m e . N e v e r t h e l e s s , he a t t e m p t e d t o d e m o l i s h in succession t h e themes c e n t r a l to t h e t h o u g h t o f his c h i e f M a r b u r g rival. 4

Cf. also Rudolf Bultmann's "Autobiographical reflections ( 1 9 5 6 ) " (Bultmann 1960: 286): T h e point of view of the theological faculty in those days was not a unified one, and the oppositions within it, especially the tension between myself and Rudolf Otto (the successor of Wilhelm Herrmann), stirred even the students and led to lively discussions. These became especially animated whenever theologians from other universities, like Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten, were invited to Marburg to lecture. Cp. Paul Tillich's "Autobiographical reflections" (Kegley - Bretall 1 9 5 2 : 14): "During the three semesters of my teaching [in Marburg 1 9 2 4 - 1 9 2 5 ] I met the first radical effects of the neo-orthodox theology on theological students: cultural problems were excluded from theological thought; theologians like Schleiermacher, Harnack, Troeltsch, O t t o , were contemptuously rejected; social and political ideas were banned from theological discussions."

2. Otto among the

theologians

5

Bultmann's basic contention concerned the inadequacy of human language and, beyond that, of human effort. When human beings talk about themselves or God, he maintained, they inevitably distort the complexity and fullness of their own concrete existence and the reality which determines that existence. From this position, Bultmann found no sense in Otto's lament that science, whose business was to formulate universally valid propositions, did not talk about God. He rejected any assertion that God was the "creative" or the "irrational" as falsely objectifying the "wholly other". He declared it impossible to discover religious truth by introspectively analyzing one's own experience. He found Otto's concern for "the antithesis between idealism and materialism . . . irrelevant"; an idealistic worldview veils our anxieties about and responsibilities toward concrete existence as much as a materialistic worldview. Finally, he insisted that one could not establish any universally proper response to encountering God. That included the response of silence, about which Otto and his school had said so much. From a distance, Bultmann's insistence that one cannot talk about God or one's own existence is somewhat amusing. Bultmann seems to have talked about nothing else.5 But the important point for us is the different conceptual world within which Bultmann moved. Otto had distinguished worldviews synchronically and aimed to defend idealism and religion against the attacks of materialism. Bultmann distinguished worldviews diachronically. His goal was not to defend one outlook against another but to translate the message of God from the mythological to the scientific frame. For Otto, religion was a matter of prerational, premoral intuition and feeling. It arose from a sense of the numinous and an allied sense of sin and guilt. For Bultmann, Christianity was a matter of the will and of faith. It arose when God approached human beings in his Word and required human beings to decide in response to his claims. Again, Otto's sensus numinis was distributed throughout the world, so that theology became something of a science, a systematic, critical account, in generic language ("the holy", "the numinous", "the mysterium tremendum"), 5

Bultmann himself recognized the difficulty. His essay concluded (Johnson [ed.] 1 9 8 7 : 90): "Even this lecture is a speaking about God and as such, if God is, it is sin, and if God is not, it is meaningless. Whether it has meaning and whether it is justified - none of us can judge." Nevertheless, it is important to recognize what, I think, Bultmann means to say: that no words, no speech, can ever adequately encapsulate the fullness of concrete experience. In this sense, existence really does precede essence.

6

Introduction

of an object of human experience. Bultmann rejected this approach. He regarded every universalizing treatment of "religion" and every attempt to derive religious truth from human experience as characteristic of hum a n effort and the world, not of faith and a "wholly other" God. 6 In Bultmann's conceptual world Otto's subtle, introspective analyses simply missed the point. 7 Otto was no typical liberal theologian. He diverged from liberal theology in several ways: by emphasizing the irrational as opposed to the rational, by excluding morality from the core of the numinous experience, by speaking prominently of the wrath of God - more broadly, the mysterium tremendum - and the fear that it evoked, and by recognizing G o d as the "wholly other". But compared with the vast changes in re6 7

See Bultmann (1987: 54-65), esp. 56: "A religious a priori, a religious 'drive', is always nothing but a part of the world, and has nothing to do with faith, if the latter really has to do with God." As theologians, each thinker found the other's categories entirely unsatisfactory, and neither was reluctant to express his judgments. In The kingdom of God and the son of man (51), Otto wrote pointedly: It is not my existence which Christ's call to repentance places in question but my righteousness before God; and it is not assurance of my existence which his message places in prospect but salvation . . . . O f course, I must exist, if I want to attain salvation and righteousness in the kingdom of God. But I also exist if I go to hell, and if I am anxious about my existence I shall go there, perhaps, with the greatest certainty. In reviewing the book, Bultmann (1937: 19) returned the favor: "The entire conceptual apparatus of the 'numinous' strikes me as unsuited to interpreting the person and proclamation of Jesus." The battle had already been engaged much earlier. In 1926 Bultmann (1958: 48) had written: All pietistic religious experience is wholly alien to [Jesus]. By any such means a claim of man on God would again be established, and man's attitude toward God would be that of raising himself to deity. Jesus knows only one attitude toward God - obedience. Since he sees man standing at the point of decision, the essential part of man is for him the will, the free act. Cp. Bultmann (1958: 154), where Bultmann talks of God vanishing before persons who do not realize that they obtain fellowship with God through obedience: Otherwise God would be a universal natural substance, something nonrational; psychological experiences, excitement and ecstasy, devotion and joy, would be interpreted as communion with God. As little as Jesus describes the nature of God in these terms does he speak of spiritual states and experiences. All mystical designations of God are lacking in his teaching, and all talk of the soul and its emotional states.

2. Otto among the

7

theologians

ligious epistemology that others w e r e m a k i n g , O t t o ' s deviations merely seemed t o be epicycles designed t o save an a r c h a i c theory (e. g., Green [ed.] 1 9 8 9 : 4 9 ) . T h e encounter with B u l t m a n n w a s the m o s t intense in personal terms, but the criticism of t w o n e o - o r t h o d o x Swiss theologians, Karl B a r t h ( 1 8 8 6 - 1 9 6 8 ) and Emil B r u n n e r ( 1 8 8 9 - 1 9 6 6 ) , p r o b a b l y had the b r o a d e s t i m p a c t . B a r t h and B r u n n e r rejected liberal theology in no uncertain t e r m s . T h e y found Schleiermacher's a t t e m p t to derive Christian teachings f r o m the general c o n c e p t "religion" a b h o r r e n t . A religionistic, a n t h r o p o c e n tric, h u m a n i s t i c a p p r o a c h , r o o t e d in the analysis of h u m a n experience o r piety, simply glorified h u m a n beings at the e x p e n s e of G o d . 8 Christian t h e o l o g y had t o begin not with h u m a n experience but with the selfrevelation of G o d in Jesus Christ, with G o d ' s W o r d . Barth ( 1 9 3 6 :

153)

c a p t u r e d the distance f r o m O t t o in phrases t h a t are typically a b r u p t . Rudolf Otto's "Idea of the Holy", whatever it may be, is at all events not to be regarded as the Word of God, for the simple and patent reason that it is the numinous, and that the numinous is the irrational, and the irrational something no longer distinguishable from an absolutised power of Nature. Upon this very distinction everything depends, if we are to understand the concept of the Word of God. 9

8

9

Cf. Barth (Green [ed.] 1989: 48): Along almost the whole front, at any rate in all its representative figures and groups, evangelical theology had become religionistic and so anthropocentric and so, in this sense, humanistic. I mean, the phenomenon and theme about which everything circled was an outer and inner disposition and emotion in human piety - which could well be Christian piety . . . . To think of God meant for them, with scarcely any attempt to hide the fact, to think of human experience, particularly of the Christian religious experience . . . . Without doubt human beings were here magnified at the expense of God - the God as One who is sovereign Other standing over against humanity, as the immovable and immutable Lord confronting humanity, Creator and Redeemer. Cp. Brunner ( 1 9 5 0 : 46): "This development of dogmatics out of the concept of 'religion' is repellant to all those theologians who, diverging from, and indeed in opposition to Schleiermacher, conceive the Christian Faith to be the relation of man to the Divine Revelation." For fuller, earlier statements that explicitly label as un-Christian any approach that develops a universal theory of religion - Brunner names Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Otto, and James - see Brunner (1946: 2 2 0 , 2 5 4 , 1 9 4 7 : 6 8 - 7 0 , 110-111). Cp. Brunner ( 1 9 5 0 : 44).

8

Introduction

In interpreting the word of God, Barth and Brunner, like Bultmann, emphasized God's will, his personhood, and his unique, once-for-all revelation in the person of Jesus. But Barth and Brunner differed on at least one major point. Barth (e. g., Green [ed.] 1989: 50) insisted that God was totaliter aliter [wholly other], that an "infinite qualitative difference" separated human beings from God. Brunner disagreed. He emphasized that human beings had been created in the image of God. The divine image may have been distorted in the fall, but it was not destroyed. This fundamental disagreement parallels the different ways in which Barth and Brunner utilized Otto's thought in their accounts of holiness. "The holy" as the human experience of the numinous may have been what Otto found in all religions, but God's holiness, as the assertion of his will in the face of all opposition, was what required Barth to cling solely to the Word of God and reject all religions as human attempts to attain divinity. There are formal similarities between Barth's and Otto's account. In a manner reminiscent of Otto's fascinans and tremendum, Barth discussed holiness in conjunction with grace and judgment. "God is holy", he wrote (Barth 1957: 358-363), "because His grace judges and His judgment is gracious." Furthermore, when Barth attributed both grace and holiness to God's transcendence, that was reminiscent of Otto's mysterium,10 But Barth was in no mood to acknowledge similarities. His emphasis on the absolute otherness of God and the uniqueness of God's revelation in Jesus required him to dismiss Otto's ideas out of hand (Barth 1957: 360): "The holy God of Scripture is certainly not 'the holy' of R. Otto, that numinous element which, in its aspect as tremendum, is in itself and as such the divine. But the holy God of Scripture is the Holy One of Israel."" Like Barth, Brunner criticized Otto for overlooking the personal Holy One of Israel, unique to biblical revelation. 12 He also chided Otto for failing to see that what makes the Holy One holy is precisely that he sep10 Barth (1957: 360) further suggests Otto's notion of mysterium when he states that grace and holiness are linked because "they both in characteristic though differing fashion point to the transcendence of God over all that is not Himself". 11 Many features of Barth's rejection of Otto persist from his earliest teaching days, when he judged Otto's "holy", in which God's mercy and righteousness were only secondary characteristics, a form of idolatry (Barth 1991: 420). 12 "Rudolf Otto", he writes tersely (Brunner 1962: 290), " . . . had important insights but the decisive Biblical message that God is the Holy One escaped him."

2. Otto among the

theologians

9

arates himself, as the Wholly Other, not just from nature but from everything else. 13 Nevertheless, the chapter on holiness in Brunner's Dogmatics opens by expressing appreciation for "Otto's beautiful book", which demonstrated "in an impressive and conclusive manner" that the holy, conceived abstractly, is common to all religions (Brunner 1950: 157). He agreed with Otto that the biblical conception of holiness initially had no moral component, although in an absolute sense moral autonomy was a chimera (the good is good because God wills it) and holiness and morality are inseparable (Brunner 1950: 158, 165-166). He also used many of Otto's distinctive themes - creaturely feeling, the mysterium tremendum, God's wrathful aspect - to characterize a double movement in the holy, on the one hand withdrawal and exclusion, on the other expansion and inclusion (Brunner 1950: 162-164). Nevertheless, Brunner tended to limit the numinous to an irrational mysterium tremendum that evoked fear in creatures and then to identify this numinous only with the God who meets us in nature, Luther's deus absolutus or nudus (Brunner 1950: 172). He restricted the moment of grace to the God who meets human beings in the form of Jesus on the cross. 14 Despite their differences, Bultmann, Barth, and Brunner represent the major theological tendencies that exploded over Germany in the early 1920s, overwhelmed Otto at the pinnacle of his career, and resulted in a widespread rejection of his thought among theologians. As Barth (Green [ed.] 1989: 51) recalled in 1956: "Everything that even from afar smelt of mysticism and morals, of pietism and romanticism or even of idealism, how suspect it was and how strictly prohibited or confined in the straitjacket of restrictions that sounded prohibitive. What derisive laughter there was where there need only have been a sad and friendly smile!" But not every major German-speaking Protestant theologian of the younger generation rejected mysticism, morals, romanticism, idealism, or even Rudolf Otto out of hand. The most important of those who did not was Paul Tillich (1886-1965).

13 Brunner (1950: 160) remarks: "The Divine Holiness is inseparably connected with that character of absolute intolerance which distinguishes the Biblical idea of God, and differentiates it from all other ideas of God." Cp. 158, where Brunner insists that only the Creator, the Holy One of Israel, and not the gods of other religions, can be Wholly Other. 14 Brunner (1946: 2 7 1 ) explicitly rejects Otto's identification of Indian bhakti traditions with grace.

10

Introduction

Barth rejected The idea of the holy as soon as he read it. 15 Tillich's reaction was somewhat different. "When I first read Rudolf Otto's Idea of the Holy", he wrote (Kegley - Bretall 1952: 6), "I understood it immediately in the light of [my] early experiences, and took it into my thinking as a constitutive element." 16 Tillich differed from Barth, Brunner, and Bultmann on two points that made openness to Otto's ideas possible. Instead of opposing divine revelation to human religious experience, Tillich (1951: 40-46) saw human experience as the necessary medium through which divine revelation was mediated. And instead of opposing the truth of the gospel to all other religious loyalties, he developed a systematic theology that was at the same time an analysis of religion in general. Among other topics, his mature Systematic theology provided "A phenomenological description" of "The meaning of 'God' " under the heading, "God and the idea of the holy" (Tillich 1951: xi). At the same time, Tillich did not simply recapitulate Otto's thought. Otto's concentration on religious feeling was, he felt, too one-sided. To avoid the appearance of aesthetic emotionalism, he himself (Tillich 1951: 215) defined the holy as a quality of ultimate concern rather than of internal human experience. 17 Rejecting the seemingly absolute wall of separation that Otto had erected between the irrational and the rational, he replaced Otto's peculiar notions of schematization and associated feelings with his own well-known account of symbolization (e. g., Tillich 1957). He systematically retranslated Otto's terms - the numinous, the 15 "Barth had read [The idea of the holy] with astonishment when still a pastor at Safenwil. From the very start Barth's thinking had taken the opposite course, through his preoccupation with the Word of God which he held to be fundamentally and inherently rational" (Torrance 1962: 181). 16 Tillich (Kegley - Bretall 1952: 6) continues: It [Otto's book] determined my method in the philosophy of religion, wherein I started with the experiences of the holy and advanced to the idea of God, and not the reverse way. Equally important existentially, as well as theologically, were the mystical, sacramental, and aesthetic implications of the idea of the holy, whereby the ethical and logical elements of religion were derived from the experience of the presence of the divine, and not conversely. This made Schleiermacher congenial to me, as he was to Otto, and induced both Otto and me to participate in movements for liturgical renewal and a revaluation of Christian and non-Christian mysticism. 17 Cf. also Tillich's brief, early article on Otto (Tillich 1923) and James Luther Adams (1965: 74, 220 n. 59). Tillich (1951: 215-216) also insists that we see Otto's analysis as phenomenological, not psychological.

2. Otto among

the

theologians

11

mysterium tremendum, the fascinosum - into his own distinctive vocabulary of human concern for the ultimate as both abyss and ground of being. 18 Then he put these terms to limited use in developing a typology of the divine. Polytheism, Tillich (1951: 222-225) said, emphasized the concreteness rather than the absoluteness of human ultimate concern. The language of the numinous provided him with a means to prevent the concrete ultimate from collapsing entirely into the merely secular. 19 Bernard Meland (1965: 191) has suggested that the major differences between Otto and Tillich derived from a fundamental choice of philosophical loyalty: Otto chose Fries, Tillich chose Schelling. In any case, Tillich did find Otto's terms for describing the experience of the holy useful. By and large he abandoned Otto's analysis of that experience. To be sure, Bultmann, Barth, Brunner, and Tillich no longer define the shape of Christian, or better, Protestant theology, as they once did. Today, the neo-orthodox insistence on the distinctiveness of Christianity and the uniqueness of God's revelation in Jesus is likely to seem quaint, offensive, or at least no longer tenable. Theologians now inhabit a world of religious pluralism, uncertain truth-claims, and interreligious dialogue. Furthermore, grand intellectual efforts at producing comprehensive theological systems have yielded to grand intellectual-practical efforts at liberating the oppressed. 20 Nevertheless, the earlier "gang of 18 Tillich ( 1 9 5 1 : 2 1 5 - 2 1 6 ) : When Otto calls the experience of the holy "numinous", he interprets the holy as the presence of the divine. When he points to the mysterious character of holiness, he indicates that the holy transcends the subjectobject structure of reality. When he describes the mystery of the holy as tremendum and fascinosum, he expresses the experience of "the ultimate" in the double sense of that which is the abyss and that which is the ground of man's being. 19 For example, Tillich ( 1 9 5 1 : 2 2 3 ) comments on Homer's deities: "Completely humanized gods are unreal. They are idealized men. They have no numinous power. The fascinosum and tremendum are gone." Later, Tillich ( 1 9 5 1 : 2 3 1 2 3 2 ) discusses the philosophical transformation of universalistic polytheism into monistic naturalism, " a universalistic feeling for the all-pervading presence of the divine. But it is an expression in which the numinous character of the universalistic idea of God has been replaced by the secular character of the monistic idea of nature." 2 0 I do not mean to misrepresent the earlier theologians. One should not overlook either Barth's or Tillich's early commitment to socialism. Still, the gaps between Barth's Church dogmatics and Tillich's Systematic theology, on the one hand, and the work of theologians like Gustavo Gutierrez, James Cone,

12

Introduction

four" still constitutes the defining moment in the theological reception of Rudolf Otto's thought. After the scathing critique, Otto never became a dominant force in Christian theology. 21 At most, he provided what he provided Tillich and, to a lesser extent, Brunner: a useful vocabulary for discussing the encounter with the transcendent, if not the divine. A more recent book by the Catholic theologian David Tracy provides a particularly good example: The analogical imagination: Christian theology and the culture of pluralism (Tracy 1981). Several factors are responsible for Tracy's openness to Otto. Like Tillich, indeed like Otto and Schleiermacher, Tracy develops a theology that is also, in some sense, a meta-theology. His emphasis on religious classics predisposes him to favor texts like Otto's famous book. In addition, his hermeneutical inclination leads him to prefer the tradition of scholars, from Schleiermacher through Otto to Mircea Eliade, who acknowledge religion as a phenomenon sui generis. He builds his theology around the interpretation of religious classics, a term that encompasses events, images, persons, and symbols as well as texts. But what is a religious classic? To answer this question, Tracy combines Otto's bipolar mystery with Schleiermacher's sense of the infinite. A religious classic, he states (Tracy 1981: 169), provides "some sense of recognition into the objectively awe-some reality of the otherness of the whole as radical

and M a r y Daly, on the other, should be apparent. Otto's concern for religious pluralism is apparent to anyone who has read any of his academic writings. His engagement with interreligious dialogue and liberation - specifically his attempt to establish a Religiöser Menschheitsbund [Religious league of humanity] that would serve, in part, to direct religious resources to redress the sufferings of the oppressed - is less well known. See "An inter-religious league" (Religious essays, 1 5 0 - 1 5 6 ) and " 9 . A League of Nations is not enough", below. I have discussed the Religiöser Menschheitsbund in Alles ( 1 9 9 1 ) . 2 1 A quick look through the indexes of several books by James Cone and Gustavo Gutierrez did not reveal a single citation of Otto. Mary Daly ( 1 9 7 8 : 4 8 - 4 9 ) rejects both Otto's notion of God as "wholly other" and his ascription of dread and awe to the human encounter with the divine or, in her terms, Self's be-ing. But Daly's criticism seems to be driven by a reflexive ideology of opposition that produces interesting results. Although Daly rejects religious dread as patriarchal, Otto's emphasis on the tremendum countered a domineering patriarchal tradition that had by and large rejected it. Like Ritschl and his followers, Daly actually restricts the range of human emotion that is open to religion.

2. Otto among

the theologians

13

mystery". 22 To elucidate how that recognition is expressed, Tracy (1981: 176) invokes Paul Tillich's account of religious symbols. There are serious differences between Otto's mysterium tremendum et fascinans and Tracy's use of those terms. Otto postulated an absolute, qualitative difference between the object that occasioned the experience of the numinous and the numinous experience itself. Tracy makes mysterium, tremendum and fascinans qualities of objects. 23 For Otto, the object was negligible; his concern was to explicate the experience. Tracy's concern is the object itself; he wants to interpret its meaning and truth. Furthermore, Otto saw the accidental, the spontaneous, the natural, and the foreign as important stimuli of numinous experience. Tracy attributes numinousness to privileged, past instances ("classics"). Indeed, in contrast to Otto's practice, he seems to expect theologians to limit themselves to elucidating classics of their own traditions. More interesting than these differences, however, is the use that Tracy does not make of Otto. In developing his interpretation of his own Christian classic, Tracy assigns a pivotal role to the "uncanny". He surveys a full range of contemporary intellectual and cultural movements, noting the uncanny in each. Then he observes (Tracy 1981: 362): "If the self is not to scatter itself into the void of sheer fascination at our pluralistic possibilities, then the tremendum power of the always-already, not-yet uncanniness of our homelessness - with ourselves, others, history, society, nature - must first be lived through and only then reflected upon." The importance of the uncanny in Tracy's book is clear: it enables him to apply the Christian classic to the contemporary world. But the genealogy he gives for that idea is very curious. Despite Tracy's alleged preference for the phenomenological tradition in which Otto stands, despite the centrality of the uncanny - das Unheimliche - in Otto's exposition of the numinous, 24 despite the clear allusions to Otto in the sentence just quoted, and despite the abundance of annotation in Tracy's burdened 2 2 Tracy begins his account of the religious classic with a direct explication of Otto. Later, he suggests (Tracy 1 9 8 1 : 174) that a religious classic is distinctive because it "does not disclose the certainty of a clarity and a control but the reality of a power at once tremendum et fascinans". 2 3 See further Tracy ( 1 9 9 0 : 5), which characterizes the experience of meeting and talking seriously with Buddhists as mysterium fascinans et tremendum. 2 4 For example: The German ungeheuer is not by derivation simply 'huge', in quantity or quality; - this, its common meaning, is in fact a rationalizing interpretation of the real idea; it is that which is not geheuer, i. e. approximately,

14

Introduction

volume, he does not mention Otto in conjunction with the uncanny at all. The notes to this section of the book read instead like a " W h o ' s W h o " of fashionable thought, and Tracy ( 1 9 8 1 : 369 n. 63) ascribes the idea of the uncanny only to Freud. Bernard Meland ( 1 9 6 5 : 189) once observed about the theological possibilities and limitations of Otto's thought: As a statement of the phenomenology of spirit within [the] framework of thought [that Otto adopts] it is difficult to see how Otto's formulation of the idea of the holy could be improved upon. For all of Otto's concern with the idea of the holy, however, his thought remains essentially under the dominance of rational-ethical categories. The holy appears as an overtone or supplement to it, but with no radically transforming consequences at the level of rational and ethical activity. Thus the effect upon thought and action appear (sic) to be more aesthetic than redemptive.

Perhaps it is possible to reframe this observation. Two features of Otto's description of religious experience make it theologically attractive. His emphasis on the mysterium suits it to theological projects that want to accentuate the difference between the human and some religious object or reality, while the rich development of the polar pair, tremendum and fascinans, provides an aura of full breadth. Thus, in settings that value transcendence and comprehensiveness, it would be difficult, as Meland says, to improve on Otto's description of what religious people experience. Not only have theologians who strongly disagreed with Otto, like Brunner, found his vocabulary helpful. That vocabulary has passed into general cultural currency, at least in the English-speaking world. But outside the parameters of Otto's own peculiar project, it is not clear what this rich account of religious experience can contribute to theology. It is doubtful that it can function the way Otto wanted it to: as an epistemological alternative to reason and sense perception. Furthermore, the emphasis on feelings and qualitative difference does not provide much specific theological content. Tracy's survey of the uncanny the uncanny - in a word, the numinous. And it is just this element of the uncanny in man that Sophocles has in mind [when he writes in Antigone, 'There is much that is deinos, but nothing more deinos than human beings']. If this, its fundamental meaning, be really and thoroughly felt in consciousness, then the word could be taken as a fairly exact expression for the numinous in its aspects of mystery, awefulness, majesty, augustness, and 'energy'; nay, even the aspect of fascination is dimly felt in it.

(The idea of the holy 1950: 40)

3. Otto and the humanistic science of religion

15

in contemporary thought demonstrates at least this much: an aura of the uncanny or the numinous can envelop any number of different and not entirely reconcilable intellectual positions. As a result, it seems (pace Tracy) to contribute nothing of substance to any of them. But even if Otto's ideas are unsuited to developing an account of religious truth in a specific religious context, say, Protestant theology, it is still possible that they might be useful in giving a general account of religion that is, to risk an oxymoron, humanistic scientific, as distinct from social scientific. In fact, Otto achieved his greatest influence not in systematic theology but in a science that sought to treat religion on its own terms.

3. Otto and the humanistic science of religion "There were never really any Ottomans", as there were Barthians, Joachim Wach (1951: 209) once observed. Nevertheless, a specific, autonomous, humanistic science of religion did develop in Germany, then in the English-speaking world, that bore several distinctly "Ottoman" traits. These traits extended well beyond the wholesale adoption of Otto's vocabulary of the numinous mysterium tremendum et fascinans.25 For example, during the late nineteenth century the topic of the origin and evolution of religion had been discussed intensely. But in a sharp critique of Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) Otto insisted that religion had not evolved from some prior, prereligious stage. It appeared at a certain point in human evolution and contained at that time all the potentials that later history would unfold. Otto also insisted that religion was something qualitatively distinct or sui generis and as such "irreducible". In The idea of the holy he had conceded that non-religious stimuli could in some sense occasion religious experiences. But through complex intellectual gymnastics he had tried to insure that religious experiences did not derive from these stimuli. On both counts, the humanistic science of religion followed Otto's lead (Wach 1951: 209-227). It stood firmly opposed to evolution and generally favored systematic over genealogical constructions; in this re2 5 I do not mean to claim that Otto was the only source for many of these features. Even the emphasis on the holy was anticipated by Nathan Söderblom (1914).

16

Introduction

gard, The idea of the holy served as a model. 26 Moreover, it condemned any attempt to make religion a consequence of psychological or sociological causes as "reductionist" (cp. Idinopulos - Yonan 1994). Other aspects of Otto's position also became commonplace in this science. Among the most important were the conception of religion as the experiential encounter with the holy (or the sacred), the contention that the heart of religion was irrational, and the insistence that to understand religious experience properly people needed a religious sensitivity. ("Do we ask the tone deaf for an account of music?") It would be wrong to limit Otto's influence to the preceding features. Among German scientists of religions, odd elements of Otto's work often appeared. Thus, Gustav Mensching's book on Tolerance and truth in religion (1971: 9, 161) mentions in passing Otto's Religiöser Menschheitsbund [Religious league of humanity], a now all but forgotten attempt to contribute to world peace by founding an association of all religions. Friedrich Heiler's general phenomenology of religion (1961: 451-452, 16, 138, 307, 335-336) contains a range of Ottomana that is unexpected in a work of its kind: Otto's Religiöser Menschheitsbund, his experiences in a Tunisian (actually a Moroccan) synagogue, his brief discursus on emptiness in Islamic architecture, his remarks on "Original numinous sounds", his proposal to introduce periods of silence into Protestant worship, and his interpretation of the Christian doctrine of predestination. As late as 1964 the anthropologist Wilhelm Mühlmann (b. 1904) (Mühlmann et al. 1964) adopted Otto's analysis of Jesus and early Christianity as a paradigm for discussing chiliastic and nativist movements. Nevertheless, Otto's work had its most significant impact on the general shape of the systematic or comparative science of religions. It did so at a time when, as in Protestant theology, the production of grand intellectual systems was in vogue. In the German context, the writings of Heinrich Frick (1893-1952), Gustav Mensching (b. 1901), and Kurt Goldammer chart the course of Otto's impact. Heinrich Frick was Otto's successor at Marburg. His Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft [Comparative science of religion] (Frick 1928), published while Frick was still teaching in nearby Giessen, reveals Otto's 26 Indeed, Otto intended his next book after The philosophy of religion based on Kant and Fries to be an introduction to the general history of religions, but he wrote The idea of the holy instead. The general history of religions was never written.

3. Otto and the humanistic

science of religion

17

influence in a number of ways. 27 It acknowledges that the experience of the holy has replaced conceptions of God (polytheism, monotheism, pantheism) as the focus of scholarly attention. It adopts Otto's account of the schematization of the holy. It notes with approval Otto's notion of "theopantism". And it quotes Otto extensively in arguing that mysticism and faith are not exclusive opposites, despite what was at the time common academic opinion (Frick 1928: 17, 20, 22 [cp. 113], 79, 108111). But the conception of Frick's book owes more to Otto's essay, "Parallels and convergences in the history of religion" (Religious essays, 95-109), than it does to his account of religious experience. The book begins by explicating a wide range of parallels among religions, which Frick calls convergences in stages of religious development. Then it turns to various features that provide actual religions with their individuality, in Frick's terms, continuities in a religion's Habitus or constitution. Finally, it identifies primary forms - religio-historical, religio-psychological, and religio-philosophical - from which religions are constituted (religiöse Orphänomene).28 These topics make Frick's book something of an oddity, or perhaps better, a holdover from an earlier age, but it is most important here to note the way Frick used Otto. He adopted some of Otto's neo-Friesian framework as well as the vocabulary Otto had derived from biological morphology, but he did not cast Otto's account of religious experience in the lead role. Very soon, however, a different set of topics - and a different attitude to Otto - became canonical in the German science of religion. Scholars began to presuppose Otto's account of religious experience as the Wesen 'essence' of religion and to concentrate their attention on explicating its expressions or forms. But in doing so, they replaced Otto's quasi-Kantian philosophical and categorical frame with the apparatus of phenomenology and hermeneutics. Furthermore, although they asserted an integral relationship between essence and manifestation or experience and expression, the topics to which they increasingly gave their attention related only loosely to Otto's analysis of religious experience. Ten years after Frick's book, another Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft (Men27 For critical analysis of Otto see Frick (1938, 1951). 28 The compass of Frick's vision is quite limited, at least in this book. The primary religio-historical form that he identifies is the tension between Catholicism and Protestantism; the primary religio-psychological form is the contrast between a mystical and a devotional piety; and the primary religiophilosophical form is a choice between temporal and spatial symbols.

18

Introduction

sching 1938b) appeared that illustrates these features well. Its author, Gustav Mensching, studied with Heiler and Otto at Marburg, collaborated with Otto on liturgical reform, and taught at the University of Bonn. 2 9 Mensching clearly owed much to Otto's influence. In Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft he praised Otto's rediscovery of the irrational as epoch-making in the study of religions. He judged Otto's later works, Mysticism east and west and India's religion of grace and Christianity, to be foundations for a hermeneutical science of religion (eine Religionswissenschaft des Verstehens) (Mensching 1949b: 21-23). More important, he defined religion as "the encounter with the holy and the response in action of people who are defined (bestimmt) by the holy" (Mensching 1949b: 78). He saw the holy as neither an object of sense perception nor of ratiocination but as an experience in a class of its own, apprehended through its own peculiar faculty, the sensus numinis. The salient characteristics of this experience, he said (Mensching 1949b: 78-79), had already been identified by Otto. Furthermore, he made Otto's "holy" the telos 'end' to which his own account tended. He began with empirical multiplicity and eventually asserted ultimate unity (Mensching 1949b: 180): "Everywhere there is the experience of a holy, which as wholly other transcends the here and now." The ways in which human beings relate to the holy may vary, as do the ways in which they try to approach it, "but the basic tendency is everywhere the same". 3 0 At the same time, he replaced Otto's renegade Friesian-Kantianism with a phenomenologi-

2 9 Mensching's writings were voluminous. Mensching (1938b, 1949b) should be read in conjunction with at least Mensching (1949a) and Mensching (1948). Mensching (1938a) is essentially a bibliographical survey that formed the core of the later, more encompassing essay, "Rudolf Otto und die Religionsgeschichte" (Mensching 1971a). 30 The sentence immediately following the first quote directs readers to O t t o ' s classic exposition. Mensching (1949b: 148) claimed to have discovered this encounter as the unity of all religions empirically: " N o n e of the typical structures or essential laws that I have treated here results from philosophical speculation. They are all derived instead from the religio-historical reality of the [world's] religions." About this claim there is r o o m for doubt. The way Mensching organized his book had at least one practical advantage. By beginning with visible forms and working inward, Mensching could suggest that despite their multiplicity, all religious forms derived from the same unitary source. He did not have to show how.

3. Otto and the humanistic science of religion

19

cal, hermeneutical perspective inspired by Edmund Husserl and Wilhelm Dilthey. The distance separating Otto and Mensching emerges clearly from a simple example. Mensching praised Otto's rediscovery of the irrational, but he himself used the same word in a very different sense. For Otto, "irrational" qualified an important dimension - better yet, the constitutive dimension - of the religious object, the holy. By contrast, Mensching (1949b: 24, cp. 1949a: 12) applied "irrational" not to the religious object but to religion itself. "The decisive recognition here is that religion is life, not rational insight or rituals performed in time and space (zeiträumlicher Ritus). As such, it is something thoroughly irrational, and one can never get at it by exclusively applying the methods of exact, empirical research." For help in "getting at" this object, Mensching (1949b: 24) turned to Dilthey and Husserl. 3 1 He identified (Mensching 1949b: 2 6 - 3 0 ) t w o methods by which to proceed: a comparison which sought similarity and difference in function and an understanding that went beyond a mere study of empirical facts to develop a "feel" for religion. 3 2 31 Mensching (1949b: 23) also cited Gerardus van der Leeuw's phenomenology as an important paradigm. 32 In developing his account of comparison, Mensching recalled Otto's terms "homologue" and "analogue". Many of the same features recurred in a book written by Mensching's teacher, Friedrich Heiler (1892-1967), in his old age, Erscheinungsformen und Wesen der Religion [The Essence and manifestations of religion] (Heiler 1961). Like Mensching, Heiler (1961: 14) believed that the best understanding of religion came from "seeing the unity of religion in the multiplicity of religions". He warned readers that Otto's account tended to an aesthetic psychologism, but he still conceived of religion in Ottonian terms: not as human action but as the objective, the uncanny, the numen, the mysterium tremendum. At the same time, he replaced Otto's philosophical underpinnings with a hermeneutical phenomenology. The book is not without its curiosities. It pursues what Heiler (1961: 19) called a "concentric" method inspired by (Pseudo-) Dionysius the Areopagite. So far as I can see, what Heiler means to say is that he is not developing simply a neutral taxonomy in which all taxa are equal but a classification that leads eventually to a central core or essence from which all the phenomena are generated. The book moves progressively from the world of religious forms through the world of religious ideas, the world of religious experiences, and the world of the object of religion, to the essence of religion. In explicating the penultimate world, the world of the object of religion, Heiler essentially summarized Otto's ideas. But the book lacks elegance. Curiously, it separates religious objects (der heilige Gegenstand) from the object of religion (die

20

Introduction

Thus, Mensching's systematic account distanced itself from Otto in terms of method but retained - indeed, culminated in - Otto's account of the numinous as the central unity that all religions shared. Kurt Goldammer's book, Die Formenwelt des Religiösen [The world of religious forms] (1960), maintained the distance from Otto in method and added to it a distance in content. The numinous was no longer the experiential source driving Goldammer's account of religion; it was simply one more religious object, a customary and unavoidable taxon. Otto's analysis was the traditional description of that taxon, but it was beginning to lose its appeal. Goldammer opened with a methodological introduction followed by a discussion of religion in general. 33 Then he turned to the object of religion. He discussed many specific objects: powers and power; the holy as it lives in things, plants, animals, and human beings; the holy in the regularities of nature; forms of gods; the idea of god; and the give and take between human beings and the powers of holiness. But he began with a discussion of "the holy" in and of itself. This manner of exposition had a marked effect: it deemphasized the holy and shifted it somewhat off-center. Goldammer's account of the holy began conventionally enough. Religion, he asserted, is always relation to an object. One cannot simply equate this object with God; it can take many forms. But "the holy or the numinous is the central mystery and the source of all religious life" Gegenstandswelt der Religion), placing the former at the front, the latter at the back of the book (contrast Goldammer, below). The book also lacks balance. The closer Heiler gets to what he says is most important, the less he actually has to say. The world of religious forms occupies some 433 pages; the section that replicates Otto, the world of the object of religion, a mere two. One wonders. Did Heiler's aging energies begin to fail in the course of writing, or was the holy beginning to lose its fascination? 33 Goldammer (1960: xxii-xxvi) traces his scholarly lineage to Joachim Wach and Gerardus van der Leeuw. In keeping with the preferences of these scholars, he advocates a phenomenological rather than a critical understanding of religions. That is, he advocates an understanding that excludes evaluation, for evaluation falls within the province of theology and the philosophy of religion. At the same time, Goldammer joins Otto, Mensching, and Heiler (Wach and van der Leeuw, too) in requiring scholars to have a "religious sensorium". He writes (Goldammer 1960: xxv): "Only those persons who have a religion themselves can write with authority (sachlich) about religion." Cp. Goldammer (1960: xxii-xxvi).

3. Otto and the humanistic

science of religion

21

(Goldammer 1960: 51-52). Having said this, however, Goldammer deliberately diverged from Otto. Mensching had merely alluded to Otto and referred readers to his book. Goldammer (1960: 53-61) developed his own account. He analyzed the numinous as a complex of four elements: the "wholly other", the powerful, the foreign or distant or uncanny, and the intimate. His aim does not seem to have been to develop a new, more satisfactory or compelling account of numinous experience. He disposes his account too summarily for that. Instead, he seems to have played for a modicum of originality by altering Otto's key terms just enough to avoid exact repetition. In addition, he seems to have written from a desire for inclusivity: he made room for the center around which Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950) had developed his phenomenology of religion, religious power. We might say that in Goldammer's account Otto's ideas succumbed to the debilitating effects of the comprehensive survey. They are certainly not the guiding spirit behind it. The books by Frick, Mensching, and Goldammer map the high points in Otto's influence on the humanistic science of religion in Germany: from initial stimulus to central dogma to classical but moribund topic. In the years following Goldammer's book, Otto has been largely abandoned. German scientists of religions such as Peter Antes, Burkhardt Gladigow, Hans-Jürgen Greschat, Manfred Hutter, H. G. Kippenberg, Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Kurt Rudolph, and Hubert Seiwert turned away from the enterprise of grand systematization and emphasized a strictly descriptive and empirical approach to particular religions. More recently German scholars such as Michael von Brück, Christoph Elsas, and the theologian Hans Küng have begun to champion interreligious dialogue. Neither group has had much use for Otto's analysis. To the former, Otto's heavy reliance upon introspection violated the descriptive stance that validated their independence from theology in the Federal Republic and from Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy in the former Democratic Republic. To the latter, Otto's generalized introspection only prevented them from attaining their objective: not finding their own religious experiences in the religions of others but listening to what others had to say. There are no signs of an Otto renaissance in Germany on the horizon. As the early translations of The idea of the holy testify, however, Otto's influence was hardly confined to Germany. Ernst Benz (1971: 48; cp. Forell 1951) noted that although Otto had few German students, he had many foreign ones. Scholars have suggested that Otto's circle of influence included R. Boeke and van der Leeuw in the Netherlands,

22

Introduction

Vittorio Lanternari and Ugo Bianchi in Italy, and others as well (e.g., Boozer 1977: 379). But Otto's influence outside Germany was strongest in the English-speaking world. It is appropriate that Otto influenced speakers of English so profoundly. In many ways Otto felt a special affinity for things English. As a boy in school, English novels were among his favorite readings. 34 In 1889 he traveled from Göttingen to Erlangen by way of England, where he seems to have been particularly taken with the Congregationalists, Methodists, and the Salvation Army. In 1904, when his prospects as a young instructor looked dismal, he considered abandoning theology to take up the study of English history. 35 His long-time friend, occasional traveling companion, and steady correspondent, the Sinologist Heinrich Hackmann (1864-1935), ministered from 1904 to 1910 to a German congregation in London. 3 6 The individualism of English religious groups, so different from the norm in German territorial churches, influenced Otto's thought profoundly. The most important mediators of Otto's influence to the English-speaking world were two expatriate Germans: the theologian Paul Tillich and, above all, the historian of religions Joachim Wach (1898-1955). A book by Wach in a now-familiar genre provides a good sense of his relation to Otto: The comparative study of religions (1958), or as one would say in German, Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft?7 Wach did not simply replicate Otto any more than Frick, Mensching, or Goldammer had. He modified Otto's ideas under the influence especially of Dilthey, Max Scheler, M a x Weber, and Tillich. But the impact of Otto on the shape of Wach's general conception of religion was great. In his Sociology of religion Wach (1944: 13) wrote that Otto's definition of religion remained the most workable: "Religion is the experience of the holy." The comparative study of religions took up the same theme. Invoking a dynamic between internal experience and external expres34 See "1. My life", below. 35 See what appears to be a page from a diary in Otto's hand, dated Friday, October 14, 1904, University Library, Marburg, Hs. 826:24. 36 The Archiv "Religionsgeschichtliche Schule" at the University of Göttingen has recently begun to prepare Otto's and Hackmann's correspondence for publication. 37 A brief synopsis of Wach's views can be found in his article, "Universals in religion" (Wach 1951: 30-47). For Wach on Otto, see "Rudolf Otto and the idea of the holy" (Wach 1951: 209-227).

3. Otto and the humanistic science of religion

23

sion reminiscent of Dilthey, Wach made the experience of what he called "ultimate reality" constitutive of all true religion. In fact, he provided a fuller discussion of that experience than any of the scholars considered so far except Otto. Then he explicated the various ways religious experience expressed itself in thought, action, and association. Wach had no more use for Otto's Friesian-Kantian inclinations than Mensching, Heiler, or Goldammer had. In the early pages of The comparative study of religions he noted (Wach 1958: 24), apparently with approval, how Max Scheler had accepted Otto's description of the holy but had rejected his Friesian-Kantianism. 38 Indeed, in the 1920s and early 1930s Wach himself had written a mammoth survey of the theory and practice of hermeneutics (Wach 1926-1933). He followed Tillich in replacing Otto's schematization and law of analogous feelings with the language of symbolization. But Wach's most interesting comments about Otto did not concern Otto's philosophical frame but his description of religious experience. In Wach's eyes (Wach 1958: 32-35, 1951: 32), Otto had improperly confined religious experience to a single, separate human faculty. By contrast, actual religious experience was a "total response of the total being". It involved an integrated, entire personality, encompassing reason, affection, and volition. Wach also rejected Otto's characterization of religious experience as an encounter with something "wholly other". With Paul Tillich, he preferred to say (Wach 1958: 46) that the infinite always came to human beings "through finite mediation". Finally, Wach diverged from the basic structure that underlay Otto's account: the gulf between the rational and the irrational and the tension between the tremendum and the fascinans. Characterizing ultimate reality as mysterium, energy, majestas, and holiness, he wrote (Wach 1958: 48): "Although the mysterious, spontaneous, and majestic character of ultimate reality is accessible to the reflecting mind, this is not true of its character of holiness." It is unfortunate that Wach did not explain what this statement was supposed to mean. It is also unfortunate that he could not integrally relate his account of religious experience to the forms of expression discussed in the rest of his book.

38 Like Tillich, Wach (1951: 219) found Otto needlessly open to the charge of "psychologism", that is, of focusing on the experience of the religious person instead of the characteristics of the religious object.

24

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Wach's well-known and influential successor, Mircea Eliade (19071986), stood at a much greater distance from Otto. Indeed, although Eliade was no positivist, he signaled the eclipse of Otto in the Englishspeaking world. To be sure, Eliade continued to pay his respects to Otto, but his own immensely popular writings pursued a different approach. In that approach, Otto's analysis of religious experience was of little actual interest. Thus, Eliade's most important writings barely mentioned Otto. 3 9 In fact, in only two passages does Eliade seem ever to have discussed Otto at any length. One passage appeared in a disciplinary retrospectus first published in 1963 (Eliade 1969a: 12-36). Not only did Eliade seem at a loss where to situate Otto in the history of the discipline. 40 He did not have much to say about him at all. He merely acknowledged (Eliade 1969a: 23) the pervasiveness of Otto's vocabulary, defended him against the charge of emotionalism, suggested (ironically) that his impact was more popular than academic, faulted him for neglecting the study of myth, and finally held him up somewhat vaguely as a model of how to renew western culture. The second passage in which Eliade discussed Otto appeared at the beginning of a popular book whose title clearly echoed Otto's best-known theme, The sacred and the profane. Eliade began by briefly resuming Otto. Then he remarked (Eliade 1959: 10): After forty years, Otto's analyses have not lost their value; readers of this book will profit by reading and reflecting on them. But in the following pages we adopt a different perspective. We propose to present the phenomenon of the sacred in all its complexity, and not only in so far as it is irrational. What will concern us is not the relation between the rational and nonrational elements of religion but the sacred in its entirety.41

39 So far as I have found, Eliade (1959, 1964) contain no mention of Otto. Eliade (1969b) only mentions Otto's attempt to reconstruct the compositionhistory of the Bhagavad-Gitä (394). Eliade (1963) simply notes the "astounding similarities" that Otto found between Meister Eckard and Sankaräcarya. 4 0 "Though not the work of a psychologist, Rudolf Otto's famous book Das Heilige (1917) might be mentioned in this context" (Eliade 1969a: 23). 41 Eliade (1959: 10) continues: "The first possible definition of the sacred is that it is the opposite of the profane." For a critique of this distinction, derived from Durkheim, see Goldammer (1960: 52).

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These comments mark the difference between Eliade and Otto, but they do not quite grasp it. One could say that Eliade completed the shift from a concern with experience to a concern with symbolization. But he did so in a peculiar context: one in which it made sense to talk, as C. G. Jung had done, of symbols having universal significance. For Otto, the sacred was a category of valuation; its only effable qualities were those that reflected human reactions in encountering it, above all, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. Friesianism or even phenomenology may have allowed Otto to insist that he was actually describing the object of religious experience, but that object never broke loose from the experiential or, if you will, the psychological qualifications. That is what left Otto so open to the charge of subjectivism. It is also what made the systems of religious forms developed by Mensching, Goldammer, Heiler, and Wach appendages to the theory of religious experience rather than integral components of it. The characteristics of the one had little if anything to do with those of the other. But in Eliade the loose association of experience and expression became a complete divorce. Eliade freed the sacred from any dependence upon the internal processes of human experience and talked about it as an object, indeed, as an independent agent. He did not use Wach's language of religious experience and its expression. He used the language of the sacred and its manifestations. True, he claimed that the sacred erupted into the world of profane existence as an element of consciousness, but this claim never required him to reflect much on the experiential content of that consciousness. He was content instead to identify the basic forms in which the sacred manifested itself. To be sure, Eliade's ideas are problematic in and of themselves, starting with the notion that we can attribute universal significance to a religious symbol. Much of the subsequent humanistic science of religion has spent its time redressing these problems, often by distancing itself from Eliade. But with some notable exceptions, such as Charles Long (1986), that science has persisted in fleeing from religious experience and in concentrating its energies on investigating differential religious forms and manifestations. With Eliade, then, Otto achieved a fixed position within the humanistic science of religion. Scholars continued to pay their respects to him as a predecessor, but his notions of religious experience no longer helped them define or develop their own ideas.

26

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4. Otto's humanistic critics As the preceding section has illustrated repeatedly, many humanistic scientists of religion were able to accept Otto's description of numinous experience even though they rejected his idiosyncratic Friesian-Kantianism. Others did, too, for example, the philosopher M a x Scheler (1874-1928). Scheler (1960: 145, 286) found Otto's Kantian language burdensome and misdirected; he accused Otto of epistemological subjectivism and emotionalism (Scheler 1960: 154, 287-288); and he judged Otto's conception of the holy to be what we might call unnecessarily "isolationist" (Scheler 1960: 286-287). That is, Otto improperly isolated the holy from the complexes of thought and activity in which it always appeared, and he improperly exempted intuitions of the holy from systematic, rational reflection. Nevertheless, Scheler accepted Otto's initial account of the holy as a phenomenological description that confirmed conclusions which he himself had reached. 42 And he thought (Scheler 1960: 315-316) that "Otto's splendid book" was correct when it established the holy not as a blanket-concept covering the good, the beautiful, and the true but as a value essentially different from all three. Not every writer, however, was so appreciative of Otto's descriptive efforts. Few have contended that Otto actually misdescribed the way (mono)theists feel, at least potentially, in religious contexts. The reason, I think, is largely rhetorical. Otto's mysterium tremendum et fascinans outlines an economical and comprehensive range of experience on the basis of a divine object conceived in principle at its greatest possible distance from human beings. Any changes to the spectrum extending from tremendum to fascinans or to the distance conveyed by mysterium would only diminish the descriptive range of the characterization. And any divergence from Otto's economy would result in a looser and thus rhetorically less powerful account, such as Goldammer's or Wach's. But philologists have routinely complained that Otto's translations misconstrued and violated the originals that they purported to translate. 4 2 Scheler (1960: 170) accepts Otto's account as being "in the true spirit of phenomenology": "Little as I can accept the religious epistemology which Otto develops in the later sections of his book, I the more gladly salute in its purely descriptive section the first serious endeavour to analyse the chief qualities of the value-modality 'holy' - the objective characteristics of all and every religion - by the dialectical method of phenomenology."

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Their complaint is fairly predictable. Otto translated not to satisfy the principle of accuracy but to reveal the experience that underlay the texts (Mensching 1938a: 122, 1971a: 52-53). It is also important, because it raises the crucial issue of how much Otto distorted what others had said. Nevertheless, Otto's translations will always be inaccessible to the readers for whom this collection is primarily intended, readers limited to English. Such readers are likely to find other criticisms more cogent: criticisms that address Otto's conceptual apparatus, his claim that the experience he describes is universal, his claim that religious experience is independent and primary, and, in the most general terms, the claim that it is worthwhile or even possible to describe another person's internal experiences and feelings. 43

4.1. Otto's conceptual apparatus The earliest comprehensive critique of Otto was a book by Joseph Geyser (1869-1948) entitled Intellekt oder Gemüt? [Intellect or emotion?] (Geyser 1921). 44 In a chapter-by-chapter commentary, Geyser developed a thorough criticism of Otto's conceptual frame. At the most basic level, he rejected the special cognitive role that Otto, following Fries, had assigned to feelings or intuitions and emphasized instead the role of concepts and cognitions in religion. For Geyser, feelings were simply emotions. They had no special cognitive significance. "In the strict sense of the word", he wrote (Geyser 1977:

43 Some have attributed certain criticisms of Otto to misinterpretations: the peculiarities of Otto's literary style (Boozer 1977: 371), a cursory misreading that failed to consider places where Otto expressed himself more fully (Boozer 1977: 371), and an engagement with neo-Friesianism that failed to consider the specific use that Otto made of its ideas (Frick 1938: 3-15). Werner Schilling (1949-1950) seems to have gone the farthest. In effect, he identified two parallel but incommensurable sets of discourse about religions, the historical and the phenomenological, and suggested that those who belong in the historical camp are unable either to appreciate Otto's work or to critique it persuasively. To be sure, criticism of Otto is cogent only if it addresses Otto, not some caricature, and only if it does not ignore the specific project in which Otto was engaged. But these requirements cannot shield Otto from criticism altogether. 44 Geyser also expressed strong criticisms of both neo-Kantianism and phenomenology. His own loyalties tended toward neo-Thomism.

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317), "we never feel something else, only ourselves." "True, a feeling can be directed to an 'object outside ourselves'. But we can only conceive and think that this object exists 'outside of us'; we cannot feel it" (Geyser 1977: 312). In fact, Geyser (1977: 325) pointed out, to attach cognitive significance to feelings would create epistemological chaos. What criteria would then allow us to determine which feelings were true and which false when different people "intuited" different and contradictory things, as can and often does happen? Besides addressing Otto's notion of feelings, Geyser also criticized Otto's account of the difference between religious and nonreligious feelings. Geyser could find no warrant for Otto's claim that religious feelings were sui generis, qualitatively different from nonreligious feelings. For example, the Hebrew patriarch Abraham may have felt that the difference which separated him from God was incomparably greater than that which separated him from anything else. But how, Geyser (1977: 312) asked, would that demonstrate that the feelings were different not in degree but in kind? "To distinguish qualitatively between experienced feelings solely on the basis of the character of the feeling is an extremely difficult and uncertain psychological undertaking" (Geyser 1977: 314). These points are significant, but the real thrust of Geyser's critique aimed at the relation Otto posited between conceptions and cognitions on the one hand and feelings on the other. For Otto, numinous feelings were primary and irrational. They were perceived through a special organ, the sensus numinis, and only later were they associated with ideas and cognitions. Geyser disagreed vehemently and repeatedly. For him, concepts and cognitions were primary, feelings derivative. There is no question but that majesty and energy belong . . . to the essential attributes of God perceived in religion. But I cannot concede that they have their origin in the unique shades of feeling that make up the human consciousness of the mysterious. Instead, there are certain concepts, experiences, and cognitions that let us more or less clearly suppose that there is something more powerful and endowed with life and force standing above us that erupts on its own into effective action and is infinitely superior to us. This supposition gives rise, as if by natural necessity, to the feelings [of majesty and energy] that Otto depicts. (Geyser 1 9 7 7 : 3 1 5 , cp. 3 1 8 , 3 2 0 , 322, 329)

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From this position, Geyser critiqued many of the most troubling features of Otto's analysis: the law of associated feelings, schematization, the holy as a category a priori, and the holy as divorced from morality. 45 We shall return to the alleged primacy of religious experience in a moment, but let us note now that in the time since Geyser's book first appeared, others have followed him in questioning the conceptual adequacy of Otto's scheme. For example, both Friedrich Feigel (b. 1875) and Walter Baetke (1884-1978) rejected the Friesian option, according to which feelings could sense objective reality. They also questioned whether unique and "unnatural" feelings could ever exist. After all, Feigel (1977: 354, 356) noted, if the experience of the holy were universal, then by definition it would be natural. Soren Holm (1971; cp. Feigel 1977: 398-405) suggested that in the book on Kant and Fries Otto had used the term "a priori" in its proper sense, but that in The idea of the holy he was actually talking about an Urphänomen 'elemental phenomenon'. John Reeder (1973) analyzed Otto's use of the term "schematization" and found it to be wanting in sense altogether. Georg Wünsch (1938) raised telling questions about Otto's approach to ethics, beginning with the utility of feeling. He acknowledged that for Otto "feeling" was not equivalent to emotion, but then he asked whether such feelings could really give consistent ethical guidance and faulted Otto for failing to take the plurality of ethical perspectives - and feelings - seriously. "Otto's method", he wrote tersely (Wünsch 1938: 67), "is somewhat dictatorial." 46 Perhaps the most telling criticism, however, is one that was first made, so far as I can tell, by Friedrich Feigel (1977: 404-405).

45

Otto's supposed "law of associated feelings", he said (Geyser 1 9 7 7 : 3 1 9 ) , is completely unknown to psychology. Otto's choice of Kant's term "schematization" is not only unfortunate, because it violates Kant's usage, but misguided, because Otto uses it to reverse the proper relations between concepts and feelings (Geyser 1 9 7 7 : 3 2 0 ) . Since feelings are not primary, it is not possible to agree with Otto that the holy is a category a priori (Geyser 1 9 7 7 : 3 2 6 - 3 2 7 ) . But it is possible to rejoin what Otto had rent asunder, religion and morality. "Only if we know God and understand our relationship to him as our Lord and as that which possesses absolute worth and is most worthy of love can we realize what sin is and how much we are disgraced and defiled by it" (Geyser 1 9 7 7 : 3 2 3 ) . 4 6 There is some irony in this critique. According to Stephan - Schmidt ( 1 9 7 3 : 4 0 5 ) Wünsch was the only proponent of religious socialism to adopt a positive attitude toward the Nazis.

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Introduction Now I ask, how are we supposed to experience a God who is "wholly other" and therefore beyond experience? One can only experience when something has somehow entered into human consciousness. But the holy is called "numinous" insofar as a complete incommensurability separates it from us. Nevertheless, Otto knows about the numinous; and we know about the holy . . . . The dilemma seems to me inescapable: either God is the "wholly other" in an absolute sense, in which case we can experience and say nothing about him, even that he is the wholly other, or we experience something of God, in which case God's essence should not be designated "numinous". 4 7

One can offer a similar criticism of Otto's assertion that the same words used in religious and non-religious contexts, such as mystery, fear, or dependence, differ not in degree but in quality. In and of itself, the language of "qualities" is problematic, but if we are to use it at all, then we must postulate some qualitative continuity between, say, human "wrath" and the "wrath of God". Otherwise, the phrase "wrath of God" would be entirely meaningless. 4.2. Are Otto's descriptions universal? There is one way to rescue Otto from this philosophical conundrum: to say that his account represents an accurate description of the way religious people talk about their experiences. Consider the term ganz anders [wholly other]. In a strict, philosophical analysis, it may make little sense to assert that the numinous, or anything else, is "wholly other". Yet religious language is not always philosophical language, and the difference is crucial. In ordinary German ganz 'wholly', 'completely', is the adverb one uses when other adverbs, such as sehr 'very', are not emphatic enough. Thus, in the summer of 1994 the Klappstuhl, " D i e irre Kneipe ... down by the Weserside"48 in Bremen, billed itself as "Die 'ganz andere' Kneipe" [the "completely different" pub]. Now, one could 4 7 For similar comments, see Smart ( 1 9 7 8 : 19). With a characteristic flare, Jonathan Z . Smith ( 1 9 9 0 : 4 2 n. 9) has recently restated this criticism, without mentioning Feigel: " O n e may note the delicious expression of the difficulty with the notion of utter alterity in H. W. Turner's Commentary on Otto's 'Idea of the Holy' (Aberdeen, 1 9 7 4 ) : 19, 'when Otto describes this experience of the Numen as "Wholly Other", he cannot mean wholly "Wholly Other" ' . " 4 8 Languages sic. Die irre Kneipe means "the crazy pub"; Bremen is situated on the Weser river.

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insist that no Kneipe can be die "ganz andere" Kneipe. If it really were "completely different", it would no longer be a Kneipe. But perhaps only the competition would offer such a pedantic reading of the slogan. So, too, even if The idea of the holy does not formulate a philosophically defensible analysis of God, it may still identify a central element of religion: an encounter with the numinous which religious people consistently insist is ganz anders, sui generis, completely different from anything one encounters in life. Granted, Otto himself, writing philosophy as much as the science of religions, wanted to assert more. But strictly speaking, this descriptive statement is all that the humanistic science of religions is entitled to make. To assess it, we require empirical evidence, not conceptual analysis. Was Otto correct in making the alleged encounter with the holy the central feature of all religions? Do all religions promote in their adherents an experience of the wholly other? There is good reason for doubt. Gerardus van der Leeuw (1938: 79) once wrote: In the last few years there has arisen a conception of religion that is found in the poetry of Stefan George and in the [writings of the scholar] W. F. Otto and his school. George's powerful, brazen verses reveal an experience of God that can hardly be described in Otto's terminology, just as little as can Homeric polytheism . . . or Vedic polytheism . . . . According to this conception religion is not a matter of . . . the "wholly other" but of things as they are, of Being itself, of the "wholly this" (das Ganz Dieses).

If van der Leeuw is correct, Otto's description of religious experience cannot apply universally. Some English-speaking scholars have made much the same point, but they have expressed it in terms of a contrast not between the wholly other and the wholly this but between the numinous and the mystical. In one sense this second contrast was familiar to Otto. In a classic study published in 1917, Otto's future colleague and friend, Friedrich Heiler (1938), had distinguished two types of prayer, the prophetic and the mystical. In the 1920s the opposition between mystical and devotional (gläubige) piety enjoyed considerable currency. Otto addressed it in at least two ways (cp. Otto 1922). On the one hand, he insisted that the two attitudes were more similar than different, a point on which Frick quoted him extensively. On the other, his two mature comparative studies addressed each pole in turn, Mysticism east and west and India's religion of grace and Christianity.

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But not everyone has agreed that Otto's account of religious experience can do justice to both poles. From the perspective of German Protestants, especially neo-orthodox theologians like Brunner and Barth, Otto seemed to favor one pole, the mystical, at the expense of the other: he emphasized experience rather than faith. More recently the British philosopher and scientist of religion, Ninian Smart (1958), has worked a parallel dichotomy the other way. He has identified two primary "strands" of religious language, the numinous and the mystical, and associated Otto with the former, but not the latter. 49 Smart's explications of these two strands have not always been as clear on one might like, but the basic distinction seems roughly parallel to two distinct, formal structures that Keith Yandell (1993: 19) has recently identified for religious experiences: subject/consciousness/object and subject/aspect. Scholars have found it fairly easy to criticize Smart's terms. As in criticizing all polar classifications, the basic strategy has been to point out specific examples that deviate from the two alternatives. For example, in discussing the mystical strand, Smart conflated Vedänta and Theraväda in a way that is puzzling and disturbing (cp. Gimello 1978; Penner 1983: 91). But these criticisms do not blunt the edge of the critique of Otto. They only diminish further the plausibility of Otto's claim that numinous experience, described as an encounter with a "wholly other", lies at the heart of all religion. Frederick Streng (1978) has advanced yet another criticism of Otto that belongs in this class. Unlike Smart, Streng conceded that Otto's terminology was useful in discussing mystical traditions. But, he maintained, its utility was limited. It applied only to mystical traditions, or perhaps better, mystics and mystical texts, that used language in a particular way, namely, descriptively. But, Streng noted, there is at least one other way in which mystics use language. They use it transformatively, and Otto's analysis tells us little about such cases. After an admirably careful reading of a Mahäyäna text, the Astasähasrikäprajüäpäramitä-sütra, Streng (1978: 166-167; emphasis added) concluded:

4 9 Among the many restatements, see especially Smart (1970: 116-151). In this article Smart uses the distinction to introduce an argument for the superiority of Christianity. Theism is generally preferable to nontheism, he states, because it is able to include both the numinous and the mystical. Christianity is the best form of theism because it incorporates a sense of religious and moral inadequacy and failure, the need for salvation to come from God, and the need for human beings to do something about it.

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While all mystical expression seeks to get beyond the conventional use of concepts or everyday perceptions, the language used to express this itself has assumptions about its capacity to partially describe and to evoke a trans-conceptual awareness. Where there is an emphasis on the descriptive function and the wholly-other character of the reality, there language will have little positive value and must have a special intuition substituted for it. Where there is an emphasis on the transformative function and where the ultimate reality is assumed to be at least minimally in all particular forms there language is regarded as either useful or not useful for knowing ultimate truth depending on the "purity" or unattached character of consciousness with which the language is used. 50

One should consider carefully what criticisms such as van der Leeuw's, Smart's, and Streng's imply. They hardly mean that Otto's description of numinous experience is never applicable. Too many religious people have found meaning in Otto's book for that to be true. But in fashioning numinous experience as the core or essence of all religion, Otto committed a fundamental error that humanistic scientists of religion like Frick, Mensching, Goldammer, and Wach have reproduced. Otto believed that he could provide an account of what underlay the multiplicity of religious phenomena by generalizing his own personal religious experience. In other words, he believed that he could create a theory that applied to all religions simply by de-specifying key terms in his own. Thus, while theologians like Barth complained that Otto's holy was not Christian, many scholars of religions have voiced the opposite complaint: that it is too Christian. They reject Otto's account as theology almost in spite of itself. 51 4.3. Is religious experience primary? Otto's description of numinous experience made yet another claim: that the experience of the holy is primary and irreducible and external reli50 The contrast between descriptive and transformative language was taken up by Steven Katz (1992: 5-15) and Bernard McGinn (1992: 226). 51 Otto was hardly the only person in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to mistake the part to which one belonged for the whole. This error was a standard feature of German middle-class liberalism. Otto, and others, transposed it from the political to the academic sphere. On the error itself, see the still valuable account by Leonard Krieger (1957: 398). On Otto's political complicity with this error, see "7. Rudolf Otto, National Liberal candidate", below.

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gious forms - ideas and symbols, rituals and ethics, forms of association and leadership - somehow derive from it. We have noted Joseph Geyser's objection to this claim. Others amplified it. The German scholar, Walter Baetke, did so quite vigorously in the first part of his book, Das Heilige im Germanischen [The holy in Germanic] (1942). "It would be a serious mistake", Baetke (1977: 356) wrote, "for the humanistic science of religions to adopt Otto's position that the initial stirrings of the feeling of the numinous were the basic element of religion, and that from such a stirring in the heart (Gemüt) all religious development had proceeded." 52 Baetke opposed this view on several grounds. First, he repeated Geyser's claim (Baetke 1977: 358): ideas precede experiences in religion, so religious ideas do not derive from experiences; they occasion them. But Otto's greatest mistake, in Baetke's eyes, lay elsewhere. Otto ignored, he said (Baetke 1977: 360-361), that all human beings are embedded in history. So far as the science of religion is concerned, a human being's personal "first religious stirrings" are always conditioned by her or his historical contexts. (There is no way to talk meaningfully about the very first religious moment. 53 ) But Baetke went even further. Otto's individualism was not only ahistorical; it also ignored that people are always conditioned socially. "Religion", Baetke (1977: 367) wrote in the manner of Durkheim, "is essentially a social matter . . . like speech, not an individual and private one . . . . The faith of the community is primary and conditions the religious life of the individual." In fact, Baetke (1977: 369) noted, "in its oldest attested usage every expression for the holy is related to cult objects, places, or times", not to some primal experience.54 5 2 Baetke ( 1 9 7 7 : 3 5 9 ) is clear that he does not intend to deny the existence of religious feelings. "I only object to the kind of experience postulated by Rudolf Otto, van der Leeuw, and others, a sensing, scenting (Wittern), or feeling of the numinous or the sacred, and to the claim that human beings acquire a knowledge of the sacred and come to religion through such a sensed or felt experience." 5 3 In a defense of Otto, Gustav Mensching once claimed that founders of religions had such originary experiences, but no known founder stands outside of history. 5 4 In making this critique, Baetke offers a basic model of religion. In an uncanny anticipation of Wilfred Cantwell Smith ( 1 9 6 3 ) , he says (Baetke 1 9 7 7 : 3 7 2 3 7 3 ) that religion consists of two basic elements: the tradition passed down by the community and the faith of individual persons in the validity of that tradition. "Human beings have religious experiences only within the context

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So far as I can determine, Baetke's work is almost unknown to Englishspeaking readers, but his claims should sound familiar. In particular, two more recent American scholars of religions have made many of the same points. In an article entitled "Language, epistemology, and mysticism", Steven Katz (1978) entered what he called "a plea for the recognition of difference" in the study of mysticism. He rooted that plea in the Baetkelike contention that experience, in this case mystical experience, always occurs within a "linguistic, social, historical, and conceptual context". Wayne Proudfoot's book, Religious experience (1985), entered a vigorous plea not only for difference but also for "reducibility", or better, for explanation in scholarly discourse about religion. Religious experience, he claimed, is not some primary reality sui generis that provides the principal source of religion and that must be purified of contextual elements to be seen as such. It is a secondary reality that not only permits but also demands contextual explanation. On Proudfoot's analysis, the claims to irreducibility that Otto advanced, along with others such as Schleiermacher and William James, were simply defensive strategies. They sought to protect religion from being affected by any conflict with science and by any explanatory account that science might develop. Baetke's, Katz's, and Proudfoot's positions are not beyond criticism. A model that promotes a strict, contextual determinism is also unsatisfactory, because it does not allow for individual variation and change. Somewhat along these lines, Carl Ernst (1992: 191) has written: Without denying the importance of religious and social background as a background for mystical experience, I would not wish to reduce this complex phenomenon to pure immanence through psychologism; to state that mystical experience is a mediated, configured outcome of epistemologica! activity, as Katz does, might be interpreted as a one-sided relation-

of a religion that has been handed down to them. These experiences always presuppose faith. They testify to the reality and vitality of one's faith. They are the blooms and fruits on the tree of religion, but they are not the r o o t . . . . The root is faith." Baetke writes strictly as a philologist, and the contrast between experience and faith sounds innocent enough. But one should not forget that these terms functioned as a shibboleth for distinguishing liberal from neo-orthodox theologians. Perhaps it is significant, then, that Baetke ( 1 9 7 7 : 3 7 3 ) also notes Paul's statement in Romans 1 0 . 1 7 : "faith comes from preaching" (translated from Martin Luther's translation of the Bible, which Baetke quotes).

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Introduction ship between language and experience, in which the built-in expectations of language have a "self-ful[fil]ling prophetic aspect" for the experiential outcome.

Nevertheless, after the essays of Baetke, Katz, and Proudfoot, it is difficult if not impossible to endorse those who, following Otto, make religion "the encounter with the holy" and religious ideas, behavior, associations, what have you, expressions of that experience. It may still be desirable, of course, to describe religious experiences as well as to explain them. That happens often enough in the study of experience-centered phenomena like mysticism. But since Otto's day powerful, general movements of thought have seemed to formulate in principle what the humanistic science of religion found in practice. Instead of talking about internal experiences, cultural scholars might do better to talk about something else. We can conveniently chart these movements on the map of cultural anthropology. 55 4.4. Why talk about religious experience? Anthropology has not always rejected the attempt to recover internal experiences. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) (1922: 25) once briefly defined the goal of ethnography as "to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world". He continued, "To study the institutions, customs, and codes or to study the behaviour and mentality without the subjective desire of feelings by what (sic) these people live, of realizing the substance of their happiness - is, in my opinion, to miss the greatest reward which we can hope to obtain from the study of man." Elsewhere, Malinowski wrote (Strenski [ed.] 1992: 171): "I venture to affirm that in not a single one of its manifestations can religion be found without its firm roots in human emotion." Nevertheless, Malinowski himself recognized how difficult it was to recover experience. 56 Even more important, Malinowski's functional method, which stipulated that the significance of cultural products is 5 5 For parallels in the study of religions, see Lindbeck ( 1 9 8 4 : 3 0 - 4 5 ) . 5 6 Consider the following from "Totemism and exogamy ( 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 1 3 ) " (Thornton - Skalnik 1 9 9 3 : 1 6 2 ) : It is extremely difficult to determine, even approximately, the inner attitude of even our own peasant with regard to the object of his cult. For the same reasons it is an absolute impossibility in the case of a savage. We are almost completely confused by his psychology when it comes to

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critics

37

determined not by the experience to which they give expression but by their function in human society, went a good way to undermining the importance of experience in the study of religion. In the English-speaking world, it marked a significant departure from J. G. Frazer's (1854-1941) and especially R. R. Marett's (1866-1943) concern with "primitive" psychology. For a generation, the functionalist theories pioneered by Malinowski and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955) pervaded anthropological thinking. To apply them, Malinowski's students and successors abandoned genealogical construction based on isolated fragments and turned to ethnography and the examination of living cultural wholes. The most important of them, Ε. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973), was fascinated by questions of rationality, conceptualization, and translation. His exemplary account of religion among the Nuer of the Sudan focused on the categories and ways of thinking that defined Nuer religious practices. His judgment on Otto's concerns is not unexpected: "Certainly one cannot speak of any specifically religious emotion among the Nuer" (Evans-Pritchard 1956: 312). The next generation in anthropology abandoned functionalist orthodoxy in favor of new theories: the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss and, more broadly, an interpretive, symbols-and-meanings anthropology pioneered by, among others, Clifford Geertz. Taking structural linguistics as his model, Lévi-Strauss attempted to formulate an anthropology of codes (the anthropological equivalent of langue 'language') that was deliberately remote from lived experience (the anthropological equivalent of parole, actual sentences). His anti-humanism could hardly take human emotions seriously. Impulses and emotions explain nothing: they are always results, either of the power of the body or of the importance of the mind. In both cases they are consequences, never causes. The latter can be sought only in the organism, which is the exclusive concern of biology, or in the intellect, which is the sole way offered to psychology and to anthropology as well. (Lévi-Strauss 1 9 6 3 : 7 1 ) its deeper, more essential concepts And so, there can be no talk of being able to get to the bottom of the most hidden, most complicated and subjective states of the savage. I should perhaps point out that these words were written before Malinowski had done any fieldwork. Is it really necessary to note that the passage contains judgments most people today, myself included, would prefer to avoid?

38

Introduction

Clifford Geertz took up an equally pertinent question in an essay whose title recalls Malinowski, " 'From the natives' point of view': On the nature of anthropological understanding" (Geertz 1985: 55-70). In this article, he asked: what are anthropologists doing if they are not actually recovering experience? He focused on how anthropologists understand the subjectivities of other peoples, and he framed his answer in terms of a give and take between experience-near and experience-distant concepts, then, after three examples, in terms of a hermeneutic circle of "exotic minutiae" and "sweeping characterizations". From Geertz's point of view, it may well make sense to discuss a religion's vocabulary of "feelings". It would make little sense to develop, as Otto did, a general theory of religion on the basis of departicularized "feelings" of "the numinous". 5 7 Just as theology did not stop with Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, and Tillich, and just as the humanistic science of religion did not cease with Eliade, anthropological thinking has not stopped with either LéviStrauss or Geertz. But contemporary, post-structuralist anthropologists have tended to be preoccupied with exploring self-critically the nature of anthropological writing, both the medium that it employs and the purposes that it serves. 58 Their colleagues who write from the field have tended to favor themes such as power and oppression, the body, gender relations, and food. These efforts have only reinforced the general flight from experience that began with functional analysis and continued in structuralism and symbolic anthropology. This flight has created a discourse about religions in which Otto's subtle, universalizing analyses of numinous experience are more or less beside the point.

5. The present collection For the moment, at least, Otto's ideas seem to have lost their vigor. Theologians rejected them fairly quickly when they abandoned human experience as a source of theological "knowledge". Humanistic scientists of religion initially found Otto helpful in trying to make sense of the human experience with religion. But they, too, have for the most part 57 For Geertz's own approach to religion, see his now classic essay, "Religion as a cultural system" (Geertz 1973: 87-125). 58 For a stimulating recent collection, see Marcus (1992).

5. The present collection

39

abandoned him; they have found the range of his ideas too limited and his aim misguided. To be sure, there remain places where Otto's ideas intersect with current sensibilities. O n e example is the desire to facilitate global religious and moral conversations t o promote peace and justice. T h e intersections are especially pronounced where both O t t o ' s quasi-Friesianism and contemporary postmodernism replicate the R o m a n t i c critique o f the Enlightenment, for example, the positive epistemological assessment o f intuition and the endeavor, however faltering, to allow non-European voices t o be heard. Nevertheless, this collection does not aim at an O t t o revival. It suggests a project o f a different order. N o w that we no longer feel a pressing need to engage O t t o ' s ideas to see whether and to what extent we wish to make them our own, we might want to reflect o n the circumstances in which they arose and were positively received. In another context, I have claimed (Alles 1 9 9 4 : 2 7 1 - 2 7 2 ) that intellectual biography is a useful but under-utilized instrument for furthering disciplinary self-consciousness among scholars w h o study religions. T h a t is partly because practitioners of the humanistic science o f religions have gravitated toward a particular rhetorical posture. In the interests of a claim t o be writing science or Wissenschaft as opposed to theology, they have tended to deimplicate themselves and their lives f r o m their writings. They have done so in two primary modes: that of universal comparativists, w h o present " a view from n o w h e r e " because they "have been everywhere", and that of the historian w h o tends " t o visit" rather than " t o move i n " . 5 9 Intellectual biography allows one to interrogate these postures a t the level o f the specific example. It helps to clarify the nature o f the scholarly acts that have constituted the humanistic science of religions. It also helps to identify the plural and complex ways in which these scholarly acts inevitably intersect with other spheres of life. In these ways it contributes to the formation of a disciplinary self-consciousness that is more realistic and mature. In the recent past, at least one historian of religions has been the subject of intense biographical scrutiny, M i r c e a Eliade. In itself, the disproportionate amount of (auto)biographical attention given to Eliade 59 I borrow these terms from Thomas Nagel (1986), Marc Manganare (1992), and Daniel Gold (1988). Manganare is, in turn, picking up on the terminology of "having been there" in Geertz (1988).

40

Introduction

on my count, Eliade himself published two volumes of autobiography (Eliade 1981, 1988) in addition to four volumes of private journals (Eliade 1977, 1989, 1990a, 1990b) and an autobiographical novel (Eliade 1994) - raises interesting questions.60 But one aspect of the casus Eliade is particularly relevant here. In the late 1980s, Eliade fell - as did other notables such as Martin Heidegger, Paul de Man, and Georges Dumézil under serious suspicion of collaborating with fascism before and during the second world war. But especially at first the debates were difficult to follow. Eliade's critics and defenders were often arguing on the basis of materials that were not generally available. The present collection is a preliminary effort to address Rudolf Otto's biography. It speaks to themes that I want and need to address again in a more sustained, narrative and analytical mode. Yet in contrast to what happened in the debate over Eliade, I very much want first to present the most pertinent documentary materials in translation. They make available, to an extent no biographical study can ever afford, the complexity of Otto's ideas and actions. Scholars have long recognized that Rudolf Otto was active beyond the academic sphere. But those who have engaged Otto's intellectual practice, whether as friends or foes, have without exception held firmly to his ideas and dismissed the acts and contexts in which these ideas were expressed. For example, in a half-page coda unrelated in substance to a prior survey of Otto's writings, Joachim Wach (1951: 226) noted obscurely: "Rudolf Otto was a good German. As a good German he was also a true cosmopolitan." We already know what John Harvey wrote in the preface to the second edition of The idea of the holy. Harvey noted Otto's political career, then reassured a post-war British public: "but his heart was not . . . in politics" (The idea of the holy 1950: xi). It may be more comfortable to dismiss Otto's public activities instead of taking them seriously. Before and after the second world war, Wach, an expatriate German, and Harvey, an Englishman, must have found it "politically" advantageous to do so. 61 It is also easier to adopt an attitude like Wach's and Harvey's. Writing biography is time-intensive. It requires locating, sifting, organizing, synthesizing, and presenting evidence that is 6 0 Eliade's autobiographical self-indulgence finds its reflex in M a c Linscott Ricketts' lengthy account of Eliade's first years (Ricketts 1 9 8 8 ) . 61 We can similarly suspect that those who eulogized Otto in 1 9 3 7 but never mentioned his suppressed Religiöser Menschheitsbund (see " 9 . A League of Nations is not enough", below) were acting out of not a little prudence.

S. The present collection

41

not readily available on the local library shelf. Moreover, it requires a certain blind faith, because one cannot predict from the start the ultimate value of the materials to which one will devote so much time. Nevertheless, there is good reason to explore Otto's public life. Not only were Otto's forays into the study of religions public acts in and of themselves; 62 for years and with considerable enthusiasm Otto engaged in several other public arenas. One of them was distinctly political. He served in the Abgeordnetenhaus 'House of representatives' of the Prussian Landtag 'State legislature' during the fateful years from 1913 to 1918, with a brief hiatus in 1915. 63 In the year after the war he was a member of the Prussian National Assembly (Mann [ed.] 1988: 1681). To be sure, one cannot assume that these public acts form a simple unity with Otto's scholarship any more than one can assume that the two were totally unrelated. A person is neither a single, unified whole nor a chaotic mass of unrelated fragments but a plural, complex, and ever changing collection of sets. The task of the biographer is to trace these sets in meaningful fashion through the course of a person's life. The task of the intellectual biographer is to do so in a manner that elucidates that person's scholarly activities. In the case of Otto the present collection makes a start. The collection divides into five parts: autobiographical fragments, essays that deal explicitly with politics, essays that are more directly related to Otto's teaching career, essays that detail Otto's extensive involvement with the church, and finally, two essays that represent Otto's final reflections on ethics. Following the precedent established during Otto's lifetime, I have sought to make translations that are accurate but readable. In other words, I have been conscious of the distinctive qualities of Otto's German, but I have found no reason to reproduce them to the 62 I mean this statement in a double sense. There is the obvious sense in which any published writing, especially published writing about other peoples' religions, is a public act. But there is also a more specific sense, represented by the charge that Otto, along with Wilhelm Bousset (1865-1920) and unlike Wilhelm Heitmiiller (1869-1926), was more interested in addressing a broader public - "popularizing", if you will — than in doing serious scholarly work. 63 From April 21 to August 17. Mann (ed.) (1988: 1681) gives the year as 1917. The hiatus was initially a condition of Otto's employment as full professor at Breslau. But when a conservative colleague decided to stand for election, Otto resumed his seat in the legislature. Cf. two letters to Hermann Mulert (Otto 1915a, 1915b).

42

Introduction

detriment of fluent English. In one or two cases, I have even altered the order of sentences for the sake of sense. It is customary for translators from German to lament the difficulty of translating German nouns such as Geist into English. The difficulties are especially pronounced here because Otto used Gefühl 'feeling' in a way that would strike us, and many Germans, as idiosyncratic. Fortunately, Otto himself provided an excursus on how "feelings" differ from emotions. 64 I am well aware that this notion of Gefühl makes it even more misleading than usual to translate Gemüt as 'heart', but I could often find no better equivalent. In every instance where the connotations of Otto's original text seemed crucial, I have given the German in parentheses. At the risk of producing a messier text, I have generally preserved Otto's emphases, although such italicizations are no longer in fashion. Where possible, I have appended notes to explain references that might otherwise remain obscure. I have, however, deliberately kept references to the secondary literature on Otto to a minimum, because such references can rather quickly become outdated. For proper names I have tried to follow the spellings and diacriticals used in the fifteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is, however, not always consistent. Except where otherwise noted, translations from the Bible are from the New Revised Standard Version.

64 See "19. On feeling guilty", below, as well as "Author's notes on the translation (The philosophy of religion)", reproduced in English in Otto (1981: 227-229).

References

43

References Adams, James Luther 1965 Paul Tillich's philosophy Harper & Row.

of culture, science, and religion. New York:

Alles, Gregory D. 1991 "Rudolf Otto and the politics of utopia", Religion 21: 235-256. 1994 "In search of intellectual biography - A review", Method and theory in the study of religion 6, no. 3: 249-273. Almond, Philip C. 1984 Rudolf Otto: An introduction to his philosophical Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press.

theology.

Chapel

Baetke, Walter 1942 Das Heilige im Germanischen. Tübingen: J. C. Β. Mohr. 1977 "Das Phänomen des Heiligen. Eine religionswissenschaftliche Grundlegung" (Baetke [1942], part one), in: Colpe (ed.), 337-379. Barth, Karl 1936 Church dogmatics, vol. 1, part 1: The doctrine of the word of God. Trans. G . T . Thomson. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1957 Church dogmatics, vol. 2, part 1: The doctrine of God. Ed. G . W . Bromiley - T. F. Torrance. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1991 The Göttingen dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian religion, vol. 1. Ed. Hannelotte Reiffen. Trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans. Benz, Ernst 1971 "Rudolf Otto als Theologe und Persönlichkeit", in: Benz (ed.), 30-48. Benz, Ernst (ed.) 1971 Rudolf Otto 's Bedeutung für die Religionswissenschaft ologie Heute. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

und für die The-

Boozer, Jack S. 1977 "Rudolf Otto (1869-1937). Theologe und Religionswissenschaftler", in: Ingebord Schnack (ed.), Marburger Gelehrter in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 362-382. Brunner, Emil 1946 Revelation and reason: The Christian doctrine of faith and knowledge. Trans. Olive Wyon. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. 1947 The mediator: A study of the central doctrine of the Christian faith. Trans. Olive Wyon. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. 1950 Dogmatics, vol. 1: The Christian doctrine of God. Trans. Olive Wyon. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. 1962 Dogmatics, vol. 3: The Christian doctrine of the church, faith, and the consummation. Trans. David Cairns - T. H. L. Parker. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

44

Introduction

Bultmann, Rudolf 1937 "Reich Gottes und Menschensohn" (review), Theologische Rundschau, η. s. 9, no. 1: 1-35. 1958 Jesus and the word. Trans. Louise Pettibone Smith - Erminie Huntress Laniero. N e w York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1960 Existence and faith: Shorter writings of Rudolf Bultmann. Ed. Schubert M. Ogden. Cleveland - New York: Meridian. 1987 "Karl Barth's Epistle to the Romans in its second edition", trans. Keith R. Crim, in: Johnson (ed.), 54-55. Colpe, Carsten (ed.) 1977 Die Diskussion um "das Heilige". (Wege der Forschung 305.) Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Daly, Mary 1978 Gyn/Ecology: Press.

The metaethics

of radical feminism.

Boston: Beacon

Eliade, Mircea 1959a Cosmos and history: The myth of the eternal return. Trans. Willard R. Trask. N e w York: Harper & Row. 1959b The sacred and the profane: The nature of religion. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World. 1963 Patterns in comparative religion. Trans. Rosemary Sheed. New York: New American Library. 1964 Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1969a The quest: History and meaning in religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1969b Yoga: Immortality and freedom. Trans. Willard R. Trask. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1977 No souvenirs: Journal, 1957-1969. Trans. Fred H. Johnson, Jr. New York: Harper & Row. 1981 Journey east, journey west: 1907-1937. Trans. Mac Linscott Ricketts. San Francisco: Harper &c Row. 1988 1937-1960, exile's odyssey. Trans. Mac Linscott Ricketts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1989 Journal III, 1970-1978. Trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1990a Journal I, 1945-1955. Trans. Mac Linscott Ricketts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1990b Journal IV, 1979-1985. Trans. Mac Linscott Ricketts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1994 Bengal nights. Trans. Catherine Spencer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ernst, Carl 1992 "Mystical language and the teaching context in the early lexicons of sufism", in: Steven T. Katz (ed.), 1992, 181-201.

References

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Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1956 Nuer religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Feigel, Friedrich Karl 1948 "Das Heilige. " Kritische Abhandlung über Rudolf Ottos gleichnamiges Buch. (2nd revised edition.) Tübingen: J . C . B . Mohr. 1977 "Das Heilige" (selections from Feigel [1948]), in: Colpe (ed.), 380-405. Forell, Birger 1951 "Rudolf Ottos Persönlichkeit", in: Birger Forell - Heinrich Frick Friedrich Heiler, 1-2. Forell, Birger - Heinrich Frick - Friedrich Heiler 1951 Religionswissenschaft in neuer Sicht. Drei Reden über Rudolf Ottos Persönlichkeit und Werk. Marburg: N. G. Elwert. Frick, Heinrich 1928 Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 1938 "Rudolf Otto innerhalb der theologischen Situation", Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, n.s. 19, nos. 1-2: 3-15. 1951 "Religionswissenschaft in neuer Sicht", in: Birger Forell - Heinrich Frick - Friedrich Heiler, 3-12. Geertz, Clifford 1973 The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books. 1985 Local knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology. New York: Basic Books. 1988 Works and lives: The anthropologist as author. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Geyser, Joseph 1921 Intellekt oder Gemütf Eine philosophische Studie über Rudolf Ottos Buch "Das Heilige". Freiburg: Herder. 1977 "Intellekt oder Gemüt?" (selections from Geyser [1921]), in: Colpe (ed.), 302-336. Cimelio, Robert M. 1978 "Mysticism and meditation", in: Steven T. Katz (ed.), 1978, 170-199. Gold, Daniel 1988 "Approaching some householder yogis: To visit or move in?", Journal of ritual studies 2: 185-194. Goldammer, Kurt 1960 Die Formenwelt des Religiösen. Grundriss der systematischen Religionswissenschaft. Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner. Green, Clifford (ed.) 1989 Karl Barth: Theologian of freedom. London: Collins. Heiler, Friedrich 1938 Prayer: A study in the history and psychology of religion. Trans. Samuel McComb - J. Edgar Park. London: Oxford University Press. 1961 Erscheinungsformen und Wesen der Religion. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer. Holm, Soren 1971 "Apriori und Urphänomen bei Rudolf Otto", in: Benz (ed.), 70-83.

46

Introduction

Idinopulos, Thomas A. - Edward A. Yonan (eds.) 1994 Religion and reductionism: Essays on Eliade, Segal, and the challenge of the social sciences for the study of religion. Leiden & New York: E . J . Brill. Johnson, Roger A. (ed.) 1987 Rudolf Bultmann: Interpreting faith for the modern era. London: Collins. Katz, Steven T. 1978 "Language, epistemology, and mysticism", in: Steven T. Katz (ed.), 1978, 22-74. 1992 "Mystical speech and mystical meaning", in: Steven T. Katz (ed.), 1992, 3-41. Katz, Steven T. (ed.) 1978 Mysticism and philosophical analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. 1983 Mysticism and religious traditions. New York: Oxford University Press. 1992 Mysticism and language. New York: Oxford University Press. Kegley, Charles W. - Robert W. Bretall 1952 The theology of Paul Tillich. New York: Macmillan. Krieger, Leonard 1957 The German idea of freedom: History of a political tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leeuw, Gerardus van der 1938 "Rudolf Otto und die Religionsgeschichte", Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, n. s. 19, nos. 1-2: 71-81. Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1963 Totemism. Trans. Rodney Needham. Boston: Beacon Press. Lindbeck, George A. 1984 The nature of doctrine: Religion and theology in a postliberal age. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. Long, Charles H. 1986 Significations: Signs, symbols, and images in the interpretation of religion. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Lüdemann, Gerd - Martin Schröder 1987 Die religionsgeschichtliche Schule in Göttingen. Eine Dokumentation. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &c Ruprecht. Malinowski, Bronislaw 1922 Argonauts of the western Pacific. London: G. Routledge & Sons. Manganare, Marc 1992 Myth, rhetoric, and the voice of authority: A critique of Frazer, Eliot, Frye, and Campbell. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Mann, Bernhard (ed.) 1988 Biographisches Handbuch für das preussische Abgeordnetenhaus 1867-1918. Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag.

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Marcus, George (ed.) 1992 Rereading cultural anthropology. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press. McGinn, Bernard 1992 "The language of love in Christian and Jewish mysticism", in: Steven T. Katz (ed.), 1992, 202-235. Meland, Bernard 1965 "Rudolf Otto", in: Dean G. Peerman - Martin E. Marty (eds.), A handbook of Christian theologians. Cleveland: World, 169-191. Mensching, Gustav 1938a "Rudolf Ottos religionsgeschichtliche Arbeit", Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, η. s. 19, nos. 1-2: 118-128. 1938b Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer. 1948 Geschichte der Religionswissenschaft. Bonn: Universitäts-Verlag. 1949a Allgemeine Religionswissenschaft. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer. 1949b Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft. (2nd revised edition.) Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer. 1971a "Rudolf Otto und die Religionsgeschichte", in: Benz (ed.), 49-69. 1971b Tolerance and truth in religion. Trans. H.-J. Klimkeit. University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press. Mühlmann, Wilhelm E., et al. 1964 Chiliasmus und Nativismus. Studien zur Psychologie, Soziologie und historischen Kasuistik der Umsturzbewegungen. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. Nagel, Thomas 1986 The view from nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press. Otto, Rudolf 1915a Letter to Hermann Mulert, Göttingen, March 22. University Library, Marburg, Hs. 797:761. 1915b Letter to Hermann Mulert, Breslau, May 17. University Library, Marburg, Hs. 797:763. 1922 " Z u m Verhältnisse von mystischer und gläubiger Frömmigkeit", Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 3 (1922): 255-265. 1924 Det Heliga jämte spridda uppsatser om det Numinösa. Trans. Ernst Logren. Stockholm: Svenska Kyrkans Diakonistyrelses Bokvörlag. 1925 Lo Santo: lo racional y lo irracional en la idea de Dios. Trans. Fernando Vela. Madrid: Edición de la Revista de Occidente. 1926 II Sacro: l'irrasionale nella idea del Divino e la sua relazione al razionale. Trans. Ernesto Bionaiuti. Bologna: Zanichelli. 1927 Seisho-naru mono. Trans. Yamayo. Kyoto. 1928 Het Heilige: Over het irrationeele in de idee van het goddelijke en de verhouding ervan tot het rationeele. Trans. J. W. Dippel. Amsterdam. 1929 Le Sacré: L'elément non-rationnel dans l'idée du divin et sa relation avec le rationnel. Trans. André Jundt. Paris: Payot. 1981 Aufsätze zur Ethik. Ed. Jack Stewart Boozer. Munich: C. H. Beck.

48

Introduction

Penner, Hans H. 1983 "The mystical illusion", in: Steven T. Katz (ed.), 1983, 89-116. Proudfoot, Wayne 1985 Religious experience. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. Reeder, John P. 1973 "The relation of the moral and the numinous in Otto's notion of the holy", in: Gene Outka - John P. Reeder (eds.), Religion and morality. Garden City, N . Y . : Doubleday, 255-292. Ricketts, Mac Linscott 1988 Mircea Eliade: The Romanian roots, 1907-1945. Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs. Scheler, Max 1960 On the eternal in man. Trans. Bernard Noble. New York: Harper & Brothers. Schilling, Werner 1949-1950 "Das Phänomen des Heiligen. Zu Baetkes Kritik an Rudolf Otto", Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 2: 206-222. [Reprinted Colpe (ed.), 406-426.] Schleiermacher, Friedrich 1799 [1899] Uber die Religion. Reden an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern. Ed. Rudolf Otto. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1958 On religion: Speeches to its cultured despisers. Trans. John Oman. Intro. Rudolf Otto. New York: Harper & Row. Simpson, J. A. - E. S. C. Weiner (ed.) 1989 "Numinous", in: Oxford English dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 10: 597-598. Smart, Ninian 1958 Reasons and faiths: An investigation of religious discourse, Christian and non-Christian. New York: Humanities Press. 1970 "Rudolf Otto and religious experience", in: Philosophers and religious truth. New York: Macmillan, 116-151. 1978 "Understanding religious experience", in: Steven T. Katz (ed.), 1978, 10-21. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1990 Drudgery divine: On the comparison of early Christianities and the religions of late antiquity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 1963 The meaning and end of religion: A new approach to the religious traditions of mankind. New York: Macmillan. Söderblom, Nathan. 1914 "Holiness", in: James Hastings (ed.), Encyclopedia of religion and ethics. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 6: 731-741. Stephen, Horst - Martin Schmidt 1973 Geschichte der evangelischen Theologie in Deutschland seit dem Idealismus. (3rd revised edition.) Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

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Streng, Frederick J. 1978 "Language and mystical awareness", in: Steven T. Katz (ed.), 1978, 141-169. Strenski, Ivan (ed.) 1992 Malinowski and the work of myth. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Thornton, Robert J. - Peter Skalnik 1993 The early writings of Bronislaw Malinowski. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tillich, Paul 1923 "Die Kategorie des 'Heiligen' bei Rudolf Otto", Theologische Blätter 4: 11-12. 1951 Systematic theology, vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1957 "Symbols of faith", chap. 3 in: Dynamics of faith. New York: Harper & Row, 41-54. Tracy, David 1981 The analogical imagination: Christian theology and the culture of pluralism. New York: Crossroad. 1991 Dialogue with the other: The inter-religious dialogue. Louvain: Peeters. Torrance, Thomas F. 1962 Karl Barth: An introduction to his early theology, 1910-1931. London: SCM Press. Wach, Joachim 1926-1933 Das Verstehen. Grundzüge einer Geschichte der hermeneutischen Theorie im 19. Jahrhundert. 3 vols. Tübingen: J . C . B . Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 1944 Sociology of religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1951 Types of religious experience: Christian and non-Christian. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1958 The comparative study of religions. Ed. Joseph M. Kitagawa. New York: Columbia University Press. Wünsch, Georg 1938 "Grundriß und Grundfrage der theologischen Ethik Rudolf Ottos", Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, n.s. 19, nos. 1-2: 46-70. Yandell, Keith E. 1993 The epistemology of religious experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

A. Autobiographical fragments

Otto never wrote an extended account of his life. Nevertheless, two kinds of sources provide access to his own perspective on his past. At various stages in his academic career, Otto was required to submit autobiographical statements, some of which survive. In addition, he was an inveterate traveller, and his letters occasionally found their way into print. The letters from North Africa that appeared in 1911 were clearly intended for publication. They are artfully conceived and address specific theological and political issues. Two other selections provide a contrast in purpose. In 1938, one year after Otto's death, selected letters to his sister, Johanne Ottmer, and her daughter, Margarete, appeared that had been written on Otto's trip to Asia in 1927-1928. Finally, 1941 saw the publication of a portion of a very early letter. These letters provide a glimpse of how the mature and the young Otto, respectively, reflected less self-consciously on his experiences.

1. My life (1891, 1898) Of the autobiographical accounts that Otto had to compose throughout his career, the most detailed is the first, which was written when Otto proposed to take his first theological examination. It contains what Otto wanted those in authority to know about his family background and his personal, educational, and religious development. Reinhard Schinzer (1971) has already made extensive use of this document. Without it, he said, we would know almost nothing about Otto's childhood and school years (Schinzer 1971: l). 1 Unfortunately, the final copy of this document has been lost. All that remains is a draft, preserved in the Otto-Nachlaß at the University Library, Marburg, and written in an extremely rough hand. I have translated from a transcription made by Margarete Dierks, 1

A few other documents also elucidate Otto's younger years, including his childhood. See especially "reminiscences" written by several of Otto's friends and acquaintances after his death: Hermann Diesselhorst (1941), Karl Flemming (undated), Emil Sonnemann (1941), Wilhelm Thimme (undated), and "eine Schülerin" (undated).

1. My life (1891,

1898)

51

Martin Kraatz, Margot Kraatz, and myself. For the sake of readability, I have generally reproduced only what can be taken as Otto's final text. In addition, I have reproduced a vita that Otto submitted to the University of Göttingen when he began to teach. It is more formal and much briefer. Not only is it useful in establishing the later course of Otto's educational career; it also evidences the development of his self-confidence and maturity. Sources: (1) "Vita zum 1. E x a m e n " , University Library, Marburg, Hs. 7 9 7 : 5 8 2 ; (2) "Curriculum vitae, Lie. theol. Karl Louis Rudolf Otto, Privatdozent", University Archives, Göttingen, 4 II b 9 6 a.

Vita for the first examination in theology I, Karl Louis Rudolf Otto, was born in Peine on September 25, 1869, the second to the last of thirteen brothers and sisters. At the time, my father, Wilhelm Otto, owned a factory in Peine. On his side, as on my mother's, I am of Lower Saxon ancestry. While I was growing up, my family, close relatives, and friends were strictly burgherly and small-town. The first event of my life was my entry into school, a "stylish burgher-school", which I completed at the age of twelve.2 Already in school I began to want to become a "pastor". Along with that desire came an interest, lively but hardly theological, in everything ecclesiastical and theological that managed to appear within my narrow horizons. I could not comfortably read any story - and I read every one that I could get my hands on - before I had convinced myself that the people in it were pious and not, say, "Catholics" or Jews or heathens. I did allow a Catholic playmate to tell me about his saints, and I was very fortunate to be taken along to Mass once. When I was twelve, our family moved to Hildesheim, where my father had already built a second factory. But during the move my father became ill and died after a few days. Many of my older brothers and sisters had already left home; the rest of them did so now. Those of us who were younger stayed with my mother and went to school. I was admitted to the Untertertia3 of

2

3

Here Otto wrote, then deleted: "I had received private instruction in Latin and Greek, so that at Easter, 1 8 8 0 , I was admitted to the Untertertia of the Gymnasium Andreanum at Hildesheim." The fourth year of instruction.

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the Gymnasium Andreanum. In 1884 I was promoted to the Secunda4 and was confirmed, and four years later I received my diploma. My time in school was not so pleasant and delightful as it otherwise usually is. I had few friends and, mostly left to myself, I was distant and indifferent to the activities of others. Books were my best companions: later I liked historical novels, especially English ones, the best. The requirements of school were not very challenging - unfortunately, because as a result I never became accustomed to hard, methodical work. My favorite subjects were German composition, later Latin composition, and physics. In almost every class our instruction in religion was so dismal that it could hardly become anyone's favorite subject. Nevertheless, I continued to like and see the value in religion as a subject, especially because of the disagreements that I experienced early enough: even as children we argued spiritedly and angrily enough about divine sonship, about the account of creation, and about Darwinism and spontaneous generation. I yearned for the time when I could thoroughly study all these problems. For in the meantime my childhood wish had become, with the approval of my family, a resolve: I wanted to study theology. And so in April 1888 I went to Erlangen in order to begin my studies there and at the same time to fulfill my obligation to military service, if I were found fit.5 I chose Erlangen because I had friends there, and because, as one said, military service there was easy and pleasant. My chief reason, however, was somewhat different. Through school, church, and family I had been thoroughly brought up in the forms of traditional orthodoxy, and this sort of faith seemed to me to be not only the best but also the only one possible. To be sure, I was pleased when our religion teacher expressed the opinion that Balaam's ass had probably not actually spoken,6 and when he softened a little the lapis 'stone' and truncus 'club' of his naturally energetic protest against Philippism.7 Kingsley's Hypatias and our teacher's own desire every now and then allowed him to voice unorthodox thoughts about Apokatasta4 5 6

7

The sixth and seventh years of instruction. Otto first wrote, then deleted "Untersec", the sixth year. Otto matriculated in Erlangen on May 14, 1888. Numbers 22.28-30. Here Otto wrote, then deleted: "or that Joshua's miracle with the sun and moon at the valley of Aijalon was perhaps to be explained through the miraculously quick onset of victory"; cp. Joshua 10.12-14. In Lutheran tradition, Philippism denotes the views of those who followed Philipp Melanchthon after Luther's death (1546) and were willing to modulate the statement of faith presented to the emperor Charles V at Augsburg in 1530 (the "Augustana" or "Augsburg confession"). At issue were three major

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sis.9 But I remained firmly convinced that there could be no Christianity as salvation except in the form that had been passed on to me. To be sure, we had heard already at school of innovations and innovators who were revolutionizing theology - blinding people with their methods and leading them away from the old truth, as was said. Courageously enough, I decided that I wanted in time to become familiar with them all. But first I wanted to study with men of the old school, in order thoroughly to acquire the means for protecting myself against danger. For that reason above all I went to Erlangen, and I was there for five semesters. M y first two semesters were not very happy. I was found fit for military service and had to spend my time not in the lecture hall but in the barracks. I counted the weeks, the days, the hours, until I would be finished with the filth and crudity of the barracks, with the torturous, boring exercises that destroyed the spirit. Fortunately, there remained a little time for study, and my semesters of military duty were not entirely without theological benefit. I was able to hear or read this or that. 1 0 I points. First, the Philippists held that it was possible to endorse as adiaphora (matters of indifference) the ecclesiastical arrangements of the "interim" of 1548, according to which Protestants temporarily accepted the Roman Mass, the seven sacraments, and the authority of the Catholic episcopate (the adiaphoristic controversy). Second, they endorsed Melanchthon's position that it was necessary to perform good works in order to be saved (the majoristic controversy). Third, they adopted the views of the communion or eucharist articulated by Melanchthon in the so-called altered Augsburg confession, abandoning Luther's insistence on the real presence of Christ's body and blood in the bread and wine at communion and inclining toward the Reformed teaching that Christ was present symbolically (the crypto-calvinistic controversy). The Philippists were opposed by the "Gnesio-Lutherans" [genuine Lutherans], especially Matthias Illyricus Flacius (1520-1575). The "Formula of concord" (1577) (Tappert 1959: 463-636) resolved these controversies by rejecting the Philippist positions (articles 4, 7, and 10). 8 A historical novel by Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), first published in 1853. Hypatia, a mathematician and astronomer, was a leader of Neoplatonists in Alexandria in the fifth century CE. Her death at the hands of Christians, who accused her of immorality, marked the beginning of the decline of Alexandria as an intellectual center. 9 'Restoration', particularly the notion advanced by Origen (ca. 185-ca. 254) that all created beings will be restored to harmony with God at the end of time. 10 In summer semester 1888 Otto enrolled in "Psalms" with August Köhler (1835-1897), a traditionalist who argued against the more recent methods of interpretation. In winter semester 1888/89 he signed up for "Church his-

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came into contact with theology - and fairly energetic contact - especially by association with friends and through lectures and discussions in the theological students' association, in which Dr. Frank 1 1 frequently participated. Finally, it was Easter 1889, and the studying and student life that I had longed for could begin. But I had little idea of how to go about beginning. My older friends, from whom I wanted to learn this, had gone to Göttingen. So I decided that I would spend a semester with them in order to learn method. 1 2 This decision was a somewhat bitter one, for it ran contrary to my plan first to become quite certain and steady in traditional theology before I exposed myself to the "modern". But it seemed to me unavoidable: so I went with the intention of protecting myself as much as possible from the "other approach", of working chiefly with my friends, and then returning quickly to Erlangen the following winter. With this semester in Göttingen began a new period not only of my theological outlook but of my entire life. When I left school for the university, I was, as often happens, very sure of myself and what I thought. I thought that at the university I would only become more so. But already in Erlangen I had found, to my surprise, that many things were different from what I had expected. For example, I brought with me from home a strict, legalistic attitude toward Sunday, and I was not a little taken aback when I discovered how lax people in Erlangen were about this issue. The crack that developed as a result in the attitudes and ideas I had brought with me was still small, but it quickly became bigger the more Frank's free attitude toward scripture and especially his subjectivism influenced me. 1 3 Then I came to Göttingen. My friend, who had left me one semester earlier as a convinced Frankian, was on the point of deserting to another tory I" with Theodor von Kolde (1850-1913), a Reformation specialist, "Archaeological seminar in Christian art" with Albert Hauck (1845-1918), "History of philosophy" with Leonhard Rabus (1835-1916), instructor in philosophy, and "Darwin's theory" with (Hermann) Emil Selenka (1842-1902), professor of zoology and comparative anatomy. 11 Franz Hermann Reinhold Frank (1827-1894), the leading, second-generation theologian of the "Erlangen school". He joined the faculty in 1 8 5 7 and was promoted to full professor in 1858. For his views, see below. 12 Otto matriculated at the University of Göttingen on May 6, 1889. 13 Frank rooted the certainty of faith in the experience of rebirth and made it prior to the objects of faith. Doing so evoked charges of subjectivism, especially from Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889), the leading theologian at Göttingen.

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camp. 1 4 I had come in order to work with him. I read New Testament with him, 15 and I could not help but learn from him the "other" viewpoints. I attended Schultz's class on apologetics. 16 At first it was not at all easy for me, a beginner, to follow; but gradually I caught on, and I followed with ever growing interest and soon with great joy the clear, evident development. Instead of naked philosophical rationalism, which I had vaguely expected, I found an energetic, convincing representation of the gospel of the kingdom of God. At the same time, in Smend's class on the Psalms 17 I came into contact with a perspective on the Old Testament very different from the one I had known until then. To be sure, I took care not to agree with it without reservation, but I could not resist the conviction that this new teaching had arisen from a serious scholarly attitude and that the old teaching had no advantage whatsoever over the new either with regard to truth or with regard to piety. The impression that these two courses made on me was strengthened through sermons that I heard in the University church. 1 8 I did not abandon the old viewpoints that were dear to me, but I had gained one thing: I had learned that being devout is not identical with a specific theological idea of what it means to be devout. And I was strengthened in this knowledge by the experiences of the next summer vacation. I was able to make a long-planned trip to the land where almost every individual attains salvation in his or her own private way, to England. There I learned further from the Wesleyan Congregationalists, from high-, broad-, and low-church partisans, and also from the Salvation Army that many ways lead to Christian discernment. (To be sure, none pleased me better than our own.) From winter semester 1889/90 to winter semester 1890/91 I was back in Erlangen. 19 14 Here Otto wrote, then deleted: "I tried to argue with him." 15 Otto actually enrolled in the "New Testament seminar" with J.T. A. Wiesinger (1818-1908), professor of theology and N e w Testament from 1860 to 1895. 16 "Christian apologetics" with Hermann Schultz (1836-1903), professor of Old Testament from 1876 and rector of the university in 1 8 8 3 - 8 4 and 189495. Although Schultz was more a younger contemporary than a student of Ritschl's, his thought tended in the same direction, without diverging so far from Schleiermacher's reliance on religious experience. 17 "Interpretations of the Psalms" with Rudolf Smend (1851-1913), a student of Julius Wellhausen (1814-1918) w h o became professor of Bible and Semitic languages in 1889. 18 The university preacher at the time was Hermann Schultz. 19 Otto re-entered the University of Erlangen on November 7, 1889.

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Gloël's exegesis and Frank's systematics attracted me. 2 0 Actually, I think it was not so much the courses as the illustrious personalities themselves, in the one case the sincere friendliness, in the other the imposing power and depth. Later Dr. Seeberg also influenced me. 2 1 I found every aspect of his gifted exposition of scripture and depiction of history profoundly stimulating. Frank's views gradually took hold in me. But I could not reconcile them with what I had heard in Göttingen, and it seemed to me especially impossible to give up the understanding of the Old Testament that had been opened up by Smend. In between came Hoffmann, whom I got to know a little especially in reading ???. 2 2 He mediated the two dogmatic antitheses but at the same time excluded both. In addition, I had many other experiences: readings from periodicals of the most different leanings, Holsten's theory of vision, 23 Renan, 2 4 and again, underlying everything, Frank's subjectivism and his and Seeberg's polemics against 20 With Frank Otto took "Dogmatics I" and "Ethics" (winter semester 1889/90), "Dogmatics II" (summer semester 1890), and "Dogmatics seminar" (winter semester 1890/91). With J . E. Gloël (1857-1891) he took "Introduction to the New Testament", "Exegesis of the gospel of John", and "Review of Galatians" in the New Testament seminar (winter semester 1889/90), "Exegesis of Romans" (summer semester 1890), and "Biblical theology of the New Testament" (winter semester 1890/91). 21 With Reinhold Seeberg (1859-1935) Otto took "Life of Schleiermacher" (winter semester 1889/90), a discussion course on "The doctrine of the means of grace: Its history and biblical foundations" (summer semester 1890), and "History of the ancient church" and "Interpretation of the letters of James, Peter, and John" (winter semester 1890/91). Seeberg became one of the leading theologians of the time. Firmly rooted in the Lutheran confessions, he came to found in the early 1900s a "modern positive theology" as an attempt to express ancient truths in new forms. 22 The reference is uncertain. I would like to suggest J. C. K. Hofmann (18101877), an early leader of the Erlangen school, in particular Der Schriftbeweis (Hofmann 1853). But Otto clearly writes Ho/fmann, and the title, in Roman letters rather than the old German handwriting of the rest of the document, seems to be a siglum followed by al' bu'. 23 Carl Holsten (1825-1897), professor of New Testament in Bern and Heidelberg. In 1861 he published Die Christusvision des Paulus und die Genesis des paulinischen Evangeliums. He considered himself one of the last members of the Tübingen school of F. C. Baur (1792-1860). 24 (Joseph-)Ernest Renan (1823-1892), especially well-known for his Life of Jesus (1863), which attributed earliest Christianity to the mythopoetic capacities of the popular imagination.

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the old theory of inspiration. But in that case what was certain and normative? According to Seeberg, various features of Paul's writings were rabbinical forms; according to Schnedermann 1 Corinthians 10.4 was nothing but "Jewish background". 25 Was the view of Paul and the apostles concerning the préexistence of the Messiah perhaps nothing more than a survival from Judaism? Was the Lord himself simply adopting the view of the Messiah common at the time when he ascribed préexistence to himself? I fell into a pathetic vacillation: against my friends I sometimes advocated kenosis26 and sometimes its opposite. So it went. Memories of an open course on Darwinism during my first semester were powerful. 27 I lost the ground under my feet. That was the end of my studies in Erlangen. I had gone there not so much to study the truth as to study the best means of defending an opinion. I left with the resigned intention of seeking nothing but the truth, even at the risk of not finding it in Christ. 28 Only the historical facts could give me the answer I was seeking: it was my first task, then, to understand those facts clearly and distinctly, insofar as that was possible for a fourth-semester student. Prof. Smend's course on Old Testament Theology did that for me with regard to the Old Testament, and Holzmann's Commentary on the Synoptics did it with regard to the New Testament. 29 The sharp criticism that I had heard censured, and only censured, as "destructive" 2 5 In 1 Corinthians 10.4, Paul gives a typological interpretation of the incident during the exodus when the people of Israel got drinking water from a rock (cp. Numbers 2 0 . 1 1 ) . According to Meyer ( 1 9 3 1 ) , Georg Schnedermann ( 1 8 5 2 - 1 9 1 7 ) published in 1 8 9 0 either a book or an article with the title, "Uber den jüdischen Hintergrund im Neuen Testament", one of his many publications on that theme; cp. Schnedermann ( 1 8 9 5 ) , which postdates Otto's text. 2 6 'Emptying', the christological option according to which the Son of God, when he became incarnate in the person of Jesus, emptied himself of all divine attributes (e.g., omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence). Kenotic christology was particularly popular in the late nineteenth century as a way of reconciling traditional dogmatic assertions with the image of Jesus that was emerging from the historical study of the gospels. 2 7 See n. 10 above. 2 8 Otto re-entered the University of Göttingen on April 2 3 , 1 8 9 1 . 2 9 Otto took "Old Testament theology" with Smend in summer semester 1 8 9 1 . There is no evidence of a course with Holzmann, so the other reference seems to be to a book by Heinrich Julius Holtzmann ( 1 8 3 2 - 1 9 1 0 ) , perhaps Holtzmann ( 1 8 8 9 ) .

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now became for me nothing but edifying and positive, for it disclosed, by means of the strictest scholarly investigation, the revelatory character of the biblical evidence in a way that was unhesitating and incontestable. Dr. Schultz's course on dogmatics helped me to grasp this dogmatically and make it my own. 3 0 Instead of lofty speculation, he taught a religious and moral understanding of revelation and of the person of the Lord, and if on the one hand he emphasized very energetically the suitability of the church's statements of faith, on the other hand he showed how all of them, and especially those about the divinity of Christ, were properly understood not through some sort of speculation but only through the spirit of the New and Old Testaments. So I gradually acquired once again a firm ground and won back what I had almost lost, but now in a new and, I think, more proper form. It often happens that we look with disdain upon and quickly condemn a standpoint that we ourselves have given up and so fall into the same error as previously, namely, that we consider our own mode of theological understanding to be the only one. In this regard I am sincerely grateful to Dr. Häring. 3 1 His caution in judgment, his respect for men of a different point of view, his recognition of everything that others possess, indeed, as he often enough allows to be seen, of everything in which others are superior to him, cannot fail to impress anyone. I understood the purpose of this report to be to detail, so far as possible, the course of my theological development. My development has really just begun, begun anew, and I do not know where it will end. But I have again decided in my heart to be filled still more with the spirit of our church, and I hope to become a convinced and useful servant of it. About my training in the individual theological subjects I still have little to report. I have received an introduction to the exegetical disciplines from the respected Drs. Wiesinger, Gloël, Seeberg, Häring, and Smend, 3 2 30 Otto took "Dogmatics II" with Schultz in summer semester 1891. 31 In summer semester 1891, Otto took a course on " O n e ' s personal standing to the office of ministry" with Theodor von Häring (1848-1928). From the tenth edition on, Otto dedicated his most famous book, The idea of the holy, to Häring, whose own views straddled the divide between Pietism and Ritschlianism, that is, between relying on personal experience and history in formulating theological truths. 32 In addition to the courses listed above, Otto took Rudolf Smend's course on " I s a i a h " in winter semester 1891.

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to the historical disciplines from Drs. Reuter, Kolde, and T s c h a c k e r t , 3 3 to the systematical disciplines from Drs. Frank, Schultz, and, in a discussion class, Seeberg, and to the practical disciplines from Drs. Wiesinger, Schultz, and K n o k e . 3 4 In addition, I have received much help through the scholarly activities of the theological association, especially since Drs. Frank, Seeberg, Häring, and K n o k e have frequently given us their support in that c o n t e x t . M y private w o r k has actually been unmethodical, especially before I c a m e to Göttingen the second time, but also afterward as well. I applied myself now t o this, n o w to that, and properly speaking I finished nothing. I pursued m a n y ancillary and secondary subjects: art history in the discussion classes of Professors H a u c k and Wieseler, 3 5 organ and music theory with Professors Ochsle and Freiberg. 3 6 I studied Arabic and a little Aramaic for t w o semesters with Prof. Spiegel, and for one semester I studied comparative Semitic g r a m m a r with Prof. de L a g a r d e . 3 7 Privately I pursued all sorts of other topics. Naturally, I could 33 At Göttingen in summer semester 1 8 8 9 Otto took "Recent church history" with Hermann Reuter (1817-1889), noted for his refusal to permit any methodological distinction between church and political history. Back in Erlangen, he took "Symbolics" (summer semester 1890) and "Edicts of the Roman emperors against the Christians" in the seminar on church history (winter semester 1890/91) with the reformation historian Theodor von Kolde (1850-1913). Finally, he took "History of the church in Hannover and Braunschweig" (summer semester 1891) and "History of dogma" (winter semester 1891/92) with Paul Tschackert (1848-1911) in Göttingen. 34 Karl Knoke (1841-1920) was professor of practical theology at Göttingen from 1882-1911. In summer semester 1891 Otto enrolled in the "Liturgical seminar" and the "Catechetical seminar" with Knoke as well as the "Homiletical seminar" co-taught by Knoke and Schultz. In winter semester 1891/92 he enrolled in "Practical theology" and the "Liturgical seminar" with Knoke, the "Homiletical seminar" with Knoke and Schultz, and the "Catechetical seminar" with Wiesinger. 35 On Hauck, see n. 10 above. In summer semester 1889 Otto took "Interpretation of Greek monuments from the Hellenistic period" with Friedrich Wieseler (1811-1892), from 1854 professor of archaeology at Göttingen. 36 Otto originally wrote Ochsler, then deleted the final " r " . As royal music director, Johann Elias Oechsler (1850-1917) taught music and voice at the University of Erlangen. Otto Freiberg (1846-1926) was professor of musicology and academic music director at the University of Göttingen. 37 Friedrich Spiegel (1820-1905) was an orientalist at the University of Erlangen, specializing in Iranian languages and Zoroastrianism. Paul Anton de Lagarde (1827-1891) was professor of oriental languages at Göttingen and a notorious German national and anti-Semite. With Spiegel Otto took

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hardly study all of these things properly, and finally, on the friendly advice of de Lagarde, I decided to postpone all of these secondary studies until some later time in order to concentrate on preparing for the examination. Unfortunately, I have done that now very late. I have begun what I had formerly neglected. T h e search for a solid perspective did not give me the drive to acquire specific knowledge methodically. Even earlier my memory was only a little accustomed to methodical learning and retention, and in recent years it has been almost completely unaccustomed to them. If it is not bad, it is nevertheless so out of practice that I make poor progress in everything that must be mastered by memory. Despite this circumstance and my awareness that my knowledge is limited, I have decided to attempt the examination this coming Easter, and I hereby obediently request your kind permission. Hildesheim December 2 9 , 1 8 9 1

Rudolf O t t o student of theology

Curriculum vitae of the licentiate of theology, Karl Louis Rudolf O t t o , Privatdozent in the theological faculty of the Georg-August University, Göttingen [July 1 8 9 8 ] I was born on September 2 5 , 1 8 6 9 , in Peine, province Hannover. M y father, w h o died in my thirteenth year, owned a malt-factory, first in Peine, then in Hildesheim. I am o f the Lutheran confession and, like my parents, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hannover. When I was twelve years old I entered the Gymnasium Andreanum in Hildesheim and completed my studies in my eighteenth year. Then I studied theology for five semesters in Erlangen and three semesters in Göttingen; at that time I also fulfilled my military duties. I passed my first theological examination at Easter 18 9 2 3 8 and my second at Christmas 1 8 9 4 . Between the "Arabic grammar" (winter semester 1889/90), "Continuation of Arabic" (summer semester 1890), and "Arabic grammar" again (winter semester 1890/91). With de Lagarde he took "Comparative Semitic grammar I" (summer semester 1891). 38 An earlier vita, also in the University Archives, Göttingen (4 II b 96 a) and dated March 7, 1898, is virtually identical until this point. Then it continues: "Until Easter 1893 I was vicar in the German Evangelical Church in Cannes in southern France. Then I entered the Predigerseminar [a school for ministerial candidates run by the church rather than the university] at Erichsburg. I passed my second theological examination in January 1895, and that fall I

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two examinations I spent three quarters of a year as vicar to the German Evangelical congregation in Cannes, and for two years I was a member of the Predigerseminar at Erichsburg. From Michaelmas 39 1895 to Michaelmas 1897 I was inspector of the Theologisches Stift 40 in Göttingen. At Pentecost 1898 I underwent the examinations for the degree of Licentiate after submitting a dissertation entitled "Geist und Wort bei Luther" [Spirit and Word in Luther], After a public disputation, I was awarded the degree of Licentiate of Theology on July 9 of the same year. On July 10, after giving a trial lecture before the assembled, honored Faculty of Theology, I received my license to teach for two years. I recognize as essential influences on my theological development my teachers Häring, Schultz, and Smend. Rudolf Otto. Lie. theol.

2. Letters from North Africa (1911) (Selections) In 1911-1912 Otto made a "world-tour" through southern Spain and North Africa, India, China, Japan, and Siberia, with funds administered by the German government. At the time he was associate professor for systematic theology at the University of Göttingen. As other traveling theologians did, Otto sent back letters to Martin Rade, professor in Marburg, for Die christliche Welt, Rade's weekly magazine for liberal Protestants. One letter described what is perhaps the best-known incident in Otto's entire life: the encounter with the hymn from Isaiah, "Holy, holy, holy . . . ", in a synagogue in Mogador, now Essaouira, Morocco. About this incident Ernst Benz (1971: 36) has written: "It is particularly noteworthy that Otto came to know the experience [of the holy] not primarily from reading sacred texts but on a journey as a spontaneous religious experience in a Jewish synagogue in Morocco, as he himself

became inspector of the Theologisches Stift here, a position I held until the beginning of this semester." 39 September 29. 40 A subsidized dormitory for students of theology.

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told me." 41 Friedrich Heiler (1951: 15-16) has written much the same thing. 42 The situation, however, was a little more complicated. In the first set of letters, "Our lady of the candle", Otto had already used the term numen in a sense similar to the one it has in The idea of the holy. Indeed, he began there to formulate a theory of the relationship of the numen to the world of ordinary reality, but one that used the more conventional Christian language of incarnation rather than the peculiar Kantian terms that he later adopted. In addition, Otto was already philosophically disposed to identify an experiential center from which religions derived. In keeping with his prior neo-Friesian convictions, his letters repeatedly presented lush descriptions of nature that deliberately attempted to arouse in readers a sense of the religious, as distinct from the aesthetic. In this respect, they are reminiscent of some of Heinrich Hackmann's published sermons that Otto (1910b: 2824, n. 1) had recommended to readers the previous fall. 43 Furthermore, Otto's Friesianism had already led him to develop an analysis of religious feelings congruent with the dynamics found in The idea of the holy. In a critique of Wilhelm Wundt, Otto (1910a: 299-300) had derived notions of souls from a feeling "for which we have no other name than the [feeling] of the supersensual", a feeling that united the uncanny, the horrifying, and the fascinating into one. 44 Finally, and most interestingly, Otto's contemporary account of encountering the trisagion in Morocco did not invoke the dynamics of religious experience so much as other cultural dialectics at work in the letters: contrasts between traditional and modern, European and indigenous, rich and poor, and, of a differ41 Benz (1971: 36) continues: "and indeed in the moment when the rabbi intoned the age-old hymn, 'Holy, holy, holy', and the community responded. In this song Rudolf Otto experienced the primal encounter with the transcendent, w h o s e name is unspeakable and w h o m the devout in the Old Testament honored with an earthly imitation of the song of the seraphim." 4 2 Cp. Heiler (1961: 16), which cites the incident in emphasizing the need for students of the science of religion to visit religious communities. 4 3 Otto (1910b: 2827) had also already praised Fries for discovering the real center of religious experience, the experience of the mysterium. 4 4 Cp. Otto (1910a: 305): "From the very beginning religion is experience of the mysterium and an impulse towards the mysterium, of what breaks forth from the depths of our life of feeling . . . as the feeling of the supersensual." In a later English translation, Otto had no difficulty in identifying this feeling; it was "the sensus numinus [s/c]" ("The sensus numinis as the historical basis of religion, I P , 430).

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ent order, spirit and letter, a contrast that Otto had already addressed in his dissertation. These dynamics appear clearly, for example, in Otto's comment at the end of the paragraph describing the encounter. One can hardly maintain, then, that Otto learned about the experience of the holy in an unmediated, spontaneous fashion in the synagogue at Mogador. 4 5 At most, one can say that as Otto reflected upon this encounter, the holy struck him as the proper center of the religious experience at which he had hinted so elusively in "Our lady of the candle", an experience that Schleiermacher and Fries had taught him to look for. If later Otto remembered the encounter as the source of his ideas about the holy, or if Benz and Heiler later took it as such, they did so under the pressure of ideas that made the experience of the holy a primary religious datum to be learned from an encounter, not evoked by notions gathered from books. Sources: (1) "Bei Unserer Frau von der Kerze", Die christliche Welt 25, no. 2 6 (June 2 9 , 1 9 1 1 ) , cols. 6 0 2 - 6 0 7 . (2) "Vom Wege", Die christliche Welt 2 5 , no. 3 0 (July 2 7 , 1 9 1 1 ) , cols. 7 0 5 - 7 1 0 , and no. 3 3 (August 17, 1 9 1 1 ) , cols. 779-783.

Our lady of the candle Santa Cruz de Tenerife, April 20 "One must marry", my donkey-driver, Aostin, says respectfully. "It is necessary. Let your grace enjoy himself a couple of years more. But then marry!" "Does enjoyment stop with marriage?" Aostin chuckles softly. "When one has fifteen children." " F i f - ?" "Fifteen. But six are dead", he adds calmly, "the last a half year ago. We went to Our Lady of Candelaria. But it didn't do any good." "Does it ever do any good?" " O f course. She often helps people. When the donkey was sick, we made a promesa. That time she helped us."

4 5 According to Horst Stephan (Otto's colleague at Marburg) and Martin Schmidt ( 1 9 7 3 : 3 6 9 , n. 161), " O t t o himself reported that he first found the numinous in Luther's De servo arbitrio."

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"Would your grace tell me a little about Our Lady of Candelaria?" Here everyone is "your grace" from the moment he starts to wear pants, or at least fragments of them. "It would give me great pleasure. You see, before this island was Catholic - and it's been Catholic a long time - the Guanches lived here. They were giants, and they were heathens. Once, two of them went fishing below Güimar there, but they didn't catch a thing. When they came back to the beach, they saw a large woman standing on top of a rock. She was holding a child in her arms and a candle in her hand. It was the Mother of God. She was made of wood covered with gold. When one of the fishermen threw a stone at her, his arm immediately grew stiff and wouldn't move. They called the king. He worshiped her and wanted to bring her into a beautiful tent, in order to reverence her there. But after he had carried her a little way, she suddenly became incredibly heavy. The king cried out, 'Help!' And in memory of this event a hermitage named Socorro 'Help' was built at that place. It is there to this day and still has the same name. Eventually she was brought from there to a cave along the seashore that belonged to the king. Here the Guanches revered and worshiped her, celebrated festivals, and danced. Still today people dance there during the great processions. One fellow stands on another's shoulders. They clothe themselves so that they look like an old Guanche, for the Guanches were giants. Then they dance. When the Christians came, they found Our Lady in the cave and explained to the Guanches who she was. All of the Guanches were baptized. Then they built a great, beautiful church and a cloister and wanted to bring Our Lady inside it. But when they tried to move her, once again she became so heavy that they could not budge her. But in the end they succeeded and brought her into the church. What happened the next day? Those who came to the church found the place empty and Our Lady back at her old place in the cave. That happened twice. Finally she relented, and now she stands in the church. She is the protectress of Tenerife and of all seven of the Canary Islands. Pilgrims come to her from everywhere. Her festivals are the Purification of the Virgin (February 2) and the Assumption of the Virgin (August 15). On those occasions there is a great procession, and Our Lady goes to visit San Bias (Saint Blaise) in her old cave. After she left the cave, a small San Bias was set up in it." "And who is more powerful, the Holy Christ of La Laguna or Our Lady of Candelaria?"

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Aostin seemed never to have thought about this theological question before. In his opinion, most people went to Candelaria, and so did most of the money. "I want to go to Candelaria, too." * *

*

Barranco Hondo, April 23 In the cool, dim light of a fonda 'cafe' we eat unpeeled potatoes and salted fish. A large cat lies on the table next to the breadbasket. Two more sit on the bench opposite it. All three contentedly watch my futile attempts to master the salted fish with knife and fork. Don Miguel pours the wine. What I am saying does not sound to him at all like Spanish which is in short supply here in the countryside - and the stumps of words which he speaks sound to me like Chinese. "How far is it to the church down below?" I ask. "That might be possible", he comments, meaning well. "Is that the way down to the church?" "Wine? No, still only bananas. A lot of them!" he says and laughs. I try a subject closer to his. "You have a pair of splendid pigs in the cavern below your house." He almost chokes, then he laughs. "No. In our country pigs don't lay eggs. Hens do. Hens!" He points to some feathery object by the cats. I have had enough Spanish for the moment. I leave the salted fish to the cats and seek out the narrow rocky path, which wends its way a thousand feet down the mountainside through banana fields to the shore below. Looking around, one's gaze takes in the peculiar surroundings. One might almost call them uncanny. 46 Up above rust-brown rock plunges to the valley in gigantic waves, interrupted by horizontal crevices and clefts. It is made up of basalt, sharp lava, and cracked layers of pumice one on top of the other, jutting upwards, crushed by ever new streams of the erupting fiery mass, split, compressed. It presses and plunges downward, sits there as if it had congealed from the fiery flood only yesterday, then disappears into the sea, which spreads out to the horizon, a whitish gray in the radiance of the midday sun. Here and there an isolated tree 46 On the "weird" or "uncanny" (unheimlich) in Otto's thought, see The idea of the holy (1950: 40).

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or shrub is growing in this peculiar soil, as peculiar as the soil itself: prickly opuntias, those wonderful, ridiculous elves o f the plant world; huge spurges, which grow up to four meters in height and try to look like cactuses; tamarisks, with their dusty, hanging greenery; and dragon trees, which dot the landscape like gigantic, fat paintbrushes, nature's primitive attempt to solve the "tree p r o b l e m " . In the early tertiary they were quite modern and up to date, but today they look ridiculous and out of fashion. * *

*

In the Dominican convent, Candelaria "Ingleses! Ingleses!'1'' This watchword has quickly made the rounds, and all the youth of the village are pressing hard around us. M o s t of them are below the " y o u r grace" rank, for the reason mentioned above. Still, all o f them wear shirts, which always stop, according to some secret m a x i m , where they would first begin to be of real significance. " A little dog, sir! A little d o g ! " Spanish copper coins bear the image of an animal bearing arms with a long, annulated tail. Because of the great similarity in form, people here take the animal to be a poodle, and they expect that every foreigner will have and give away as many o f these "little d o g s " as possible. But we do not give any away, and we take refuge in the peace o f the cloister. T h e large white building is still; the cells stand open and empty; the m o n k s have left long ago. It leads to a great, stately church with three naves, once the most beautiful church on the island. It has collapsed. T h e windows have fallen out, the altars are demolished. Following this is an empty, seemingly poor, elongated structure, where the sanctuary is found today. A long, brocaded curtain conceals the high altar, above which a large, empty space opens up. Because of some oversight, the priest is away on a journey, and his housekeeper has let us in. N o w she lights two candles, and slowly the curtain rises. " T h i s image is more splendid and accomplished than any that I have seen in my entire life. T h e color of the face is somewhat brownish, with very beautiful, rosy cheeks. But actually, one cannot talk about the colors so precisely, for the image is accustomed to change color and to appear to be now this color, now t h a t . " So wrote old Alonso de Espinosa [cp. 1 9 0 7 : 7 0 ] in his book o n the origin and miracles of O u r Lady o f Candelaria. W e could find nothing of this magnificence and these miraculous colors. We were simply looking at one o f the world's

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hundreds and thousands of sacred images. It was similar in every way to all the Mothers of God, from pillars, the Graces, and the Maries of Einsiedeln and Czgstochowa to the more venerable and ugly images of the Eastern Church: the Mother of God from Kazan, the blacherniotissa,47 the Iberian of Athos and Moscow (der iberischen vom Athos und von Moskau). It is wrapped in the familiar, conical garment, and it holds in its left hand a large, silver candle which denotes that the image originally depicted the "churching" or purification of Mary. 48 The curtain comes down, and we hear once again how the image really, the Virgin herself - "appeared" to the Guanches. We hear of its miracles and its great festivals, which thousands cross the mountains to attend. We hear of the visit of the Mother of God to San Bias in the cave below. We hear of the decorative flags and colors which all the islands contribute and of the dances and the fireworks. And we receive a picture along with two red and gold bands that have come into contact with the image and bear the inscription: N.A.R.M.P.R.L.M.O.T.A.R.E. These are the mysterious signs that the Mother of God wears on the hem of her garment. In the meantime, another visitor has arrived, an old woman, dressed entirely in black. She kneels down at the portal and now laboriously, step by step, traverses the entire church on her knees, up to the altar. She bows three times, kisses the steps, gets up, returns to the entrance, and begins traversing the church again. "What does that mean, señora?" "A promesa, señor." The beautiful old church, the shabby new one, the cloister, the entire complex is crowded up against, almost stuck onto, the powerful lava rock, which here plunges down and leaves room for only a narrow strip between itself and the sea. The buildings actually look as if they are trying to clothe the rock. And the rock itself must have had a special impact on 47 A representation of Mary as intercessor, named after the Blachernae palace (Tekfur Sayari) in Constantinople. 48 The festival of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, now of the Presentation of the Lord (Feb. 2), is also known as Candlemas because it is traditionally celebrated with candle processions. It commemorates the visit of Mary and Jesus to the temple forty days after Jesus's birth (Luke 2:22-38).

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the feelings of the builders, for otherwise one cannot understand why, when the sanctuary was removed from the cave, it was situated in a location right by the mouth of a barranco 'gorge' that was not protected from flash floods. As I still have to report, this location would be very fateful for Our Lady of the Candle. A hundred and fifty meters from the church the original sanctuary, the "Cave of Saint Blaise", pierces the rock. An ancient entranceway, older than every other construction at the site, surrounds the mouth of the cave and protects the interior. It is locked, but a huge knothole provides a view of what is inside: a calm, dim light beneath the brown-red dome; simple images of the four kings of the Guanches engaged in worship; in the background the altar on which Saint Blaise is now enthroned. The entire complex is much more impressive than the church and the sacred image. And apparently the cave retains its dignity even today. People take its stones along with them, and when they pour water over them, it has the power to heal. As we are speaking, the curate comes home, tells us once more what we already know, then adds a piece of information that Espinosa could not yet have known. At the beginning of the preceding century one of the uncanny flash-floods that come up infrequently but with devastating force in these barrancos demolished the great, beautiful church built at its mouth and washed its contents out to sea, including the sacred image. "Including the sacred image?" "Yes indeed." "But how was it ever found again?" "It was never found again. We made - a new one." "Made a new one?!" "Certainly. Just like the old one. It was sent to Rome and blessed, and a new church was built for it." Only slowly did I recover from my horror. I said nothing, but inwardly I doubted whether it was possible to make images sacred in Rome. If in other matters the people had acted so simply and practically, they would have been spared this effort altogether. They would have left it to Our Lady of Candelaria to determine how she wished to transfer her gracious presence into the new image. Then I asked about the meaning of the inscription on the hem of the garment. "Latine loqueris? [Do you speak Latin?]" "Loquor. [Yes, I do.J"

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"Favoriscas mihi papyrum. [Please give me a piece of paper.]" He wrote: Non Alta Regum Mundi Palatia Require. Litora Malo 49 Oceani Tenerifica Abitare, Relinquens Excelsa· I thanked him and disappeared into the interior of the old church to reflect upon what I had seen. It is completely empty. The blue sky shines through the open roof, just as the blue sea is visible through the vacant windows. Inside it is still, and only the calm roar of the returning tide on the beach pierces the silence. * *

*

It is possible that the Guanches, who inhabited Tenerife before the Spanish came, possessed and worshiped an image of Mary before they converted to Christianity. Aside from the "appearance" of Mary in the image, the story makes a good deal of sense. Grand Canary Island nearby was Catholic long before Tenerife was, and we know that elsewhere heathens have acquired and worshiped images of Mary and the saints even before they have been baptized. Saint Nicholas was worshiped in this way by the inhabitants of Kamchatka. But what seems originally to have been most important here was not the heavenly mother but the rock and the cave. The place is called Puerto de San Bias still today. Saint Blaise, however, is the saint commonly associated with caves, and the Catholic church has often introduced his cult when an old, pre-Christian cave-sanctuary is to be christianized. I have already indicated the importance of the rock and the cave for the entire complex. Only later, then, was the cult of Mary situated there, and it was apparently separated from the cave-cult proper only partially and with difficulty. The cave-cult continued to affect the cult of Mary and is still alive in it. The same thing happens in the cults of the other Maries of mountains, rockoutcroppings, and deserted places that are so numerous in Catholicism. Our Lady of the Candle is only a less successful predecessor of, for example, Notre Dame de Lourdes. At Lourdes, too, one finds an outcropping of rock and a cave, healing water issuing from sacred rock, and still today the special sanctity of the rock-face itself, from which the numen50 mysteriously emerges and to which it returns.

4 9 I do not need the lofty palaces of the world's kings. When I leave heaven, I prefer the ocean's shores at Tenerife. [Martin Rade's note] 5 0 Numen, that is, 'the Godhead', 'the divine essence'. [Martin Rade's note]

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The entire cult is instructive and illustrative of so many events in the history of religion. Consider the legend that was later attached to the spot in order to explain its name and location. " S o c o r r o " is nothing more than an epithet applied to countless sacred places, images and crosses that possess the ability to perform miracles. Certainly the Socorro here was nothing more than that. But the legend adds a new explanation. As in our legends about the Wartburg o r Achalm, 5 1 the Guanche prince is summoned. The term "appearance" ( " E r s c h e i n u n g " [apparicion]) is also instructive. It is the name typically used when the numen becomes visible or detectable (fühlbar), whether in the form of gods, angels, or spirits (cp. Greek epiphania 'manifestation'). The term "apparition" refers to the same thing when we apply it to the appearance of ghosts. W h a t is most instructive is the special relationship that the numen has to the means in which it appears. These images, sacred rocks, holy objects, these " h o u s e s " of the heavenly are more than "images" or "houses". They are actually the heavenly itself; then again, they are not. By the standards of the time, that Athenian philosopher w h o claimed that Phidias's image of Athena was, after all, only her image, not the goddess herself, should have been stoned for blasphemy. And as far as religious feeling is concerned, 51 The Wartburg, outside Eisenach in Thuringia, is famous as the site of the poetic competition celebrated in Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser, as Martin Luther's hideout in 1521-1522, where he began translating the New Testament into German, and as the scene of student demonstrations in 1817. According to legend (Richter [ed.] 1877: 3), Count Ludwig II of Thuringia, known as "the Jumper", was once hunting on Inselberg. There he encountered a wild animal and followed it up to the Hörsei near Eisenach and from there to the mountain where the Wartburg now lies. As he waited for the animal to emerge from the forest, the mountain pleased him so much that he cried out, "Wait, mountain (Warte, Berg). You should be my fortress (Burg)." Eventually Ludwig gained control of the site and began the construction of the Wartburg. There are several accounts of the naming of Achalm, west of Reutlingen in Baden-Württemberg, among them the following (Meier [ed.] 1852: 344): At Achalm iron arrowheads fitted to wooden shafts were found shot into the old walls. They attest to an age-old siege through which the fortress was taken. As the defeated count departed, he sighed and called out to his stronghold, "Ah, helm! (Ach Helm!) I must leave you." From the opening words of this cry the new owner called the fortress Achelm or Achalm. Others report that the count said, "Ah! Everything (Ach äll [allei) must I leave", for which reason the fortress is even today colloquially known as Achei.

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the queen of heaven herself really appears in the image at Tenerife, too. She disdains the heavenly palace, humbles herself, assumes the form of wood, and dwells at Tenerife. Our dogmaticians have formulated the artificial doctrines of the communicatio idiomatum,52 the union of the "two natures" of Christ, and of the unio sacramentalis [sacramental union]. That teaching applies precisely to Our Lady of the Candle and to every similar "sacred image". It also applies to every divine image, every "fetish", and every stone that the heathen consider sacred. The cult here is also instructive with regard to the distribution of the numen among a countless number of "appearances". On this point, too, dogmaticians in every religion have created the most refined and subtle teachings. Luther taught ubiquitas, the ability of the heavenly substance to be in many places at once, whole and without division. The Middle Ages also spoke of the ability of holy things to be present in many places. (Consider, for example, the twenty-six heads of John the Baptist.) Yoga teaches that every fully realized being has the ability to multiply the personality and be in several places simultaneously. Tibetan Buddhism has developed this point very sublimely. - Oh thought, do not wander too far! But what was the meaning of the peculiar, old cults of hill, rock, and cave, the ancient worship of nature itself, that we find among people of all times and places, just as we find it here? How did human beings develop this sort of worship? And what gives it the power to establish itself at various stages of religious evolution, even better, to arise over and over again? The answer seems easy, especially here at Candelaria. Just look around. What do we ourselves experience? The sun has sunk deeper. Its rays fall obliquely, no longer with a blinding white radiance but with a shimmering light that is golden and brown. Everything is filled with shades and colors. The yellow-brown rock, which was previously uniform, is now alive. The deep blue-black of the heavy, massive basalt frees itself from the red and yellow and dark brown of the lava and from the bright green and white of the broad strata of pumice, ash, tufa, and lapilli. The restless jumble, the almost chaotic rumble, of the landscape in front of us assumes the shape of an enormous relief rich in lines and shapes. The contrast of light and shadow highlights fold upon fold, and one form after another emerges 5 2 The Christian teaching according to which the divine nature of Christ assumed the properties of the human nature and, on some accounts, vice versa.

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in the free space. In a beautiful, broad, flat curve the plunge of the rock, which elsewhere falls precipitously into the sea, recedes before us, and gives way to this still bay, on whose gentle, black shore the sea, n o w a deep blue, continuously casts broad, silver strips of foam. In every n o o k , in every possible cranny there presses forth what was not visible from above: the colorful splendor of this fabulous, wondrous plant life. Here golden wheat, heavy with ears already ripe and ready for the harvest, nods in a hundred tiny scraps o f soil, laboriously encircled with stone pebbles. There bananas raise their elegant, large, emerald leaves, at the same time that their massive, violet, flowering stems hang down t o the ground from the weight. All about one sees graceful cineraria, circular, broad sempervivum, roses of every color, on the heights the vast heath in tree tops, in white flowery splendor, under the mighty branches o f the ancient Canary pine, the proud laurel, and the towering palms. But most of all one sees the favorite flowers o f our mothers, the bright pelargonium and the dark-red geranium. Vegetation climbs and proliferates around the r o c k , clambers uphill in high, long copses with clumps of thirty blossoms, winds itself around the clumsy cactus, forces its way through the undergrowth of the three-meter tall euphorbia, plunges down in graceful wreaths from the tall rock-face, a stationary waterfall of dark green and purple. Thus clothed, the enormous slope soars upward in great, bold lines to the two-thousand-meter high crests and ridges of the cumbre 'crest' [in this case, the rim of the crater], which spreads out endlessly. But that itself is only the base of the towering, snowy peak and the enormous, craterous mountain, around which an ever-changing sea of silver clouds, blown by the trade winds, flutters and rolls. Is it not obvious that when primitive peoples, with their childish and impressionable minds (Gemiite), viewed such magnificence, they would intuit and discern the divine, that they would worship and pray to it as manifested on the towering heights of this mountain, in the powerful cleft of this ravine and rock? D o we not find here the root of religion? N o . We do not find the root of religion here. M a y b e those primitives were children. But then again, listen to the children outside. They are interested in "little dogs" and our chocolate bonbons, in the traps with which they catch the gray-green canary birds, and in their musical tops. But they are indifferent to the divine splendor that surrounds them. A child does not notice the greatness and the beauty of nature and the splendor of G o d in his w o r k s . Human beings do not experience these things at the beginning but at the end of their lives, when they

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have become mature and deep in the course of their personal histories. Furthermore, there are probably a thousand different ways in which the aesthetic experience of nature modulates into religious experience, for it is related to religious experience in its very depths. But aesthetics is not religion, and the origins of religion lie somewhere completely different. They lie . . . - anyway, these roses smell too sweet and the deep roar of the breaking waves is too splendid, to do justice to such weighty matters now. 5 3 *

*

*

I am once again in the cart {Wagen), traveling on the dusty road along the side of the mountain. The sun has vanished behind the summit. From above, an enormous blue shadow slowly washes over terrace after terrace. It gradually covers everything, settling onto the surface of the sea, spreading to the horizon, then deepening into a dark violet. Darkness falls quickly. Form and color vanish. The stillness of the night is all around. Down below the broad, roaring waves of the sea break against the deep foundation of the rock. But high above the mountain, the sea, and the peaks of rock the eternal ornamentation blooms silently from the dark depths of the universe. On the road I

Off Agadir, May 18, 1911

"It won't", says the small Catalan, as he twists his black moustache nervously. "Try it again. It will start soon", Don Juan reassures him. For twentythree years he has transported onions from Lanzarote 54 to America, and in the process he has learned a little patience. Pedro pulls the handle again, and the generator starts to rattle and clang. He taps with the key, and long, blue sparks flash out. He intends the taps to inform the telegraph office in Mogador 5 5 that our small, rickety, dirty ship will land there tomorrow morning, after an extremely slow journey. We sit as quiet 53 Since distance makes it impossible for us to question the author, he will have to discuss this point for us at a later date. [Martin Rade's note] 54 The easternmost of the Canary Islands. 55 Now Essaouira, on the Moroccan coast.

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as mice in the small telegraph compartment and listen to this peculiar, ethereal conversation. Through a small window a white stripe is visible that has accompanied us for a long time now in the east, slowly bobbing up and down on the horizon. It is the coast of Morocco, which stretches about 1200 kilometers from Cap Juby to Tangier. It borders the Maghrib el-Aqsa, the westernmost Islamic land, that was for so long isolated and strange but now is so hotly coveted because of its immense fertility, its mineral resources, and its mercantile potential. I had wanted to travel through the interior to Fès itself, in order to see this civilization at its heart. But that has become impossible, for the tribes have been brought to despair by endless taxation and have now risen up in revolt against the sultan 56 and his machzen 'store-rooms', 'treasuries'. Still, the periphery remains calm, and the picturesque, gleaming white coastal cities provide much to see and learn, too. At last our poor ship, huffing and puffing and buffeted by a stiff northeasterly, conquers its enemy. It sails into a beautiful, wide bay. Its exertions over, it lets out several loud blasts from its horn, and then comes to rest comfortably, pitching against the heavy chain of the anchor. In the long, sandy lagoon a city rises up from the gray-green of the water, blinding white, as if it were made of sugar. In front stands a wall, straight as an arrow and fitted with battlements. It is flanked on the right and the left by lofty bastions, from which enormous antique cannons peer out, congenial and totally unusable. The wall is pierced by great archways, through which a canal would lead to the interior, if it were not silted up. In the middle is a beautiful, high gateway. On its steps a colorful mass of people hurries in long garments that flutter in the wind: black Africans from the Sudan in clumsy sacks; noble, light-skinned "Andalusians"; Moors driven out of Spain, who now make up the Moroccan aristocracy and intelligentsia, with distinct, well-defined features and elegant, well-groomed hands and limbs. Among them walk the people of the land in every blend of color, shade, race, and kind, including pure Berbers, the "blue" people from the Sous, with light-colored, non-Semitic complexions, who have just recently come into contact with Arabic culture, and above all, the Moroccan Jews. These Jews, who are busy everywhere, dress and speak like Arabs, but they are distinguished by the black, felt caps that the law 56 Moulay Abd al-Hafid, who was trapped in Fès by revolting tribes and rescued by the French. These events led to the signing of the Treaty of Fès on March 20, 1912, and the establishment of Morocco as a French Protectorate.

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requires them to wear and from their unmixed Jewish features (Typus). They live by the thousands in every Moroccan city, earning their livings as manufacturers, money-changers, brokers, and middlemen and holding fast for centuries to Torah and Talmud. For the most part they are confined to close, unbelievably dirty ghettoes, their millahs, but some Jews roam the land as nomadic tribes, especially in the South. Don Juan was exactly right. The message of our arrival finally makes its way through. A heavy, eight-oared launch comes out to meet us. In it are three strong Africans, as black as the devil, five Arabs, and in the very front two sly ( p f i f f i g e ) Jews, who convey us and our baggage - one does not exactly know how - down into the launch, which dances on the waves. The waves are not bad. One of them, a powerful, green, crystalline monster, strikes us on the side. "Sidi Mogdur!" cries the boatman, " A b d el Kader!" the black, "Si Muhammad/" the whole chorus, each time a wave thunders alongside us and lifts the launch to the sky. The saints really do help; they bring us, dry, to the shore. Well, actually, the two Jews do. When the water becomes shallow, they pack us up, set us on their shoulders, and haul us like sacks to the dry land. *

*

*

Mogador, May 14 [sic\ Bismilla-a-a-si rachma-a-a-ni rachi-i-imi57 Praise be to Allah, the Lord, the merciful, the compassionate, the king on the day of judgment. We serve you; we call upon you. Lead us in the proper way, in the way of those to whom you show your compassion, and not in the way of those with whom you are angry nor of those who are in error. Bismillaasi rachmani rachimi

A crowd of twenty-five boys cries endlessly, with all their might, straining their lungs. They crouch, legs crossed, on reed mats decorated with pleasant designs. Their short upper bodies swing vigorously back and forth, and they speak in a peaceful and pious nasal tone, just as the adults do. They look exactly like the Munich Kindel,58 wearing long, pleated cowls over white shirts and capes that cover their ears, under which their small faces - brown, gold, white, black - stare out in a manner that is 5 7 Properly, Bismallah al-rahman al-rahtm, "In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate", the phrase that begins every sura of the Qur'än except sura 9. Otto gives sura 1 here. 5 8 A monk on the coat of arms of Munich.

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incredibly amusing. The talib squats in the other corner, a rod's distance away. His cane sits harmlessly on the ground. At the sound of the holy words of the Islamic "Our Father", repeated for the thousandth time, he has fallen comfortably asleep. The recitation continues. The small, narrow, two-meter-long madrasah butts up against the plump, four-cornered minaret of a whitewashed mosque that we are not allowed to enter. Light streams in only through the door. It falls softly on the students, their master, and his large teapot, which boils gently on the charcoal. As we step into the opening, the chorus falters. Immediately, the teacher wakes up and reaches for his instrument of instruction. But with a start he learns that there is a good reason for this silence. He greets us in a friendly manner. Still a young man, he has only recently completed the madrasah himself. He has noble, large, black eyes and soft features, and his demeanor lacks every trace of that beauty which suits the faces of angels and deer so well, but those of men so poorly. The teacher offers us tea and demonstrates for us what his students have accomplished. Year in and year out, their lessons are writing, reading, a little arithmetic, and the Qur'än, which the students memorize. They show us their white writing tablets covered with rounded, flowing Arabic characters, the most elegant writing in the world. They contain two suras of the Qur'än. Verse after verse is "beaten black and blue", as was once common in our catechetical instruction. Whatever inner meaning the verses might have is obliterated. When the whole Qur'än is finished, the exercise starts over again from the beginning. "Do they only learn the Qur'än?" "Only the Qur'än. Whatever is good is in the Qur'än or derives from it. What is not in the Qur'än is either not necessary for human beings to know or dangerous. We teachers learn the entire Qur'än." "Do you learn it by heart, or do you learn to read it?" "By heart, word for word, from beginning to end." "Where have you studied? At al-Azhar in Cairo, or at the large university in Fès?" "Right here, and only here. Earlier the tolba59 from here went to Fès to study, but only a few still go today. People study there less than they used to." "What did one study in Fès earlier?"

59 That is, the talaba 'students'.

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"Plenty. The Qur'än, grammar, logic, the art of good speaking (rhetoric). Also the tradition [hadithi] and Qur'änic exegesis, law, mathematics, astronomy, and falas-, falas- . . . " "Philosophy?" "Yes." "What is philosophy?" "Oh, something bad that people pursue who do not want to be satisfied with Allah's words." He holds out a small pencil. "Do you see this? Or this and this?" He points to a stone and the sky. "We see everything and say with the Qur'än, 'Allah made it.' But philosophers are not satisfied. They do not want to consult the Qur'än but this here" - he taps his forehead - "the mind, and then they ask, 'Why is this and this, and how did that and that come about?' God has not commanded it." Having spoken, he sips his tea and, after such great efforts, returns to his earlier comfort, amiably nodding good-bye to us. Immediately the chorus begins again: Bismilla-a-a-si

racbm-a-a-ni

rachi-i-i-mi

May 20 We sit on the broad, flat roof of one of the city's most stately houses. It is the new Jewish school. Here things are different from what they are in the madrasah. About seventy Jewish young people of various ages frolic during a fifteen-minute recess. Their clothes are tidy, their behavior mannerly; some of them wear European dress. Earlier the house had belonged to the English Jewish mission. Now the Alliance israélite 60 conducts the educational work, skillfully and successfully, it seems. The director and teacher, curriculum and administration are French. The "sacred language" and the Old Testament are also taught, but not to excess. French, arithmetic, geography, history, the sciences, even English are taught and learned diligently. No one here doubts that these Alliance schools are one of the most important and powerful instruments of the 6 0 The Alliance israélite universelle, a Jewish auxiliary organization founded in 1 8 6 0 with headquarters in Paris. It sought both to protect Jews from oppression and to improve their education. Especially active in North Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Iran, it strongly supported France's political interests.

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French pénétration pacifique, which works slowly but surely and in time will make these intelligent, maturing young people supporters of France. A network of such schools stretches all along the coast, and it has already decisively suppressed the similar influence that English and Spanish language and culture had exercised earlier. With drums beating the "sharifian" police, led by their French instructing officers, march through the gate nearby and pass beneath the window of the school. Their ranks and files are sharp, their steps right on the beat. One can hardly recognize in these energetic men, dressed in khaki, the men and boys of this land, who otherwise fill the streets, dressed in broad flowing garments, squatting, dreaming, and doing nothing, or at least as little as possible. The tax officer, the military instructor, the teacher, even the doctor and hospital - least of all, it seems, the French businessman all promote a form of conquest. This conquest is not so noticeable as a train to Fès, but it takes hold deeply and has profound effects. 61 In search of the

salselet

When Hackmann 6 2 and I were studying Semitic languages with Lagarde 6 3 , he most frequently explained to us the "accents", the small hooks, loops, and points that are scattered under the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. "They are musical signs", he said. " T h e salselet means a trill." As often happened, he taught us more than he knew. Because the small squiggle goes back and forth like a bolt of lightning, he conjectured that it was a trill. Here in Morocco they still know how to vocalize this old sign, and it is still used in the old, traditional Jewish schools. I wanted to learn what the salselet was, and besides, I wanted to see one of the old schools. Chayyim el Malek, King Life, 64 has taken me to one. It looks just like the Arabic madrasah. Here too, one hears from a distance the nasal chanting of the text; one sees a troop of little people squatting 61 These sentences anticipate Otto's own cultural colonial politics; see "6. Germany as a cultural colonial power", below. The train to Fès may be an oblique allusion to the high-visibility German project in the Near East, the Baghdad-Bahn. 62 Heinrich Hackmann (1864-1935), Otto's close friend and a member of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule who became a Sinologist and eventually professor of the general history of religions at Amsterdam. 63 Paul Anton de Lagarde (1827-1891); see "1. My life", n. 37, above. 64 Otto occasionally engaged in the annoying practice of translating names.

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on the floor, swinging their upper bodies back and forth with all their might. In the middle is the rabbi. He receives only a meager tuition from his charges every week, nothing more, except when an "Epicurean" - as I am called here - happens to be curious about the salselet. Chayyim has fetched three older rabbis, and in addition to them a number of rabbinical students happen to be present. A religious discussion ensues. To one side there is a large volume bound in leather, a part of the Talmud. It was printed in Warsaw. "The book comes from the east. Do you belong to the same school as the Jews in the east?" Those present vigorously shake their heads and answer with an indignant denial. "No. They are Ashkenazi; we are Sephardic." "Is there a big difference?" "Very big", says the oldest rabbi, with a half-pained expression on his face. "What is the difference?" "They read 'o' when one is supposed to read 'a', and 'ei' when one is supposed to read 'e'. H o w do you read?" I recite for him the first verse of the Bible. Those assembled shake their heads with pleasure. I use the pronunciation that they believe is correct. As a result, they almost forgive my Epicureanism, and they become more open. We talk about the inspiration of the scriptures and of the accents that the Holy Spirit dictated to Ezra, about the prayers for the dead, about the intercession of the patriarchs and the saints, about the miracleworking rabbis and how they arise, about the graves of the seven saints at Agimmur and the great pilgrimage to them, about the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit and about the Holy Spirit itself. 65 "What, then, is the rûah haqqodes, the Holy Spirit? The Muslims say it is an angel, the archangel Gabriel." "They're wrong. It is no angel." "The Christians say that it is a pers- , that it is something from God himself." This statement evokes angry denial. "God is one", the entire chorus promptly and simultaneously replies. The atmosphere is starting to heat up. The young rabbi intercedes. He has brought out a well-worn primer of some sort, and now, identifying each figure, he sings quickly and lightly 65 The Holy Spirit was a major focus of Otto's doctoral dissertation.

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'atnäh and sôp pàsûq and the other important accents. The small salselet is not common. He must first recall a passage in which it appears. At last he finds one in the book of Esther. And now we know what it is. His voice rises gently but quickly, then quivers lightly for a moment. "He forgot one", says Chayyim, when we are outside again. "Yes, the qarnê pärä, the ox's horns." He is overwhelmed that someone would know the ox's horns. He presses my hand. "Tomorrow I'll show you a circumcision." I was careful to avoid this abundance of goodness.

On the Sabbath 66 A small, dimly lighted room, not ten meters long, hardly five meters wide. Subdued light floats in from above. The walls, fitted with brown wainscoting, are censed by smoke from thirty hanging oil-lamps. Along all of the walls are benches divided into seats, like the pews that choruses of mendicant friars use. There is a gleam high up the narrow wall, and in the middle stands a small altar with a wide lectern. Chayyim el Malek has brought me through the labyrinthine streets of the ghetto and two narrow, gloomy staircases to a synagogue in the old style, untouched by the west. There are perhaps forty such synagogues here, most of them supported by private endowments and located like house chapels in private dwellings. Served by rabbis and partisans of the old style, they are both places of prayer and schools of talmudic learning at the same time. It is Sabbath, and already in the dark, incredibly filthy vestibule we hear the "blessings" (Bemscben [in quotes]) of the prayers and the scripture readings, those half-sung, half-spoken nasal chants that the synagogue bequeathed to both the church and the mosque. The sound is quite pleasant, and it is soon possible to distinguish certain, regular modulations and cadences, which follow one another like leitmotifs. At first the ear tries to separate and understand the words in vain, and soon one wants to quit trying. Then suddenly the tangle of voices resolves itself and . . . a solemn fear overcomes one's limbs. It begins in unison, clear and unmistakable: Qâdôs qâdôs qâdôs

66

'ëlôhîm ädonäy

sebâôt

N o date is given. In 1 9 1 1 May 2 0 and 2 7 were Saturdays.

2. Letters from North Africa (1911) (Selections) Male'û hassamayim

wehaares

81

kebôdô!"

I have heard the Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus of the cardinals in Saint Peter's, the Swiat, swiat, swiat in the cathedral in the Kremlin, and the Hagios, hagios, hagios of the patriarch in Jerusalem. In whatever language these words are spoken, the most sublime words that human lips have ever uttered, they always seize one in the deepest ground of the soul, arousing and stirring with a mighty shudder the mystery of the otherworldly that sleeps therein. That happens here more than anywhere else, here in this deserted place, where they resound in the language in which Isaiah first heard them and on the lips of the people whose heritage they initially were. At the same time the tragedy of this people is powerfully impressed upon the soul: they have discarded the highest and most genuine product of their nation and spirit and now sit lamenting by the side of the undecaying mummy of "their religion", standing guard over its casing and its trappings. We enter through the narrow door just as the recitation of the Torah is finished. The broad, parchment scroll is rolled up once again, placed in its silk mantel, and carried in procession back to the ark. Someone sings the Haphtara, the selection from the prophets. The congregation follows the leader attentively. Here and there people mumble along with him. Heads shake involuntarily when he reads a qöp instead of a kap, but the assembly delights when he reads well. Only men are gathered here. The women come only once a year, on the Day of Atonement; for the rest, they must "ask their husbands at home". 68 "They don't understand any of it", Chayyim explains. I climb to the high balcony of our house. To the right songs to Mary ring out clear and distinct from the small Spanish Franciscan church below. They are holding May devotions. To the left, on the gallery of a plump, four-sided minaret, the muezzin sings his La illah il Allah [There is no god but God] and issues the call to evening prayer. At the same time his counterparts are singing from three other minarets. The houses of the city spread out on every side, white-washed and dazzling in the bright sunlight. Its three divisions are sharply separated from one an-

67 "Holy, holy, holy LORD God of hosts; heaven and earth are full of your glory" - a liturgical adaptation of Isaiah 6.3: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." 68

I Corinthians

14.35.

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other: the quarter of the faithful, the Jewish quarter, and the casbah, the quarter of the government, of soldiers, and of foreigners. High walls separate these quarters from one another. As if drawn with a ruler, the streets run straight as an arrow through the entire city. Here and there they broaden into plazas and markets. As they demonstrate, Mogador did not arise gradually. It was laid out at the sultan's command and constructed according to a specific plan. About 1 5 0 years ago, 6 9 in order to harm the Sous, the region of independent tribes south of the Atlas mountains, the sultan closed the old, good port at Agadir and laid out Mogador. He transplanted Jews and a portion of the rest of the population to the new port, thereby diverting a portion of the commerce from the hinterlands and the rich, central territory of Marrakech. The size of the settlement and many a stately house from earlier times testify to its former importance. Down below the caravan-road runs out the gate toward Marrakech. Yesterday we road along it up country. A line of long-, skinny-, "twisty"legged camels sways rhythmically along the crescent-shaped beach, then over to the domed shrine of Sidi Mogdur, the local saint and patron of Mogador, after w h o m the city may have been named. In the most beautiful sun these camels cast the immense shadows of their sharp silhouettes like giant hieroglyphs on the flat, snow-white sand. They have brought two thousand goatskins that now lie spread out in the vicinity of the city gate to be seasoned, and they are taking back with them a hundred small sugar loaves made in Germany. Below the shrine they stop at an earthen house, surrounded by an odd tangle of thorn bushes, beneath which a sort of sacristan of the saint sleeps or recites the rosary of Allah's ninety-nine names. One cannot visit the saint up above until one gives the sacristan an offering: pieces of copper, a handful of sugar, rice, tea, or something similar. The strange offering-place awakens ageold memories: a small bamah made of sand, surrounded by a circle of stones, which demarcates the haram 'sacred precinct' and partakes of its sacrality. Various objects are carefully and ingeniously juxtaposed and piled on individual stones to make small pyramids or pillars. If one asks what all this really means, one receives the usual answer: "Nothing. It is just a custom." But it is actually a ritual that is found in remarkable uniformity almost everywhere in the lower strata of religion. For example, there are very similar practices in Shinto or Japanese Buddhism. And 6 9 The actual year was 1 7 6 5 .

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fourteen days ago I myself found the same practices on Catholic soil. When Aostin and I were coming down "Hell's mountain" 7 0 on Tenerife, we came to a lonely place where, as often happens, a rough, small, wooden cross was set up to mark a place where someone had met with misfortune. What was unusual about this cross was that small stones had been placed in a row, and sometimes one on top of the other, along the cross-bar. "It is nothing. It is a custom. One recites the Ave Maria, then one places a small stone there", Aostin said. This morning I discovered, or was told about, the same thing in the Jewish cemetery outside of town on the road to Safi. There large stone slabs cover the graves. Their shape and carving still recall the age-old custom that was once brought here from Egypt or Phoenicia. One of the graves, apparently a very important one, perhaps the grave of a distinguished or "saintly" rabbi, has a modest, rough, small appendage with a hollow socket blackened by soot. Little rocks lie strewn on the slab of stone, some tossed hurriedly, some arranged carefully, some tied up tightly in small strips of cloth. Slowly a young Jewish boy crept up to see what the Anglo (Ingles) could be looking for on the old stone slabs. "What does this mean?" I asked him. "Oh, only the ignorant, the simple [do these things]," he said. "In there (that is, in the sooty hole) they burn little lamps or candles. And there they place stones. It is - it is only a 'memorial'. " It is more than a "memorial". It is the old cult of the dead, returning again and again and assuming ever new forms, half superstitious, half religious. It joins with the cult of the local numen and links up with that most ancient of all religious expressions, "communing" with the supernatural by means of a primitive imagination. Whoever wants to study the same thing, but not so far away, should travel to Innsbruck and spend an afternoon in the "Poor souls' cemetery" below Lanser Klippen. 71 Rudolf Otto

7 0 Perhaps Barranco del Infierno [Hell's gorge] ? 71 The Lanser See (altitude roughly 2 7 5 0 ft.), in the region of Igls near Innsbruck, is a relatively warm-watered lake that attracts bathers. The Lanser summit is about 3 0 5 0 feet above sea level.

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II On Board the M . . . , 4 June 1911 O Holy Spirit enter in, And make our hearts your dwelling. 7 2

The trumpets of the ship's band resound over the forget-me-not-blue waves. They rouse me from sleep, draw me from my berth, and follow me onto the sunny deck. Pentecost morning! The water slaps lightly against the sides of our ship. It is a proud, beautiful, German ship, a real delight after traveling in Spanish and French coastal boats that are either half-clean or simply filthy, encrusted with age and neglect. Even with a cargo of 9000 tons it plays lightly on the waves, bounding five meters a second. It moves straight and steady and bears itself stately and proudly and now, on the morning of Pentecost, piously, too. North Africa glides by. The posts of the deck divide the long, beautiful image of its coast into several, three-meter-long pictures. Since one sees more when one looks at as little as possible, I ignore everything else and concentrate on what is directly in front of me. It is odd, but I had always imagined that the coast of Africa was entirely flat, the long beaches slowly turning into sandbanks and sandy bays. But here in front of me proud, beautiful mountains stand right at the water's edge. Limestone ridges with any number of peaks run parallel and intertwine, resembling a gray hunting-jacket with sparse, green trimming. Slowly, from the left, peak after peak of the Atlas range enters my field of vision and forces ridges, pinnacles, and crags out of the frame to the right. Despite our distance, the Pillars of Hercules still tower above the horizon directly behind us, Jabal Musa 7 3 on the left and Jabal Tärik, which we are now supposed to call Jabal Albion, on the right. Gibraltar [Jabal Tärik] is much smaller than its African counterpart, and from this distance it is not very significant. But from up close it is extremely impres-

72 H y m n by Michael Schirmer; trans. Catherine W i n k w o r t h ; Lutheran Book of Worship (1978), # 4 5 9 . 73 The Pillars of Hercules are usually identified with Gibraltar on the n o r t h and M t . H a c h o , just east of Ceuta, on t h e south. O t t o follows a less frequent designation in identifying the southern pillar with Jabal M u s a , a peak just west of Ceuta.

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sive, especially when seen at evening from the north, where a completely flat, low, broad alluvial plain links the completely isolated, 1 2 0 0 - f o o t tall block of limestone with Spain. O n this side the R o c k drops from its highest point in an unbroken vertical wall, forming what amounts to a cross-section of a lofty, noble triangle. A gentle articulation and flaring takes the sharpness away from the all-too-straight sides. Toward evening I went out one day onto the broad plain. It was dotted with people out for walks, Redcoats laughing and playing ball, beautiful groves of trees, and purple and blue mallows shining out from the green. T h e brownish twilight played upon the sea off in the distance to the left and across the beautiful, curving Bay of Gibraltar to the right. It climbed slowly up the limestone wall. T h a t was " c h a r m i n g " (reizend [in quotes]). But very quickly there was something m o r e than "the c h a r m i n g " to experience here. T h e light disappeared as darkness engulfed first the f o o t of the R o c k , then the highest pinnacle, and finally the reddish clouds up in the sky. T h e games stopped. And n o w , beyond " c h a r m " and " e m o t i o n " (.Rührung [in quotes]), the R o c k rose great and mighty in the realm of pure form. It towered over its surroundings, projecting into space as if about t o rupture it and effacing the interest of the place and its history as well as any desire for the lively game that was still being played. T h e towering form dissolved the magic o f the clear, serene beauty that had earlier irradiated so greatly. With a calm, magnificent sublimity it banished every intuition of and feeling f o r 7 4 that beauty by means o f an impression that was most simple yet most powerful, that depressed but at the same time s o m e h o w uplifted and enchanted. I went back there the next morning. I noticed that during the day the previous evening's impression o f the sublime was not able to arise in such a pure form. T h e interesting and the beautiful competed with it too powerfully, . . . and the practical almost obliterated it completely. By light of day I saw clearly h o w the damnably practical surrounds the R o c k : emplacements of cannon and stores o f ordnance clutter its flanks, riddled with openings, up to the fatal long spires of its peak. An enormous cross rises f r o m the summit. O n e might suppose that this cross, at least, could not interfere with the sublimity of the mountain. But it does, as soon as one discovers that its crossbeam must support as many as three dozen 74 The language is Friesian: Anschauung and Gefühl. But it is also consistent with Otto's earlier inclination to Schleiermacher, since Schleiermacher, too, made religion a matter of Anschauung and Gefühl.

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copper wires and forms one half of a wireless telegraph installation. At the foot of the Rock, the other half of the installation receives these wires, so that the cross and the mountain have been turned into a giant telegraph station. During the day's wanderings and journeys I stop thinking so much about the sublime mountain. Another impression grows stronger, an impression of the power and greatness, wisdom, maturity, and selfcertainty, collective will and incomparable ability of the kingdom and people that has here grasped with a sure and steady hand the pulse of international commerce, concentrating together the greatest force into the smallest space. If one could only totally dissociate this impression from any taint of one's own personal or practical interests, it, too, would lead to the purely sublime. To be sure, this impression of the sublime cannot be so direct as the impression of the sublime in nature, because it only arises gradually as a result of reflection and of being integrated into one's thought (Beziehen). Later, however, it stirs the heart in a very deep way. Let that be as it may. I am travelling to Algiers, in order to acquire there at least a hurried impression of what happens to Arab culture when the French come, and especially what happens to Islam when it is "penetrated" by the west. iE·

Notre Dame d'Afrique, June 6. "See. I was right. There it is", says Mahmud, as we finally arrive after a rather warm journey and enter the church. "There is the African woman I told you about. She was buried here in the mountain. The Catholics dug half of the mountain up. This is where they found her. They stuffed her and placed her on the altar. Now people pray to her. Just look at all the people who kneel before her. They are also supposed to light candles for her. Her priests live in the houses out back." In fact, the "African Mother of God", for whom Lavigerie75 built here one of his wonderful but less tasteful mixed-style churches, stands brown-black high up on the altar. Theater drapes surround her in the most horrible fashion, and the idolatry is so coarse and crude that I have no desire to tell Mahmud anything about his stuffed African woman. 75 Charles-Martial-Allemand Lavigerie (1825-1892), cardinal (from 1882) and archbishop of Algiers (from 1867) and Carthage (from 1884).

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Nevertheless, the view from up here is beautiful and instructive. The city of Algiers seems to stretch endlessly along the bay of the same name. It is a French city, as French and modern as one could wish. The very precious harbor, the long streets, lined by stores and hotels, that lead up to it, the city of five- and six-storey tenement houses built along the Sahel Hills, and in the distance elegant villas, parks, and "palace"-hotels. The old Arab city, untouched and well-preserved, almost disappears in the middle of it all. "If one has a little money and belongs to the better classes, one doesn't live there", Mahmud says. "All of our rich people have settled in the area of St. Eugène and Bab el Oued." The last two places lie directly below us. They are so European, as rectilinear and as boring as possible. And around them stretches a string of villages, towns, and settlements whose names and appearance no longer give the slightest hint that Arabs live there. Mahmud is the son of the mullah at the pretty little mosque and qubbah of Sidi 'Abdu'l-Rahman 7 6 and at the same time a pupil at the newly built Franco-Arabic high school (madrasah) next door. Both of them lie directly below us, high on the hills below the old castle [the Qasbah]. There the last Dey of Algiers struck a French legate a blow with a fan that was then as useful to France as now perhaps the "revolt" of the tribes around Fès will be. We want to see the qubbah and the madrasah. The cart (Wagen) brings us quickly there. Sidi 'Abdu'l-Rahman, Servant of the Compassionate, is very holy. After my experiences in Morocco, I am astounded when Mahmud invites me to come into the mosque without a second thought. "But naturally! We have no prejudices here. Simply pull these slippers on over your boots. Look at how many visitors are already inside." Indeed! I see a huge crowd of people, waving red books in their hands, while the director of the tour-group circles around them. Someone is plentifully reciting the most pure "Chicago-ese" with its unadulterated throat-sound, so I quickly leave the shadow of the saint and his ostricheggs (Straußeneier) 77 and retreat to the madrasah, which is not on the tour.

76 A qubbah is a cupola or domed building or shrine. 'Abdu'l-Raman is the patron of Algiers. His mausoleum was built after his death in 1468, then rebuilt in 1611. Later, the funerary chamber was transformed into a mosque, and in 1896 the chamber was topped with an octagonal cupola. 77 Otto's meaning is uncertain.

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The madrasah is a stately building, in good imitation-Moorish style, built recently by the government. Around the tall, cool inner court are tall, spacious schoolrooms with maps, animal skeletons, and human skeletons on the walls. "What does one study here?" "Everything", says Mahmud. "French, arithmetic, mathematics, natural sciences, everything. The government has built two other madrasahs just like this in Tlemcen and Constantine. Every city, large and small, now has preparatory Arabic-French lycées and elementary schools. Even some villages have them. The pupils at the madrasah will become teachers or qadïs 'judges' or government officials or - or even mullahs in the larger mosques. But most of them will probably become interpreters in larger businesses, government offices, the tourist industry, and so on." "How do these madrasahs get along with the earlier, old-style Qur'änic schools? I found one this morning in a corner of the old city." "Oh, the new schools have nothing to do with them. They are completely unmodern. There are still quite a few of those schools out in the country. But where people can have the Arabic-French schools, the old ones are disappearing. Everywhere, civilization is very much on the rise", he adds, and straightens out his short, western jacket, which hangs somewhat askew over his baggy Arab pants. "But come. We must hurry if we still want to meet Professor Belair." s-

On the Ridge of the Atlas Mountains, June 8 How still it is up here, after the pressing crowds of the last several days, how refreshing and cool after the hot streets of Algiers and the burning thoroughfares over which one must walk or ride in order to see the surrounding countryside - and also after the last, hot, 50-kilometer journey through the Mitidja plain, that, so abundantly fruitful, now runs, 1500 meters below us, east and west between the Atlas Mountains and the Sahel Hills of Algiers as far as the eye can see. In the midst of green orange groves and oil gardens gleams the white, rectilinear city of Blida, a vision of pleasant, well-ordered comfort. Behind us, the mountainous and hilly hinterland of the Atlas range stretches toward the desert, its sharp ridges running into and over one another, like a somewhat wrinkled dress in a Dürer [woodcut]. Above us, the remains of a stately cedar forest are protected from the beasts of Ahriman, the nibbling goats, by

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Ormuzd and the French police. The firm, thickset, mighty trunks hold up the noble, shady tiers of regularly placed branches. Beneath them, blue and bright yellow pansies grow luxuriantly. Atop a base of red-brown clay-slate, a thick, soft, emerald-green turf glides, like green plush over old mahogany, down the gentle slopes of the mountain to the valleys that lie in broad, stately, separate folds. Professor Belair has escorted me up here. An outstanding Arabist and the most knowledgeable expert on the indigenous religion and culture of the area, he has been in the service of the French-Arabic school system for a long time. From up here one gets a most impressive glimpse of what the French can do with territory that they have taken possession of. Below, field crowds upon field, each one distinct: wheat fields and vineyards, fields of maize and vegetable gardens, all well tended and heavy with crops and fruit. Highway and railroad, irrigation canal and weir, factory and mine - all are stately to behold. The Arabs work just as hard as the hard-working French and Italian colonists, and they are making advances. Even up here on this lonely mountain, with only little Ali, our young mule, for company, we are as safe and well-protected as in the streets of the city itself. Whoever is interested in the "music hall and absinthe-bar culture" that one frequently associates with the French probably knows how to find it, but I have not noticed it. Instead, I see everywhere an economy that is growing and developing vigorously in every way. Without question this development benefits the rulers first and foremost, but it also benefits the natives, a benefit that they recognize and value. In addition to economic growth the French have brought an organized police force, good hygiene, the administration of justice, and wide-ranging achievements in the area of schools and public education. It would be foolish for us not to appreciate these accomplishments, and dangerous besides. We can be quite indifferent to political competition from a nation that disseminates only music halls and absinthe-bars, but not from a cultured nation that acquires and increases its powers through culture. 7 8 "And what do you think of the Arabs themselves and their development?" "First and most important, they find themselves under the patronage and administration of Europeans, and they are on the whole content

78 See " 6 . Germany as a cultural colonial p o w e r " , below.

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with that situation. They are productive, but only under European leadership." "And what about the pan-Islamic movement?" 7 9 "It does not exist here. But if it did, it would have to be the old, original fanaticism of primitive Islam, the cult of the Mahdi and the spirit of the dervishes and 'brotherhoods'. But that has nothing to do with modern, political efforts, and it would not benefit from the kind of 'reformation' or 'renewal' of Islam that people occasionally expect from contact with modern culture. This spirit was alive here earlier, and it is occasionally still found in Morocco, but it is in steady decline, and so is Islam itself. The brotherhoods and dervishes increasingly withdraw within themselves. 80 For example, you must look a long time before you find their Aïssaua 81 here. Mosques are becoming ever fewer in number. As for the saints, you yourself have seen in Blida how in this day and age they have 'retired'. " Indeed, to the right of Blida we had come upon two, old saints' graves set within a wonderful olive "preserve". But the preserve has become a park in which nannies push strollers. And the graves of the saints are locked up and only provide picturesque photographs. "What about the Young Arabs?" "Des singes, des singes, des singes! I know them, here and in Egypt. Let's not talk about them." "But your government has itself founded three new madrasahs, in which it also allows mullahs to be trained for the mosques." "Yes, and we have recently added instruction in the natural sciences. Let us see how that will fit with Islam. I do not think many mullahs will come from these madrasahs. One of the earlier students, who was not very well off, was offered a well-paid position as mullah in a mosque in Algiers. His response? I can no longer perform the prayers myself; how then shall I lead others in prayer?" 79 Perhaps Otto had in mind pan-Islâmism as advocated especially by Jamälal-DIn al-Afghäni (1837-1897), who urged Muslims to return to the purity of early Islam and expelí foreign colonizers. 80 ins Innere. The phrase could also mean "into the interior [of the country]", although given the geographical setting of the conversation and the next sentence, the translation given in the text seems preferable. 81 Presumably a rough transliteration of al-zawïyyat, a building or complex of buildings used for religious studies and worship and often containing the mausoleum of a (Sufi) saint.

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" B u t isn't this loss o f religion most deplorable? W h a t can come of a culture that brings with it nothing but economic benefits?" " O n e confronts that question almost every day here. It seems to me to be framed falsely. First o f all, the penetration of modern ways into the simple, old forms of life cannot be stopped. Given that fact, your regret is at the very least futile. Second, the new way of life is already introducing spiritual values that are perhaps higher than the ones it has displaced. Under the pressure of contemporary life, the A r a b has stopped being a dreamer and thoughtless idler and become a diligent worker with a well-ordered lifestyle. He works by identifying tasks and setting goals. His interest in community life and his social and political instincts have been gently aroused, and as a result he is worth more than his predecessor, with the old religion of customs and habit and suggestion. Only very infrequently (I myself have only encountered a single instance) did this old religion deeply influence the heart and conscience. Without exception, contact with our civilization and especially the altered economic circumstances exert an influence that is freeing, stimulating, and liberating. There is no question but that these new forms are a threat to the traditional religion. But it seems to me that for the very first time they prepare and create the kind o f person w h o truly benefits from having a religion and who is first capable o f religious refinement. Wait and see. T h e development that is n o w under w a y will run its course and c a n n o t be stopped. If religion really does derive from the human heart and human needs, that will be evident after the present cultural reorganization has run its course. For if it really does derive from those things, after the present reorganization has shattered and perhaps buried the traditional religious forms, religion will emerge once again in a higher f o r m . " I wanted several times to interject a " Y e s , but . . . " , but I let it go, without saying a word, because at that m o m e n t I noticed something down below that seemed to contradict very decisively the notion that Islam was on the wane. T w o poor, old mosques stand in the center of Blida, and they c o n f o r m only too well to M r . Belair's description. But in front of the gate across from the train station a structure rises up that seems to be completely new. Tall and spacious, it boasts a beautiful, pointed dome, gleaming white walls, and those screened windows in an earlier style that contemporary builders love to imitate. T h e people w h o built that structure spent quite a bit o f money on it. I waited a while, then pointed to the building, which was glowing faintly red in the evening sun.

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"Qu'est-ce qu'on y fait, Monsieur? Le rite chaféï ou le rite hanéfi?" [What rituals are performed there, sir, Shâfi'ïyah or Hanafïyah?] "Monsieur, on y fait des cigarettes." [Why sir, there one smokes cigarettes.]

3. Letters from India and Egypt (1927-1928 [1938]) In October 1927 Otto began a journey that took him to Ceylon and India, then Egypt and Palestine. Birger Forell (1893-1958), a young Swedish pastor who had studied with Otto in Marburg soon after the war, accompanied him. 82 The ostensible purpose for Otto's journey was to gather materials for his Religionskundliche Sammlung [Museum of the world's religions] in Marburg. Along the way, Otto also talked about his religious ventures for peace. In Colombo he spoke to the Young Men's Buddhist Association about his Religiöser Menschheitsbund [Religious league of humanity]. In Mysore he tried to convince the maharaja to participate in the Peace Conference of the World's Religions, proposed for Vienna in 1930 but never held. Later, in Jerusalem, Otto attended the second World Missions Conference, then returned to Marburg at the beginning of May. 83 The year after Otto's death, four letters written on this journey appeared in Die christliche Welt and Die freie Volkskirche. The best known passage occurs in the second letter. The massive stone visage of Siva Trimurti at Elephanta Island, Bombay, was, Otto wrote, the grandest and most complete expression of the mystery of the transcendent he had ever encountered. "To see this place would truly be worth a trip to India in itself." Friedrich Heiler (1951: 15-16) ranked this experience and that in the synagogue in Mogador as Otto's two most important religious experiences of the Orient. Source: "Briefe Rudolf Ottos von seiner Fahrt nach Indien und Ägypten", Die christliche Welt 52, no. 24 (1938), cols. 985-990.

82 Forell used his offices as Swedish pastor in Berlin to help people escape Germany during the Nazi period. After the war, he devoted much energy to relief efforts for a defeated Germany. See Harald von Koenigswald (1962). 83 Further details in Otto (1928).

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I O n board the Trier, sailing towards Port Said October 22, 1 9 2 7 Saturday. I've been sick for t w o days, but today I'm better again. T h e sea is so smooth and calm that it looks like a mirror. It has already begun to get quite warm, and this evening we should reach Port Said. We'll stay there only three hours, then sail for about ten hours through the Suez Canal and for four days on the Red Sea. In the night of the 19th2 0 t h we passed Stromboli. In front of my window someone shouted, "It's erupting. It's erupting." Instantly I got into my clothes and went out. Right in front of us, like a tall isosceles triangle, was the silhouette of the volcano. Every t w o to three minutes a light red gleam shone around the summit, but it wasn't the flames o f the volcano; it was distant heat-lightning. In the morning, about 7 : 0 0 o ' c l o c k , we sailed through the Straits of Messina and made a large arc along the south side of Italy. T h e tall Aspromonte range, with its incredibly picturesque foothills, stretched out to Cape Spartivento. Behind us to the right the gigantic, glimmering Aetna disappeared behind a huge cloud, and then until about 2 : 0 0 in the afternoon we were alone between sky and water. T h e n we came to the west coast of Crete. Read the twenty-seventh chapter of Acts, where Paul describes his journey from Sidon to Crete and then to M a l t a past the small island of Cauda. Cauda, or Gavdhos, as it is called today, is a small little island that we sailed past between 5 : 0 0 and 6 : 0 0 p.m. - a long ledge of limestone with a lighthouse on its highest point that for a long time beamed its moving light to us, Europe's final farewell. T h e water flowed absolutely smooth in a silky gray. In the evening light the tall mountains of Crete were first a dull violet and then a deep purple, before they disappeared into the darkness. T h e Great Bear was already so low that its lowest stars almost touched the horizon. Birger 8 4 and I spent the first part of the night lying out on the stem. T h e M i l k y Way was directly above us. In its middle was a huge, noble-looking cross. M a y b e you can find it; it's made of five stars and sits at an angle above Lyra. 8 5 All the way in the west was Orion, lying completely horizontal. A large number of shooting stars fell

84 Birger Forell, a Swedish minister stationed in Berlin. [Note in original] 85 The constellation Cygnus.

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here and there - so many, that we didn't know what all we should wish for. Yours truly, Rudolf II Bombay, January 4 , 1 9 2 8 Dear Grete, By the time you receive this letter, it will be close to your birthday. I'm very tired from working so hard and from the strong sunshine here. But I'd like to tell you a little something about our most significant experiences and the very strong impression that our journey has made on us so far. From our balcony we can see the wonderful Bombay Harbor. Right nearby sits the proud "Gateway of India", and left of that we see the mountainous island of Elephanta. We went there three days ago. Visitors climb halfway up the mountain on magnificent stone steps, until on the right side a broad door opens in the volcanic rock. It leads into one of the biggest cave-temples of ancient India. Heavy pillars, carved from the rock, bear the roof. Slowly, one's eyes become accustomed to the dim light; then they can make out marvelous representations from Indian mythology carved on the walls. Eventually one's eyes find their way to the massive, main niche. Here towers an image of the deity that I can only compare with certain works of Japanese sculpture and the great images of Christ in old Byzantine churches: a three-headed form, depicted from the chest up, growing out of the rock, three times the size of a human being. To get the full effect, one must sit down. The middle head looks straight ahead, silent and powerful; the other two heads are shown in profile. The stillness and the majesty of the image is complete. It portrays Siva as the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer of the world, and at the same time as the savior and bestower o f blessings. Nowhere have I seen the mystery of the transcendent expressed with more grandeur or fullness than in these three heads. When the little Indian guide who accompanied us saw how much the image affected us, he began to speak. He said (and it's quite believable) that the image changes its appearance according to the amount of daylight that filters into the great hall. Sometimes it's calm and massive, at others frightfully

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majestic, at still others it's smiling and benevolent. It has stood there like this for perhaps a thousand years, abandoned by its faithful. W h e n one turns around, one looks through the entrance o f the cave, across the antechamber, and out o n t o the gray-blue sea and at the opposing, wooded peaks. Thus, the face of the creator surveys his handiwork. To see this place would truly be worth a trip t o India in itself, and from the spirit of the religion that lived here one can learn more in an hour of viewing than from all the books ever written. T o w a r d evening we came back in our tiny m o t o r b o a t ; in the brisk breeze it danced a lively dance on the waves. T h e sun had just set, and the whole western sky had a unique, purple glow. Darkness came quickly, and as w e returned, the whole shore was filled with hundreds of people in colorful clothes who decorated the steps o f the landing and the breastwork like multi-colored garlands. I'm enclosing a few pictures, but they are not pictures of the landing and only approximate the impression. We've been here in B o m b a y for almost a week, and we've had dealings mainly with educated Parsis. A student and genuine admirer of Geldner 8 6 has taken it upon himself to help us buy images of gods. T o m o r r o w he wants t o take us to the gardens and funeral places o f the Parsis, from where one has a beautiful view of the city and the bay. T h e n t o m o r r o w evening we'll travel to M o u n t Abu, where the chief temples of the Jains are. There, in the coolness of the high elevations, I'll be able to w o r k for several days and, I hope, finally get rid of this annoying bronchitis. I've never so much wished that all of you could be here and share my impressions as on Elephanta Island. I hope we can find a few good, large photographs o f the temple and the image. We've n o w completed two-thirds o f our Indian journey. The ship on which we shall sail to Suez will probably depart as early as February 5. We'll have to crowd a great many things into the next four weeks, but it will be easier than before, because the climate will continue to get milder as we travel north. In Pune on Christmas Eve we lit your Christmas candle and put it on a rose bush, in the company of some dear, friendly Scots. 9 : 0 0 p.m. It's now night-time. Outside the lights on the water sparkle in groups like large, multi-colored jewels. Below us in the garden is a palm tree, around whose leaves are draped garlands of colored lights, 86 Professor in Marburg, died 1929. [Note in original] Karl Friedrich Geldner (1852-1929) is best known for his work with the Veda.

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which sway gently back and forth in the evening breeze. The large lawn is empty now. Shortly after sunset, Muslims dressed in snow-white clothes and colorful turbans assembled there. They arranged themselves in a row and spread out their small prayer-rugs in the direction of Mecca. Then they quietly conducted their evening prayers, undisturbed by either the passing cars or the milling crowds. Now only the north-star stands above the lawn, half so high in the sky as at home. Heartfelt greetings and good wishes for your new year of life. I take delight in thinking about coming home and seeing you again. Yours truly, Uncle Rudolf III The Himalayas, above Simla January 24, 1928 "The other side", says the brahmin. I walk around the small temple in search of the entrance. Seven old monkeys, the leaders of the monkey community, squat on a low wall that surrounds the entrance. My approach frightens a tiny little monkey, and it runs to its mother. She comforts it by placing her arm on its shoulder and watches me with a cold, pondering stare. Out of the temple's door comes a priest, carrying a large bowl filled with nuts. He strews the nuts about, and in an instant probably a hundred brown members of the monkey community come scurrying from every tree, pushing and shoving. Each gathers up its portion of the nuts and munches away with delight. Tall Dewaar trees rustle lightly in the lonely heights above the temple's roof, cedars similar to our stone pines. Glistening fresh snow lies all around, under which six dainty little cows search for food. On one side of the temple there is a monk's cell, where a Frenchman who converted to Brahminism has lived for twenty-five years as a sädhu and priest. Between the beautiful, dark green trees one can see brown, creviced cliffs below, sprinkled with white. It is probably 2 0 0 0 feet down to the long ridges that wind beautifully and run off twisting in every direction. They fall and rise and fall again, probably about 2 0 0 0 feet down to the valleyfloor below, a multitude that fills the world as far as the eye can see. Behind them to the north, a white ridge of eternal snow stretches three times higher still than our present altitude. Below us Simla spreads out

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its bungalows, palaces, churches, and lanes - a curious and disturbing encroachment on the world of beauty on high. January 25. For two days I've stayed up here. The air is sharp and cold, as it is at Davos, and the sun is scorching and burning. Below us is Subhatu, where the sädhu Sundar Singh lives. A couple of people in these Himalayan heights have read my book and receive me with kindness. One of these is the young Berry, the brother of the professor whom we met in King's College hostel 87 in London (the deaf man [Taube] who understood German so well). I went with him to church. Afterwards, we sat by a fire, and he spoke sensibly and factually about India's situation, about the Reform Commission that will arrive in India on February 3, about the Indian boycott, and about the possibilities and prospects for improved relations that would come from affectionate concern for India's interests and a genuine feeling for great and difficult responsibilities. We sent greetings to Berry's brother. Tomorrow evening we leave for Agra and the Täj Mahal. January 27. Birger met me on the journey to Agra and Delhi. We had divided up the work. I traveled to Simla while he traveled to Hatwah 8 8 and the headwaters of the Ganges. We shared our experiences. He observes well and clearly and tells what he has seen and experienced in an excellent manner. The Täj Mahal struck me even more strongly than it did sixteen years ago. One afternoon we went out to a lonely city, once splendid, that an emperor had built and, after it was finished, immediately abandoned. 8 9 N o w it sits on the broad plains with mighty walls, palaces of rose-colored stone, tombs of saints built out of snow-white marble, and an amazing, splendid mosque. The whole site looks like a mirage of stone, almost completely undamaged and undisturbed. In the evening we visited the bazaar in search of old images of deities. We found several, but they are scarce, and the newer ones are mostly trash. Vrindävan. The Bethlehem of Krsna's devotees. Pilgrims stream here from north and south. Every temple is a Krsna temple, and each is associated with a story of Krsna's life and deeds. A brown devotee of Krsna led us into the Ran-ga-ath 9 0 temple. It is a vast and interesting place. Seven concentric forecourts and inner courts surround the temple and the divine image. 87 88 89 90

Hospital. [Note in original] Presumably Hardwär. Presumably Fatehpur Sîkri. Presumably Ranganäth.

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As heathens we could proceed no farther than the second court. Galleries o f apartments for priests (who take turns serving, just like the priests in Jerusalem) stretch out to the west around the sacred pool, down to which broad steps lead. O n the water sits a huge boat. It bears the divine image during the presentation o f festival dramas. T h e story of the elephant and the crocodile is especially popular. It is performed here every year before a great crowd. O n c e , the story goes, the king of the elephants fell into a swamp and could not get out. H e called for help, and a crocodile came. But it was a wicked crocodile, and instead o f helping the elephant, it bit him in the leg and wanted to eat him. Then the king of the elephants called upon the Lord, and Visnu had mercy on him. H e came down f r o m heaven himself and killed the crocodile. O u r guide reverently told us this story. H e also told us about the festival's wonderful ceremonies. "Finally, when the crocodile bites him, the priests come into this pavilion where we are standing, and they set off fireworks. Then 'they shout him d e a d ' 9 1 " , he said, his eyes blazing with delight. T o the right of the pool stands Krsna's rose-garden, which blooms eternally. It is in full bloom even now. Inside it are two marble pavilions. T h e y bring an image of Krsna into one of the pavilions, and an image o f his consort R a d h ä into the other. A chorus sings among the rose-bushes of the love o f Radhä for Krsna. For devotees, Radhä is the soul, and Krsna is its loving savior. In these two figures, then, the most vile and the most tender aspects of Indian religion intertwine. I have bought an enormous, fat idol. It is made of marble and has four heads. For its sake I have had to give up an entire kingdom. Because I have to drag it along with us, I will unfortunately not be able to stop in Gwalior but must pass it by. I a m going to Näsik, on the sacred Godävari river, where R ä m a took refuge with his beloved Sita in the forest of the ascetics. I will stay there for several days.

91 English in original.

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IV Aswan. Monday, March 11, 1928 Dear Johanna (sic), Bauer 92 and I have traveled to Aswan, the southernmost portion of Egypt. Even this far north the population is Nubian. The sun is very hot, but the nights and the mornings are wonderful. The green, fertile strips here are very narrow, and they are almost completely inundated by the Nile. To the east spreads a dark brown desert, to the west one of honey-colored gold. Both are equally splendid. We traveled for a couple of hours through the eastern desert - through enormous banks of lava and granite, barren, without a single tree or plant, cracked and numb with death and silence. This is what the moon must look like. Suddenly the wild, mischievous stone separates, and a vast, beautiful basin of water appears: the dammed up Nile, which here covers many square kilometers of old palm groves and farmers' fields.93 A single palm rises from the broad and mighty flood. For about an hour small Nubian children paddle us about on the brown-gray water. Their squeaky voices sing in time with the oars, and their coal-black eyes smile at us. We glide over Philae, which is now submerged, and peer through the beautiful flowered capitals [of the columns] into the interior of the charming little temple of late antiquity that one has seen so often. We pull our heads out of the water, and the ship halts at the heavy, granite roof of the large temple of Isis, now an island in this artificial sea. H o w peculiar it all is: a submerged temple, now in ruins, but still displaying on high pylons above the water beautiful and proud images of the gods and kings whom it once served. Their faces have been gashed by Coptic Christians and Arab Muslims, who wanted to obliterate these devils in stone.

92 Hans Bauer [1878-1937], Professor of Oriental Languages, University of Halle. [Note in original] 93 The old Aswan Dam was completed in 1902 and flooded, among other sites, the island of Philae and its famous temples. The island reappeared again when the Aswan High Dam was completed, four miles upstream, in 1970. Philae is perhaps best known for its temple of Isis, active as such until the mid-sixth century CE, despite the pro-Christian edict of 378 banning the worship of Isis.

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4. A letter from Greece (1891 [1941]) From August to October, 1891, Otto journeyed through Greece with two fellow students from Göttingen, Heinrich Hackmann (1864-1935), a member of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule and later Sinologist, and Karl Thimme (1869-1949). When this excerpt was published in 1941, Thimme had retired from the ministry and was living in Stederdorf, a village two miles north of Peine, the town where Otto was born. According to the German introduction to the letters translated in the previous section, Otto had forbidden the publication of his unfinished works. "But he had himself occasionally published letters from his travels, for example, the letters from North Africa published in Die christliche Welt in 1911." In its final year of publication, Die christliche Welt took advantage of this liberty once again. It published the following excerpts from a letter Otto had written fifty years earlier to his oldest sister, Julie, and her husband, Otto Gehrich. Why this particular fragment was published remains a mystery. Perhaps the portion dealing with chapels on mountaintops seemed to foreshadow Otto's later notions of numinous experience. Source: "Reisebriefe Rudolf Ottos aus Griechenland", Die christliche no. 9 (May 3, 1941), cols. 197-198.

Welt 55,

For the last two days we have been on Corfu. My favorite part of the Odyssey took place here. It starts at book 6, where the valiant Odysseus is shipwrecked and takes shelter in the olive groves of Scheria. Please read the passage; there is nothing more beautiful. Yesterday evening we were on the coast where all of these events must have taken place. The cliffs fall precipitously into the blue sea. The ruins of a temple sit in a ravine, and below that a clear spring bubbles not far from a cool cave in the cliff. Around it are the most magnificent old olive trees with wondrous, fantastically shaped trunks, broad branches, and transparent canopies of leaves. One gazes out onto the soft, quiet sea, pale close up, but violet farther away. It nestles in countless inlets into the red mountains of Albania and around islands and reefs. Goats, which must be just like those of Alkinoos, graze under the trees. After a while girls come with jugs, just like the jugs Nausikaa and her playmates carried. They draw water from the spring, and carry it home on their heads. Do you recall the view of the sea and the coast at Naples? If so, that will give you an idea of the wonderful view from the steep heights of

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the shore here. A true, natural sentiment (Empfinden) led people to build chapels here above it. One feels God's presence here more than elsewhere. In Greece mountain peaks and sanctuaries are often named Hagios Elias, Saint Elijah, after the man who especially sought out mountaintops in order to be with God . . . . During the day we wander about the city. We see curious things. Just as in Erlangen every third house is a beer hall, so here every third building is a church or chapel, each as homely and ugly as the next. Our rooms are on the wonderful esplanade. To our left is the columned Palazzo Reale. In front of us is the old castle, which the Venetians and then the British held. It sits on a narrow, steep peninsula with a double-peak jutting out into the sea. With its tall, splendid cypresses, it offers a wonderful vista reminiscent of Böcklin's "Island of the dead". 94 We have already gotten many glimpses of church life, which is our special interest. On the very first day we visited a neighboring village to see a panegyris95 in honor of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.96 Like church festivals in Bavaria, it was both religious and secular at the same time. The devout flocked to the church. They kissed the images and put copper coins into richly decorated basins and the begging boxes of monks and nuns. Afterwards, they went outside to the festival plaza right next to the church. There a band was playing rousing music. Above charcoal fires - how horrible! - halves of lambs on spits were being roasted, and the pleasant local wine flowed freely. The whole festival presented an image of lively celebration beneath the magnificent old olive trees.

94 Arnold Böcklin ( 1 8 2 7 - 1 9 0 1 ) , Swiss painter whose "Island of the dead" ( 1 8 8 0 ) inspired Sergei Rachmaninoff's symphonic poem of the same name. 95 'Assembly', 'church festival'. [Note in original] 96 Celebrated on August 15.

Β. Politics and society

Perhaps the most neglected topic in the study of O t t o has been his extensive political and social activities. These activities began very early. Otto w a s involved f r o m first to last in Friedrich N a u m a n n ' s Nationalsozialer Verein [National-social association] ( 1 8 9 6 - 1 9 0 3 ) . They continued until after the first world war. Otto's political statements reflect the vagaries o f G e r m a n liberalism: prior to the w a r , enthusiasm for cultural colonialism; during the war, the need t o reform the Prussian electoral system; after the war, a concern for the welfare of a defeated Germany. His most imaginative and idiosyncratic proposal was his postwar response to the international situation. H e called for the creation o f a religious league o f all humanity as the moral foundation for the League of Nations. But O t t o ' s internationalism never abandoned national identities. His own loyalties are underscored by a liturgical proposal that he offered German Protestants in 1 9 2 5 : a service to celebrate the fatherland.

5. Early Political Involvement (1903 [1938]) In 1 8 9 6 the pastor-politician Friedrich N a u m a n n ( 1 8 6 0 - 1 9 1 9 ) founded the Nationalsozialer Verein as a liberal breakaway group f r o m the Evangelisch-Sozialer Kongreß [Evangelical-social congress] founded by the anti-Semitic court preacher Adolf Stöcker ( 1 8 3 5 - 1 9 0 9 ) (Diiding 1 9 7 2 ) . T h e group aimed to create a national socialism, as opposed to the international socialism of social democracy, and thus to unite within itself the social interests of workers and the liberal interests of the middle classes, especially the cultivated middle classes. 1 According t o the principles adopted at the founding convention in Erfurt, 1 8 9 6 , the group favored both a vigorous power-politics abroad and a policy of social reform at home. Indeed, it saw these foreign and dopiestic policies as inextricably intertwined (Diiding 1 9 7 2 : 2 0 0 - 2 0 2 ) . But the Verein never 1

The so-called Bildungsbürgertum, as distinct from the other major component of the German grand bourgeoisie, the propertied middle classes or Besitzbürgertum.

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achieved electoral success. In 1903 it was disbanded, or better, merged with the Freisinnige Vereinigung [Free thinking union]. In August 1903 Otto wrote a long letter to Wilhelm Thimme (1879-1966), future Augustine scholar and younger brother of the Karl Thimme of the preceding selection. Among other things, the letter gives intriguing hints, but little more, of Otto's involvement with the Nationalsozialer Verein. During the rest of the decade, Otto's politics seem to have vacillated between a somewhat right- and somewhat left-leaning liberalism. He was interested in representing the National Liberal Party in the Prussian legislature. At the same time, he collaborated with fellow neo-Friesians Leonard Nelson and Wilhelm Bousset, who were adamantly left-liberal, in the Göttingen chapter of the Akademischer Freibund. 2 Source: Letter to Wilhelm Thimme, August 2 6 , 1903, University Library, Marburg, Hs. 7 9 7 : 7 , partially transcribed in Wilhelm Thimme, "Erinnerungen an Rudolf Otto", University Library, Marburg, Hs. 7 9 7 : 5 7 7 , 16-17.

I, too, cannot believe in one personal God in any way that suggests there might be two such gods. But all piety and faith require us to believe in the eternal and highest Being, which we name God, as the foundation, in the same way as we believe in thought, consciousness, character, and moral will. Apart from that belief one does not actually believe; one only believes that one believes . . . . Now that the general assembly has taken place, perhaps [Friedrich] Naumann's crossover to the Freisinnigen will seem to you a little more necessary and justified than it did earlier. For my part, I received the same pleasure from the assembly as I get from watching the final act of a tragedy. I attended the first act, the constituent assembly in Erfurt, as a delegate. I attended the last act as a sort of forerunner or σκία των μελλόντων [shade of things to come]. I had long ago made in private the transition that Naumann now recommends and proposes.

2

See the lengthy report about a public incident sparked by a meeting of the Freibund in which Otto played a leading role (Student Corporations, Göttingen 1 9 1 0 ) as well as newspaper accounts of the meeting and incident ("Allgemeine Akademiker-Versammlung" [ 1 9 1 0 ] , "Eine große Akademikerversammlung" [1910], and " Z u der allgemeinen Akademiker-Versammlung" [1910]).

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6. Germany as a cultural colonial power (1912) The second leg of Otto's world-tour of 1 9 1 1 - 1 9 1 2 (see " 2 . Letters from North Africa", above) took him to India, China, and Japan. There, in a talk before the German governor in Qingdao on "Germany's cultural tasks in the east", Otto's observations on the French educational efforts in North Africa grew to a full-blown cultural missionary program (Otto 1 9 1 2 : 18). His ideas were by no means unique. Others who had received government funds for "world-tours" expressed similar concerns. But they initiated a flurry of activities on Otto's part. At the invitation of the Ministry of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Otto spoke in March 1 9 1 3 to the Colonial Society in Braunschweig and to a convention of publishers in Leipzig about German cultural tasks abroad (Otto 1913b & 1913c). He also took intense interest in the cultural activities of Richard Wilhelm ( 1 8 7 3 - 1 9 3 0 ) , the later Sinologist who, before the first world war, was a missionary of the Allgemeiner Evangelisch-Protestantischer Missionsverein [Evangelical Protestant mission society] in Qingdao. In addition, Otto recruited funds so that Chinese could study in Germany, and he even hosted a Chinese student himself. Finally, he took a leading role in instituting a multi-volume series of translations of religious classics, analogous to " T h e sacred books of the east", under the title Quellen der Religionsgeschichte [Sources for the history of religion]. Source:

"Deutsche Kulturaufgaben im Ausland", Der ostasiatische

Lloyd

26,

no. 2 3 (June 7, 1 9 1 2 ) : 4 8 3 - 4 8 5 (with pp. 4 8 4 a & b).

From the very beginning of human history - from the influence exerted by Assyria and Babylon to that of the Anglo-Saxon world, which in quantity, at least, is the most significant cultural influence today - culture has continuously been transferred from one people to another. This happens in a variety of ways. In some cases cultural transfer happens on its own. As a people develops economically and politically, the territory over which it exercises control or with which it trades expands, and so does its cultural influence. In other cases cultural transfer occurs because less developed peoples want and need goods that more cultured peoples possess. The less developed seek and imitate the institutions, customs, laws, religion, art, science, technology, and governments of those who are more cultured. In addition, every more highly developed culture has an impulse to spread itself. It feels itself bound and obligated by a noble duty: because one possesses culture, one has a

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debt to all of humanity that must be paid. One recognizes at the same time that the transfer and spread of culture is in a cultured people's own best interests, when those interests are properly understood. That is because cultural expansion is of the utmost significance to a people's political and economic well-being, indeed, to its national existence and self-assertion. History teaches us repeatedly that economic relations and political influence follow upon cultural influence. One sees this in the relationship between France and the Levant, in the influence that England and America exercise on half the world, and at a lower level in the influence of Arabic culture and Islam throughout Africa and the economic and political benefits of that influence. For centuries France's cultural influence has created interest in the French way of life, a preference for French tastes, and a desire for things French. Completely on their own, desires aroused in this way look to France for their satisfaction and provide that country with very real monetary benefits (sehr reale "Werte"). Articles of French fashion and taste, French scholarship and novels, French wines and pianos, and all of France's many different products have found and continue to find outlets in areas where French culture has prepared the way. Furthermore - and this is almost more "profitable" - France's distinct culture has made it "the place to be", the home of half the world and the storehouse of its money. Earlier Russians and Levantines, Rumanians and Turks, even English lords and the English king Edward VII gravitated to Paris. Today wealthy Argentineans and South Americans stream to Paris year after year for a saison. From youth onward French literature and an education influenced by French culture have told them that Paris is the ideal city. In the same way youth from other countries, eager for learning, flock to Paris in droves. They are drawn by French culture, and in turn they convey that culture back to their homelands and, along with it, France's economic and political influence. 3 Even more important than these two 4 is a third economic benefit. Essentially as a result of cultural influence, regions outside of France have been opened up for the excess population of young people seeking 3 4

Otto himself was not immune to the attractions of French culture in his youth. See Otto (1896), which envisions the prospects of a ministerial position in Paris. Presumably Otto means (1) the export of French goods and (2) tourism.

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places to live and w o r k . 5 Teachers, educators, instructors in politics, military science, economics, and technology, doctors and nurses, bankers a n d engineers, political and cultural (geistliche) advisers, financiers and administrators (Organisator[en]) and countless others w h o would have been unable to find a position at home or would have f o u n d only an inadequate position, can find a home and a career a b r o a d . In this way cultural influence acquires very real monetary value. The profits that accrue in this way are perhaps greater than all profits that derive from industry and commerce put together. Just think of the many millions who p o u r into N e w England every year. For Germany, with its ever growing number of young people in need of positions, this dimension is of the greatest significance. J u s t as important as economic benefits, however, is the gain in political influence. Political influence derives above all from cultural influence. It is only natural to be sympathetic with, favorably disposed to, and on g o o d political terms with that people from which one's teachers, education, and culture have come. These g o o d relations strengthen in turn the reputation and significance of those peoples who are cultural leaders. The French, the English, and the Americans have for a long time had a high regard for the economic and political importance of the influence of their respective cultures on foreign countries. We Germans are also gradually coming to understand this importance, especially those of us who are involved in trade and heavy industry. Increasingly, these groups are donating large sums of money not only for technical projects a n d schools overseas, but also for purely cultural undertakings. A larger percentage of our population needs to understand how important these pursuits are. Public opinion, the press, the government, and politicians m u s t recognize that when it comes to our ability to assert ourselves as a nation and to compete a b r o a d in economic and political arenas, cultural endeavors are at least as important as the politics of power and of economics that the Colonial Society, the N a v y League, a n d the Air Force Union promote. This is all the more true right now, when the signs are so auspicious. Outside Germany an increasing number of people are demonstrating an appreciation of and desire for German technology, language, and culture. Let us recognize what w e must d o ! Let us seize 5

Otto m a y have h a d his own experience in mind here. At the time of writing he w a s 4 3 years of age and still looking for a suitable a c a d e m i c appointment. H e received his first professoriate at Breslau in 1 9 1 5 .

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the moment! Let us learn from the French, English, and Americans how to undertake with broad vision, expansive scope, and due haste a task upon which our significance and destiny as a nation will to a large extent depend. There are many ways to influence other lands permanently and decisively by means of our culture. The most important of all is through the excellence and superiority of one's culture itself. Superior quality makes a culture attractive and overcomes the influence of other cultures. Our first and most important task, then, is to nurture and ennoble our own culture constantly. To be sure, the present situation forces us to develop and fashion external instruments of power, our financial strength, and the tools for economic competition. But all of these things are nothing more than necessary, external prerequisites of national superiority. They do not of themselves guarantee it. In the end the people with the richest, strongest, and finest culture will be victorious in international competition. Our goal must be to create that culture, and we can allow no external, material task, however important, to divert us from it. We should look to each and every German abroad to bear and spread German culture. That requires first and foremost that each and every German be conscious of this national duty. The English are English wherever they go. They require those around them to use their language (recall pidgin English), and they accustom others to English manners and influences. Germans should do the same. We must eliminate the complaint that Germans "anglicize" in their business dealings and private affairs. We should begin by using German in our own houses, with our own servants, and so far as we are able with our business associates. In this way a pidgin German might develop. T h a t sort of German might not have much value in and o f itself, but it might create opportunities for more permanent and profound linguistic and cultural relations, as pidgin English has done everywhere. Germans abroad, then, should not think of their positions only as instruments, exactly like any other, for serving their own personal interests. They should live as and feel themselves to be personally a part of their surroundings. They should be freely open to, respectful of, and interested in their surroundings and its culture. One often hears that the English do not understand "the natives" 6 and hold themselves aloof from them. But in my travels I have encountered many examples of just the opposite among English and Americans, 6

English in original.

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while I have unfortunately found among Germans the most incredibly naive and coarse opinions about their Asian surroundings. These opinions would disappear immediately if only these Germans made an effort to acquire a minimal amount of insight into the distinctive psychological, historical, and cultural conditions of their environment. To this end there is an urgent need for lectures, b o o k s , and pertinent journals to instruct our young merchants, manufacturers, politicians, and travelers. A greater understanding of the distinctive character of foreigners would increase trust and respect and a feeling for one another, and that in turn would certainly awaken the desire on the part of Germans to help transmit Germ a n culture themselves. All who have attended German schools at home can assist in this endeavor, if they are only willing and try. F o r example, they could give elementary language instruction or read G e r m a n books together with foreigners. They could organize associations, give public lectures, and so on. W h a t the Anglo-American world has achieved with an organization like the Young M e n ' s Christian Association Germans could achieve, too, and perhaps better. I have often heard on my travels from people eager to learn: " I f only someone were willing to speak or read German with me or help me in other w a y s . " In many places it would be quite simple to meet with such young people in a group and teach them g r a m m a r or organize a weekly "reading night". I a m confident that anyone who begins to do so will very quickly become fond of these activities. It is also extremely important to bring larger numbers of foreigners to Germany. I a m thinking above all of foreign students. We could attract young men t o our universities, high schools, and polytechnic institutions at home, and boys and girls t o our educational institutions overseas. We could do so, first, through the kinds of personal relations that I discussed earlier, then by more directly advertizing our educational institutions and opportunities in public lectures and essays. It is also especially important to make life easier f o r those w h o want to come. F o r example, we could establish special hostels for foreign students. These hostels could be directed by those familiar with East Asia, preferably educated w o m e n . There young men could find guidance and advice as well as a comfortable place to live. T h a t would make the adjustment to life in a foreign country easier, and foreign students would thereby avoid many dangers that they would otherwise easily encounter. M e n of experience and influence in China and J a p a n have repeatedly told me that they are unwilling to send their sons to the west. T h e main reason is the special

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moral dangers that threaten isolated young foreigners. A hostel just for them would be one way to overcome these threats. It would also be better to locate such hostels in smaller rather than larger university-towns, for obvious reasons. England and America have gone so far as to provide foreign students with generous stipends, travel allowances, and special rates for sea and rail travel. These measures, too, are worth imitating. Next, I must mention the great, far-reaching work of founding German cultural, linguistic, and educational institutions abroad. We should take as our model the Anglo-American zeal for schools and other educational institutions overseas. These institutions are generally run by missionaries and mission societies, but occasionally they are independent of mission activity (recall the Oxford movement for universities in China and Lord Cecil 7 ). Elementary schools, middle schools, technical schools, law schools, medical schools, all the way up to "universities" as institutions of general cultivation - missions have created all of these, and year in and year out they boast of thousands of students. The American college in Lahore has as many as 900 students every year, the Scottish university in Calcutta as many as 1100. The Doshisha University, founded by the Americans in Kyoto, has up to 900 students.8 Many of these institutions are without a doubt admirable. The usual criticism (Vorurteil) is that they are exclusively religious institutions and instill culture (Bildung) only as a means, not an end. But for the most part this criticism is unjust, especially in the case of institutions run by university graduates. The number of converts who come out of these institutions is often very small, but their influence on the moral development of their students is often extremely significant. For example, when I was in India, I met Muslim families who prefer to send their sons to mission schools, even though there is an Islamic college in the very same place that is 7

8

Lord William Cecil ( 1 8 5 4 - 1 9 4 3 ) . As a result of events such as the failed Boxer "Rebellion" and wars with Japan, the Chinese at the beginning of the twentieth century began actively to cultivate European and American education. Cf. the contemporary Encyclopaedia Britannica (18: 596): " M o r e significant still is the way in which the foremost Chinese officials have turned to missionaries like Timothy Richard and Griffith John for assistance. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge, under the inspiration of Lord William Cecil, were interesting themselves in 1 9 1 0 in a scheme for establishing a Christian university in China." Doshisha University was actually founded in 1 8 7 5 by Joseph Niijima, working in conjunction with the American Board of Foreign Missions. By 1 9 9 0 it had roughly 1 2 0 , 0 0 0 students.

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considerably less expensive. Furthermore, I have read directives of the Anglo-Indian government authorizing the preferential hiring of graduates from this college for civil service. The reason is that these graduates are for the m o s t part more intelligent and clever, and above all more trustworthy and mature, than others are. In those countries where school systems are still unfinished, it is actually possible to construct an entire educational system from the primary grades on up to the university. T h e Americans did this earlier in J a p a n . In contemporary Japan such an undertaking is no longer possible, because that country established its o w n school system some time ago. In China efforts are already under way to develop a school system, but there will still be opportunities for educational enterprises for many years to c o m e , so long as one maintains the proper relationship to Beijing University. T h e English and Americans have known enough already to make use of this opportunity. In Shandong they have rural elementary schools, middle and high schools in the cities, and three "faculties" in Weifang, Jingzhou, and Jinan. St. J o h n ' s College in Shanghai, organized according to the American system o f grades, is a branch of America's Harvard University. The private university in H o n g Kopg, which is independent of mission w o r k , has received a large endowment. And there are other Anglo-American institutions besides these. One must admire the far-sighted and noble manner in which the English and Americans have undertaken this work and the quantity of resources that, for idealistic reasons but also from a proper understanding of their own best interests, they are willing to devote t o it. Some English and Americans have made gifts worth millions, while others have established foundations to support educational work. Germans have begun ventures with public and private financing that are more modest but still very promising. In the territory of Jiaozhou the government has already established twelve elementary schools which teach some G e r m a n . There is the well-known and successful German high school in Qingdao. At Qingdao, too, there is a dock school, at which for the time being a hundred and twenty students learn the various crafts of seafaring and at the same time receive instruction in the German language. In Shanghai the government maintains a high school for medicine and technology, and in many other Chinese cities there are schools that teach German. Of the schools that are funded privately, I should mention the various German mission schools. Last year a conference o f G e r m a n teachers was held in Qingdao in an attempt to unify

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these efforts. Every teacher of German in Chinese schools was invited to attend. We should pursue this w o r k in every way and with every available resource. Perhaps we should take the advice o f Consul D r . Betz 9 in Jinan and devote our resources t o founding not residential schools but as many day schools as possible. After all, residential schools are not only more expensive but also more troublesome, given the inclination of Chinese students to strikes and disturbances o f every sort, especially when a number o f them live together in the same place. In places like J a p a n , where a comprehensive and independent school system is already established, there are still many possibilities for Germans to provide educational assistance. An increasing number of Japanese already desire to learn German as well as German science, literature, and culture. A plentiful supply of teachers and instructional materials would easily and quickly allow that number to climb very high indeed. I have frequently discussed with friends and persons in authority the idea and prospects for schools in German language and culture. We must create day schools that initially provide comprehensive instruction in German over the course of, say, two years. After this initial period they would then provide an introduction to German literature and history, especially German cultural history. It would be easy to supplement this instruction with courses on technology, medicine, political economy, art history, politics, German philosophy, ethics, worldviews, and higher culture ( G e i s t e s b i l d u n g ) in general. All of these courses could be taught by German engineers, doctors, and educated persons w h o happen to live in the vicinity. Without any effort at all these schools would become meeting places for the already large number of native doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, teachers, and clergy, indeed, for all generally educated and cultured people w h o have been touched by German influence. These people would soon enough constitute a sufficiently large audience that, for example, instructors from German universities could be invited to give shorter or longer courses, series of public lectures, and practica. Such events would most certainly attract large numbers of students to German universities. With modifications and adjustments, the same thing could be done in China. In the course o f time German-Japanese and 9

Heinrich Betz (b. 1 8 7 3 ) , a German official whose career in China began in 1 8 9 8 and continued into the 1920s. He was appointed Consul in Jinan in 1909.

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German-Chinese Societies would be formed, and German reading rooms, libraries, and club rooms would be founded. It would not cost much to establish the kinds of schools for German culture that I envision, if the schools drew their teachers from qualified persons already living in the area, some of whom would no doubt volunteer. People in Germany are interested in and willing to participate in such activities. For example, a friend of mine has already received 15,000 marks from an industrialist in Germany for use in just such a school. Those who know the area very well assure me that there would be no lack of students for such institutions. Among those who would be immediately interested are, as I have already mentioned, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, engineers, officers, translators, diplomats, clergy (not only Christian ministers but also Buddhist priests; the latter are already showing interest in German religious scholarship, Oriental philology, and German philosophy, and given the opportunity they would become even more interested), teachers of language and other subjects at institutions of higher learning, and most especially journalists, writers, and those in a position to influence public opinion. The influence of these schools would very quickly extend to all educated persons whatsoever. So far as I can see, all of these efforts must meet three requirements. The experiences (Erlebnisse und Erfahrungen) that I have had in my travels have only served to confirm this. A sudden and abrupt collision with modern culture, especially when that culture is presented as purely technical and intellectual, has everywhere had very harmful effects upon the cultures and worldviews of eastern peoples. Very often the result has been a moral rootlessness and upheaval that can lead directly to immorality and anarchy. One sees this in events in India during the last decade. The disorienting effects are not limited to individuals alone. Severe social crises and revolutionary and anarchical upheavals can also result. 10 In Japan such tendencies have just now begun to appear. One 10 Otto might also have mentioned the so-called Boxer Rebellion in China (1899-1900). The "Boxers", members of the society "Righteous and Harmonious Fists", attacked European and North American missionaries and their converts because of their disregard for Chinese traditions. They were suppressed by the allied troops of several European colonial powers. Germany's role in the affair was significant. On June 18, 1900, after an appeal from the empress dowager to kill all foreigners, the German foreign minister, Baron Clemens von Ketteler, was assassinated. The lead article of the peace protocol, signed September 7, 1901, required an official apology for von

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of the biggest and most difficult problems that Japanese leaders face is how to forestall developments similar to those that have occurred in India. If we do not want our educational efforts to have such evil effects, we must first of all transmit a culture that does not completely alienate students from what is best in their own cultures and from their own ways of thinking. It may look like an excess of German idealism for the dock school in Qingdao to sponsor classes in Chinese classics taught every evening by Chinese teachers, but it is not. These classes really owe their existence to the purest political calculation. The first requirement our educational efforts must meet, then, is this: they must provide and nurture a fundamental, inner understanding and cultivation of the cultural values of the students' own traditions. The second requirement is that our education not only instruct and challenge the students' mind but at the same time educate and cultivate their hearts and characters. We must provide students with a worldview and set of values that is somehow shaped by religion and morals or at least by idealistic philosophy. This entails a third requirement: those who undertake to educate must themselves be idealists. Their chief task is to instill in their students a good and solid character through personal association. In other words, the traditional eastern relationship between teacher and student must be preserved and, if possible, deepened as it assumes modern forms. In the east the teacher has always been and is still today the spiritual guide, indeed, the spiritual father of the student. It is almost as important for a teacher to have a personality that is suited to educational activities as to have received specialized training. Perhaps it would be very difficult to undertake a program of general education in medical schools, technical schools, and other schools of specialized higher learning. Specialized study necessarily demands from teachers and pupils alike a one-sided devotion of time and energy. For this reason it is even more important that preparatory schools provide a good general education. For example, the Lixian Seminar that Dr. Wilhelm directs in Qingdao is essentially a preparatory school for later specialized studies. Students attend this school between the ages of ten and seventeen. Several of its

Ketteler's death and a monument in his honor erected at the site (Tan 1955: 234). But much had transpired in the fifteen months since von Ketteler was killed. Germany had decided that the situation called for a show of strength. "The violence of the German troops made the Chinese people detest and fear them more than any other foreign force" (Tan 1955: 145).

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features strike me as exemplary: the ways in which the school tries to include elements of value from Chinese culture and traditions, in which it combines western and eastern educational ideals, in which it separates the task of education (Erziehung) from that of training {Schulung), and in which it creates a community of pupils and teachers. But even in specialized institutions, there are, so far as I can see, two ways to impart a general cultural education: (1) by acquainting students with idealistic subjects, either by including in the regular curriculum lectures in philosophy that incline to idealism or else by introducing in a more popular fashion questions about perspectives on life and the world, perhaps by using short pieces from the literatures of both Germany and the native country; and (2) by providing a historical introduction to human religious and moral evolution, perhaps by using Bertholet's Religionsgeschichtliches Lesebuch (1908). It is certainly not the place of such schools to educate students in a specific religion. Nevertheless, if one really wants schools that pass on culture to their students, one cannot completely exclude from the curriculum such an important moment of human culture as the great, historical manifestations of religion, nor can one entirely neglect to stimulate the religious and moral sensibility (Gefühl) of the students. If one wants to avoid both mistakes, 11 one should provide a historical treatment of the major lines of the general history of religions. It is the simplest and best way to nurture religious and moral development but at the same time allow students to pursue their own religions. It is also very important to establish schools for girls, especially since opportunities in this field will remain wide open for many years to come. Today's girls will grow up to become the mothers of the next generation. It is well known how widely and deeply French culture has influenced the Levant by means of the education provided to girls in convent schools. Finally, and not the least, one should consider founding in foreign countries a fortunate and specifically German institution: kindergartens under the direction of German women. For both tasks it might be beneficial to adopt an idea put forward by Professor Zimmer 1 2 and institute an 11 Presumably O t t o means (1) propagating a particular religion and (2) totally neglecting religion. 12 Presumably Friedrich Zimmer (1855-1919), a Protestant theologian active in educational endeavors. In 1894 he founded the Evangelischer Diakonieverein [Protestant diaconal association], whose structure sought to rectify the "patriarchal" organization of earlier associations for deaconesses.

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interconfessional order of teaching sisters. Members of this order could also become directors of homes for students and young people abroad. These homes would be not only residences but also centers for German social life and comfort. I found just such a home run by Englishwomen at Aligarh College, an Islamic institution in India. In order to accomplish all of these tasks, it would be best to found a general German Cultural Union for work overseas. We already have such an organization for work in Turkey, and attempts are being made to start a similar organization in East Asia. Would it not be expedient and profitable to combine all such efforts into a single, encompassing organization charged with spreading and nurturing German culture abroad? Such a Union would seem to be at least as necessary as the Navy League or the Air Force Union. It would advance both the general culture of humanity and also, when these are properly understood, our own national interests.

7. Rudolf Otto, National Liberal candidate (1913) In 1 9 1 3 , Otto was elected to represent Göttingen in the Abgeordnetenhaus 'House of representatives' of the Prussian Landtag 'State legislature' as a member of the National Liberal Party faction. He had stood for a different seat in earlier elections and failed, but in 1913 the result was quite different. Results from the preliminary elections of Friday, May 16, showed a total of 2 3 7 electors from the National Liberal Party, 86 electors on the right, and 16 Social Democrats. Otto carried the city of Göttingen in an even greater landslide: 1 2 7 National Liberal electors, 3 from the right, and 2 Social Democrats. With such vote totals, the results of the final elections, held on June 3, were hardly in doubt. Otto's huge success probably owed less to the effectiveness of his campaign than to Göttingen's strong tradition of supporting National Liberal candidates. Nevertheless, on Thursday, May 8, eight days before the election, the National Liberal Party held a public meeting at 8:30 p.m. A detailed report of Otto's speech appeared two days later in the Göttinger Zeitung. A separate offprint of the report is preserved in the Otto archives. Presumably, it was distributed as a pre-election circular. Otto's speech and the subsequent discussion often allude to assertions made two nights earlier at a public meeting of the conservative opposition (cp. "Eine öffentliche Versammlung der rechtsstehenden Parteien"

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[1913]). At that meeting, Representative von Kardorff 1 3 accused the National Liberals of drifting to the left, of dreaming of a united parliamentary block from Bassermann to Bebel, 14 of being at the mercy of the Social Democrats, and of having no concern for the welfare of landowners. Oberforstmeister Fricke 15 was introduced as the candidate of the Bund der Landwirte [Landowners' league] and the German-Hannoverian Party. 16 If elected, he pledged to ally himself with the Free Conservative faction in the legislature. Source: Göttinger Zeitung 51, no. 16369 (May 10, 1913); offprint: Otto Archives, Religionskundliche Sammlung, Marburg, 387.

Report of the meeting of the National Liberal Party, City Park, Göttingen, May 8, 1913 A public meeting of the National Liberal Party took place yesterday evening in the Great Hall of the City Park. The hall was filled to the very last seat, and many had to stand in the entrance. Professor Brandi, 17 as president, opened the meeting and welcomed all present. When citizens came together after a day's business, he said, for political activities in the evening, they did so out of an interest in the common good, because they knew that political activity was a duty and an honor for the citizens of a state. To be sure, on various points there 13 Siegfried von Kardorff (1873-1945), at the time the Free Conservative member of the Prussian House of Representatives from Posen 6 (Fraustadt, Lissa, Rawitsch, Gostyn). After the first world war he was active in the DeutschNationale Volkspartei [German national people's party], then in the Reichstag from 1920-1932 as a member of the Deutsche Volkspartei [German people's party]. 14 Ernst Bassermann (1854-1917) became president of the executive council of the National Liberal Party in 1905 and governed the party's affairs until his death. August Bebel (1840-1913) was one of the founders of the German Social Democratic Party. 15 Carl Fricke (1859/1860/1865-1914), at the time an administrator in the Royal Academy of Forestry, Hannover-Miinden. He began to lecture at the University of Göttingen in fall, 1913, joined the army when the war broke out, and was killed in battle in October 1914. 16 Formed to promote the interests of an independent Hannover after the kingdom's forced annexation by Prussia in 1866. 17 Karl Brandi (1868-1946), from 1902 professor of history in Göttingen. A specialist in Renaissance and Reformation history, he served as rector of the university 1919-1920.

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were probably friendly disagreements, but they were generally agreed in their opposition to the unjust attacks of their opponents. We will not allow ourselves, the speaker continued, to be upset by these attacks. We will not stoop to this low level of political fighting, for that would be an insult to the business at hand. We proclaim our faith in our nationhood (Volkstum), in our state and monarchy, in the life and work of this state. We actively take part in the work. We define a representative's responsibilities (Tätigkeit), and we support him as he works to fulfill those responsibilities. The people's representative should support the state government, and this task of popular representation should be taken seriously. What happens in France and Italy is not desirable. There a delegate works for nothing but the narrow interests of the electoral district. At the same time, a representative should be concerned with each person's interests. Our position is probably best demonstrated by our outgoing representative, Mr. Heine. 18 Nothing was unimportant to him. With fatherly concern he listened to every wish. He was, in the best sense of the word, the father of our district. He also addressed every matter of great concern to the entire district. But that did not exhaust his activity. He was a respected member of the party, and we can be proud of him for that. Heine conceived of his duties in terms that were great and broad, but at the same time as intimate and sensitive as possible. We find it difficult that he will not run for office again. For years Representative Heine has asked us to allow him to step down. Now, because he is so conscientious and desires a well-earned rest, he has decided not to accept our mandate. We found it painful, but it was our duty to grant him this request. For years we knew that we might need to nominate a new candidate. For months we have known that the time was upon us. One point in particular governed our choice. We sought a candidate who lived within the district itself and who knew it and its situation. We also wanted to find a person who would be genuinely important, someone who would develop a program of his own. Representative Heine had such a program. He was an authority on agriculture, an area in which he rose from the ranks. Ickler, 19 too, has a program. He is the leader of an enormous 18 Karl Heine ( 1 8 5 7 - 1 9 1 6 ) , National Liberal member of the Prussian House from Göttingen 1 9 0 7 - 1 9 1 3 . By profession he specialized in agricultural administration. 19 Gustav Ickler (b. 1 8 7 0 ) , a metalworker who, as a National Liberal, represented Göttingen in the Reichstag from 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 1 8 .

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association and is influential in labor issues. We hope that our new candidate will also have a program, that he will not be merely a pawn of the party but a person who will enrich the House of Representatives. Professor Otto has been active in our university for years. He has also traveled throughout the world. As a result he brings a broad perspective to the work of our district and the state of Prussia. He is no stranger to political life. Once before he campaigned for the seat from Alfeld district, 20 and he is close to the National Liberal Party. He looks at matters with his eyes open and forms his own opinions. My feeling is that we ought to be thankful to representatives who accept difficult mandates. Candidates who seek mandates are less desirable, for people who enter politics for fun are not suited to it. Voters should welcome the presence of capable personalities and ask them to take up the mandate. That is the case with Professor Otto, and for that reason we welcome him warmly. The speaker concluded with the wish that discussion proceed in a manner appropriate to the great dignity of the matter at hand. (Spirited applause) At this point Professor Dr. Otto spoke: The new House of Representatives will have to address many specific issues. In finance, it will have to alleviate our tax burden, improve the collection of taxes, and perhaps institute a new military tax. It will also need to consider how to advance and provide security for our rural classes ("domestic colonization"). In addition, it will need to address issues of trade and of the working class, the salaries of civil servants and teachers, the reform of the administration, communal self-government, and especially questions of voting rights. But before we consider specific issues, let us first reflect more broadly upon the contemporary political situation in general and what it requires. What it requires is given in the notions "national" and "liberal" and the necessary connection between the two. That applies as much in foreign as in domestic policy. Let us start with the situation outside our borders. There are hours and times in the history of the world that are intensely serious, indeed, that are solemnly and fatefully significant. Today as never before the world has become a single system of powerful, intertwined forces. Within such a system only a heavily armed people (Volk) will 2 0 District Hildesheim 2 (Alfeld, Gronau), held by the Free Conservative August Lüders (b. 1856) from January 1899 until the collapse of the government in November 1918.

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be able to assert itself and assure itself a lasting place in worldhistory. For that reason, our first political task must be a decisive and very pragmatic power politics. When one sends a representative to the House, one should ask: what is your position with respect to current issues in national power and defense? These issues necessarily include questions of a politics of national expansion. A people must be willing and able to create for itself through colonial expansion the broad basis necessary for global business and commerce. Global commerce and a domination of the global market depends, however, not a little on national cultural expansion. Unfortunately, this aspect has until now been overlooked and neglected. It is shortsighted to suppose that a people can assert itself simply through foreign trade. America and England have not simply developed extensive economic relations; they have also spread their distinctive culture far and wide. In order to address such pressing national issues, it is necessary to be liberal. The two necessarily go hand in hand. One of the best lessons I learned on my world-tour was this: among peoples who desire to assert themselves, "national" and "liberal" are intimately interrelated. Which people, then, have established themselves most firmly outside their borders? Those which are internally the most liberal, where nationalism and liberalism have most thoroughly pervaded one another, where politics is pursued by entire peoples who are informed, intelligent, and independent. Consider American policies in China. Why do these policies succeed so well? Because through them an entire, free people enters into global politics. Each and every person contributes to the work and knows something about it. The great liberal idea underlies these policies. Through them, an entire people, free and energetic, collaborates in global politics. So these two belong together: national because liberal, and liberal because national! In domestic policy, too, these two notions belong together. The defects of the situation within our borders demonstrate that. The first major defect is the fragmentation of our political life into a great number of special interest groups, some of them very small. The body politic has been divided up into pieces that are no longer defined politically but in terms of special confessional, economic, or other interests. We must come together as a party and look out for the interests of the people as a people. We must always guard against the danger of fragmentation. We must be a party that aspires most decisively to be national above

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all, that looks out for the welfare of the people as a people. But how is that necessarily liberal? A " n a t i o n a l " politics has often been the rallying cry of special political interests; but in these cases one overlooks that the special interests have confused themselves and their concerns with the nation and the people. In truth, however, they have pursued the politics of a particular class, in fact, of a class that already had power. That w a s true in the eighteenth century. At that time a feudal and clerical upper class spoke of national interests, because its members were convinced that they were themselves the nation. It sometimes happens that lower classes pursue such a politics, too. For example, in Australia the working class dominates. This fallacy mistakes the interests of a specific class for those of the nation. But national interests concern the people as a union of all classes, interdependent and interconnected. T h e goal of N a t i o n a l Liberalism is to further the welfare of the various classes in such a way that all benefit from the welfare of the people as a whole. National Liberalism has made its great mark in just this regard. One hundred years ago, National Liberalism discovered this notion of the people. Stein's 2 1 great service w a s to break the privileges of a single class and emphasize that the people comprised more than the interests of a single group. It w a s liberalism that admitted to politics farmers, burghers, craftsmen, all the large, broad classes that sustain our national identity. A n d it is the policy of National Liberalism to grant these groups lasting protection. Liberalism would betray itself if it wanted to a b a n d o n them. It must by its very nature promote and protect the large estates and classes that the national body needs in order to survive. These classes include above all agriculture, industry, business and commerce, and labor. National Liberalism is linked to these estates not through bittersweet concessions but through its inmost being. First and foremost we must have agriculture. It is the soil in which the strength of the fatherland takes root. History shows that there are circumstances under which a people can try t o o late to reestablish a neglected agricultural base. England tried that and failed. Therefore, we recognize the right of agriculture to develop freely, so that it can contribute to the health of the nation. For this reason, we have decidedly endorsed the present policy of protec21 (Heinrich Friedrich) Karl vom Stein (1757-1831), chief minister of Prussia (1807-1808) and architect of the Prussian state. Among other things, he liberated the peasants and instituted reforms in property and political rights.

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tive tariffs. Those who oppose this policy are fond of saying that in the global market the production of corn is continually increasing, and that this increase in production will inevitably undercut the price. I have no doubt that production is increasing outside our borders, but consumption is increasing there, too. Hundreds of millions of Indians and Chinese are gradually coming to realize that they have a right to eat until they are satisfied. Their stomachs provide an enormously large place for increased production to fill. This is true of the production of meat, too. We favor deliberately increasing the size of our agricultural population; that is, we favor domestic colonization as a way of obtaining new land for agriculture. After all, it is the farmer who provides us with meat and frees us from foreign competition. The attitude of National Liberalism toward the concerns of the middle class, especially the extensive class of small business owners, is no different. It is unhealthy to concentrate enormous wealth in the hands of a few and allow others to live in poverty. The case is just the same with the interests of the industrial middle class. From the liberal perspective, it is not in the national interest to devote an ever larger percentage of the population to operating machinery and working in factories. I say this for both social and educational reasons. Our highest purpose is to develop our personalities. Therefore, it cannot be good for a large percentage of the population to be engaged in work like operating machines, which impedes that development. It must remain possible to find genuine individuals in this class. In areas of basic manufacturing, machines should replace handwork, but in quality work and finishing individual craftsmen excel. Our cultural ideals lead us to hope that individual craftsmen will persist and thrive. We want them to know that with us their rights to organize and govern themselves are secure, as are their rights to a healthy sense of identity and economic stature. That we support labor is a matter of honor and good conscience. We do not do so from some paternalistic "concern" on our part. Rather, we support labor's independence and its right to political status equal to that of other classes. We promote a liberal national politics ( Volkspolitik) in another sense, too: we want to limit the privileges of certain upper classes. We encourage self-governance within municipalities, and we most especially oppose an electoral system that is harmful to the people, antiquated, and unworkable. We want to avoid the dangers of radicalism and precipitous change. For that reason, we do not favor transferring the electoral system

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used for the Reichstag to Prussia. 22 At the same time, we oppose just as strongly those reactionary elements that impede the free activity of the people and make it nothing but an illusion. It is already burdensome and vexing, especially for rural voters, that most voters cannot vote in the places where they live but must often travel for hours in order to cast their ballots. Our terribly low voter turnout would immediately improve if everyone could vote where he 23 lives. Furthermore, we demand that the indirect ballot be eliminated. And in most places public voting has become public torture. The second, great, major demand of our political situation is that, in addition to all those issues that pertain to our external lives, we vigorously recognize those issues that are properly cultural and belong to a determined cultural politics. "Man does not live by bread alone." Even less does a people. A people requires training, schools, popular education, welfare work, physical and spiritual hygiene, attention to the various issues of social ethics, and, besides a general education of the intellect, the nurturing and cultivation of the entire spirit and heart of individuals and the nation as a whole. Here we must include questions about the place of religion as the most important and innermost portion of the life of the spirit. People usually suppose that liberal politicians have simply set aside such questions; they shrug their shoulders and ignore them. That supposition is most unjust. Simply recall the name Hardenberg. 24 Indeed, liberalism has its historical roots in great religious movements. I do not subscribe to the slogan, "religion is a private matter". 2 5 Religion is thoroughly and chiefly a matter of the people. For that reason the relations between a people's religion and the state must be rich and deep. It is lamentable to think that the state must maintain neutrality with respect to the loftiest cultural interests of a people's life. That is "Manchester liberalism", which only recognizes the police-function of the state. That is not how we understand the state. We consider it to be a moral institu2 2 Unlike the imperial constitution, the Prussian state constitution still preserved an electoral system that divided the electorate into three groups and assigned greater weight to the votes of those with status and property. On Otto's changing attitudes, see " 8 . Election reform", below. 23 Although women's suffrage was an issue of discussion in more leftist circles, I have been unable to determine Otto's attitude toward it. 2 4 Karl August von Hardenberg (1750-1822), the Prussian statesman who carried on Stein's reforms after Stein's dismissal in 1808. 2 5 After the war, Otto changed his mind. See " 1 8 . The church's mission in a secular society", below.

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tion, one with an established interest in nurturing the inner cultural life of a people, in forming its character, and in protecting the moral and religious life of the community. 26 For that reason, too, I cannot endorse the slogan, "separation of church and state". It is no doubt an important task of liberalism to eliminate encroachments by the church into areas that lie within the jurisdiction of the state. That happened earlier, for example, in the case of schools. But it is equally false to suppose that the state has absolutely no relation to the church whatsoever. In conjunction with its cultural tasks, a state must nurture science and academic freedom, it must introduce science and higher culture across a broad spectrum of its people's life, and it must nurture sociability, that is, a noble enjoyment of life. That, too, is without a doubt a prominent political task. The third great demand of our present political situation is perhaps the most pressing of all: to oppose the reactionary tendencies that are dangerously on the rise in the ultramontane camp 2 7 and among the conservatives, who unfortunately have menacingly allied with them. The whole world is pushing vigorously ahead toward liberal forms, and the spirit of the time touches and shakes everything that has become rigid and inflexible. Everywhere it 28 stretches its wings, and it is so depressing to see how among us it 28 runs into the danger of being shackled. This group presents itself to the voters with the slogan, "a union of the parties of the right". But the Center [Party] is not at all "[a party of the] right". One half of it is radical, and what remains on the right is ultramontane in character. It is to the highest degree lamentable that on the "left" the "red flood" has been swelling powerfully, but the very alliance that overthrew Biilow 29 has brought us the 110 Social Democrats. The danger of

26 In the original, this sentence has one verb too many. I have construed it by ignoring the final ist. 27 As emerges below, Otto has in mind a certain faction within the Center Party, the party of German Catholicism. 28 Otto uses the feminine pronoun sie, so the antecedent of "it" cannot be "spirit" (Geist), which is masculine. The precise antecedent is vague, but "it" could refer to either "time" (Zeit) or freiheitliche Gestaltung, here translated in the plural as "liberal forms". 29 Bernhard, Fürst von Biilow (1849-1929), the chancellor of the German Reich from 1900 to 1909. He was initially supported by an alliance of conservatives and the Center [Party], but later by a peculiar alliance of conservatives and liberals. In 1909, the conservatives, upset with several policy decisions, broke

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ultramontanism is just as great as the danger of socialism. (Applause) At its most essential, ultramontanism is antinational and opposed to what it means to be German. It is opposed to everything that is specifically German, to German thought and German will. Its demagoguery is more dangerous than that of the socialists, because socialism cannot arouse the heart; it cannot invoke the terrors of the conscience, of hell, and of the confessional. (Applause) One must sympathize with (Zusammensein) the "modernist" priests, when they sigh and complain and claim that they would rather adopt a national perspective. Unfortunately, we see that conservatives have only stood feebly against the growing danger. We are simply forced to recognize this danger, and to lament that together the conservatives and the Center have overthrown the man who had driven back clericalism as much as socialism. Thus, the present situation demands of us, in domestic as well as in foreign arenas, a politics that is national because it is liberal, and liberal because it is national. (Vigorous applause). Professor Brandi thanked the speaker for his remarks, then opened the floor to discussion. Professor von Seelhorst30 spoke first and explained that he was a conservative. To his mind, the platform of the Conservative Party was very close to that of the National Liberal Party, and that opinion had not changed as a result of anything Professor Otto had said. There had been no alliance between the conservatives and the Center. The two parties had simply collaborated, the way the Liberals themselves had once done with the Center. If the ultramontanes offered to help the conservatives, why should the conservatives refuse to accept their help? A conservative candidate could have said exactly what Professor Otto said about agriculture, the middle class, craftsmen, and cultural tasks. If he could readily agree with the National Liberals in Göttingen, that was due to the activities of Representative Heine. The National Liberal Party as such had shifted to the left. But he held the Göttingen candidate in the highest regard.

with the liberals, re-allied themselves with the Center, and forced Bülow to resign. 3 0 Konrad von Seelhorst ( 1 8 5 3 - 1 9 3 0 ) , professor of agriculture from 1901 and prorector of the university 1 9 0 8 - 1 9 0 9 .

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Justizrat Eckels: 31 The various parties always talk about entering into alliances that often do not take place. If newspapers had reported that the National Liberals had been offered an alliance with the Freisinnigen 'Free thinkers', 32 we would be dreaming of a block from Bassermann to Bebel. Certain points link us to the Progressives, but there are also differences, as we saw in Hannover, where a fierce fight broke out between the various liberals. Mr. von Kardorff would hardly know of what we dream; we have dreamt neither of Bebel nor of a block. We reject the reproach indignantly; the Social Democrat is our greatest enemy. There is a certain calculation here. It is an attempt to convince people who are not schooled in politics that we have some relationship to the Social Democrats. The parties on the right are looking for help everywhere. The middle class parties are allying themselves with the Bund der Landwirte, the Weifen,33 and the ultramontanes. Professor Otto's remarks have convinced me that he will win. (Applause) Professor Bousset: 34 On behalf of the Progressive People's Party I am privileged to declare my endorsement of the candidacy of Professor Otto. According to the conservatives, it is a cardinal sin to join the Progressives, and in doing so the National Liberals will assume responsibility for the deeds of the Freisinnigen. By the same logic, the Center would have to answer for the deeds of the Social Democrats, with whom they once formed a coalition. But this is "summer logic". From what happened in the electoral districts of Löwenberg, Sprottau-Sagan, Breslau, Greifswalde-Grimmen, and Parchim-Ludwigsluft, it is obvious how much the conservatives needed the help of the Social Democrats. So many examples must point to a hidden system. The speaker declared that by and large he agreed with what Professor Otto said, although he could not 31 Gerhard E.A.H. Eckels ( 1 8 8 4 - 1 9 6 2 ) , son of Justizrat Hermann Eckels ( 1 8 4 7 1 9 0 7 ) . The elderEckels, a National Liberal, was Heine's and Otto's predecessor in the Landtag. He held the seat from Göttingen 1 8 9 2 - 1 8 9 8 and again 1901-1907. 3 2 A left liberal party. See " 5 . Early political involvement", above. 33 The Welf (Eng. Guelph) dynasty, the traditional monarchy in Hannover (and, beginning in 1 7 1 4 , of Great Britain), lost Hannover to the Prussian Hohenzollern in 1 8 6 6 . But the annexation was never officially ratified, and many Hannoverians continued to oppose it. They formed the German-Hannoverian Party, which had nominated Otto's opponent. 3 4 Wilhelm Bousset ( 1 8 6 5 - 1 9 2 0 ) , New Testament scholar and, with Otto, one of the theological leaders of the neo-Friesian revival. In 1 9 1 0 Bousset had presided over the unification of the major left-liberal parties.

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endorse Otto's view on protective tariffs. He would also be in favor of eliminating the tax on animal fodder and abolishing bills of entry. As for voting rights, the tripartition of the wards in primary elections is ridiculous. He could agree with what Professor Otto said about the church and religious policy. The deceased National Liberal Representative Hackelberg (sic)35 rendered great service in these matters, and Professor Otto will fill the hole left by his death. He asked those present to support Professor Otto's candidacy energetically. The Center is more dangerous than the Social Democrats, for the latter are not fundamentally international. If Professor von Seelhorst agrees with Professor Otto's views, then he is a liberal. What it means to be national is self-evident; one does not need constantly to emphasize that, as the conservatives do. He cried: "Liberal burghers arise!" (Applause) Mrs. (Frau Professor) Titius 36 asked about Professor Otto's position toward women's issues. Since Professor Otto is a liberal, she would expect that he supported the efforts and aspirations of women. Among the important women's issues are the protection of women after they have given birth, regulations concerning apartments, and women's schools for continuing education. Women did not seek power, but they did want to know that the personhood of women was taken into account. Rechtsanwalt Stöckmann 3 7 remarked: history demonstrates what conservatives and liberals have accomplished. In constitutional matters there has been a regression. Freedom and scholarship exist in name only. Fichte's Addresses to the German nation (1968) state clearly what it means to be a German people. Dr. Laporte 3 8 expressed his joy that the National Liberal Party had found this man. In the matter of protective tariffs, the Progressives have a 35 Albert Hackenberg (1852-1912), the National Liberal representative from Koblenz 4 (Kreuznach, Simmern, Zell) 1899-1912. A minster in Hottenbach, he was a member of the central executive board of the National Liberal party 1907-1912. 36 Emma Titius (b. 1859), née Brandstaedter, wife of Arthur Titius (1864-1936), then professor of systematic theology at Göttingen. Otto was on friendly personal terms with both Prof, and Mrs. Titius. 37 Wilhelm Stöckmann (b. 1876). Not much is known of him, except that in 1917 he took his wife's last name, Kothe, and moved to Lüneburg. 38 Probably Walther W. K. F. de Laporte (b. 1874), who took a degree in political science from the University of Göttingen and was at the time instructor in the institute for social ethics there. In any event, this Dr. Laporte lived next door to the Titius's in Berlin-Dahlem in the mid-1930s.

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different relationship to the same ground as the National Liberals. 39 He hoped that the various liberal parties would be able to reach agreement once again. About cultural matters Professor Otto was quite correct. He requested that Otto also help in the struggle for student freedom (freie Studentenschaft). The prorector's statute had infringed upon this great principle. Many thanks were owed to Mr. Heine, who was always there for everyone. Professor Bousset once again remarked how in many electoral districts the conservatives had supported Social Democracy by abstaining from the final ballot. Professor Otto explained how the alliance of the conservatives and the Center demonstrated that they were intimately related in spirit. This alliance was also present in our electoral district in the form of the joint candidacy. In reply to Mrs. Titius, he expressed his conviction that women were fit for collaboration [in politics]. When women's issues were expressed in so fine a manner as the speaker had expressed them, one could only agree. He would support the rights that women possessed according to their nature. The final word was spoken by the former representative, Mr. Heine, who was greeted with applause. He thanked the assembly for the recognition that they had given him. When one fulfills an office, he said, one must exercise that office with all of one's strength. Since he was convinced that he could no longer do so, he wished to step down. The grand manner in which Professor Otto has presented his policies demonstrates that the party has made a good choice. Professor Otto will fill the hole left by the deceased representative Hackenberg. Representative von Kardorff said recently that the National Liberals are enemies of agriculture, but Representative von Heydebrand, 40 a member of the same party, has said just the opposite. After touching on the work that now faces the House of Representatives, the speaker criticized the alliance of the right-wing parties in our electoral district. The opposition wears new clothes for 3 9 Perhaps he means that the Progressives have the same concerns as the National Liberals, but they feel these concerns will be met better by other policies. 4 0 Ernst von Heydebrand und der Lasa ( 1 8 5 1 - 1 9 2 4 ) , a member of the Landtag (electoral district Breslau 2 [Militisch, Trebnitz]) from 1 8 8 8 and also of the Reichstag from 1 9 0 3 . From 1 9 0 6 to 1 9 1 8 he led the Conservative delegation in the Prussian House. Although he was unrelated to Wilhelm II, he was known as "the uncrowned king of Prussia".

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each election. First they are Conservatives, then the party of the middle classes; then they are the Economic Union, then Christian Socialists, and now a middle class group with support from the Center and the Weifen. Then they confess that they are Free Conservatives. What a mishmash! Every attempt to defeat the National Liberal Party will necessarily fail. With men of such character as we possess, this district will never elect anything but a National Liberal. It has always been National Liberal, and it will remain National Liberal. It is ready to fight and to work. Do me one more favor, the speaker concluded, and, all of you, help Professor Otto become my successor. I wish for this district all that is best. I know that with Professor Otto it is in the best possible hands. Victory will be ours. A joyous cheer for the National Liberal Party, and a second one for Representative Heine, concluded the assembly at 12:30.

8. Election reform (1918) Representative Otto appears very seldom in the record of the Prussian legislature. On May 2, 1914, he gave a speech (Otto 1914) in support of the Quellen der Religionsgeschichte, the German answer to "The sacred books of the east". He succeeded in procuring from the government 100,000 marks, in annual increments of 10,000 marks beginning in 1915. His only other official statements occurred four years later. On May 2, 1918 he led a group of thirty-eight National Liberals in breaking with the party and supporting the king's proposal to establish universal and equal male suffrage in Prussia. After the war, this group joined with other left-leaning liberals to form the German Democratic Party. Equal male suffrage had been the practice of the Reichstag, the imperial legislature, from its founding in 1866. But the Prussian state preserved a different system, instituted by the constitutional decree of 1850. In this system, representatives in the lower house of the Landtag were elected by all taxpayers. These in turn were divided into three classes, and their votes were weighted in accordance with the amount of tax they paid. Thus, the system benefited the aristocracy and the middle classes at the expense of the workers. As appears from Otto's campaign speech, the Prussian electoral system was the subject of some discussion even before the outbreak of the

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first world war. Indeed, it was a major plank of the Social Democratic platform. In 1917 Otto (1917a, 1917b) had twice added his voice to those publicly calling for a reform of the Prussian electoral procedure. That November Wilhelm II (1917) submitted a bill to the Prussian parliament to grant an equal vote to every male Prussian twenty-five years old or older who had been a citizen for at least three years and who had lived in the community where he would vote for at least one year. 41 The next April a revised bill which reestablished unequal electoral privileges came from committee for consideration by the entire lower house (Kommission 23 1918a). But the war ended and the government collapsed before the bill could be passed. In addition to being found in the legislative reports, Otto's speech in support of the bill was printed, without the exclamations from the floor, in Deutsche Stimmen (Otto 1918). It applies in a particularly interesting manner Otto's language of religious psychology to the political situation of Germany at the end of the war. Source: Speech before the Prussian Legislature, 140th Meeting of the 22nd Legislative Period, Session 3 (May 2, 1 9 1 8 ) , in: Wörtliche Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses, vol. 8 (Berlin: Preußische Verlagsanstalt, 1 9 1 8 ) , cols. 9 4 1 7 - 9 4 2 7 .

Dr. Otto (Göttingen), Representative (National Liberal Party): In the name of thirty-seven members of my party and on their instructions I announce that we have decided to support the government's original draft of the sections under discussion, §§ 1 and 3. 4 2 That is, we are willing to agree to a universal and equal suffrage in Prussia. Permit me briefly to set before you the reasons for our decision. We believe that we are answerable in this matter first to ourselves, second to our party, and third to this high house. We all feel the seriousness of the moment. It is 4 1 There was some discussion in committee of giving women the right to vote, and an amendment to the bill was offered that granted the right to vote to every German, regardless of sex, living in Prussia (Braun et al. 1 9 1 8 ) . As mentioned in the previous chapter, I have been unable to determine Otto's views on this issue. 4 2 §1 granted franchise to every male Prussian twenty-five years old and older. §3 of the original draft stipulated that each voter would have a single vote (Wilhelm II 1 9 1 7 ) . As revised by committee, §3 added an additional vote on several criteria - age, number of children over fourteen years old, net financial worth, income, self-employment, and education - as well as a provision that voting was mandatory (Kommission 2 3 1 9 1 8 a : 5 9 9 7 - 5 9 9 8 ) .

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beyond doubt one of the most serious situations that our party has ever faced. Indeed, the seriousness of the moment requires me, for obvious reasons, completely to forego any polemics. I will be satisfied simply to set before you, briefly and to the point, the most important reasons why we have adopted this position. I will also refrain from dwelling on details, first, because the time is late, second, because I would simply be repeating what previous speakers have said, and third, because I want to respect the request of Vice President Porsch, 43 who properly admonished us to be brief. Inasmuch as I will content myself with setting before you only general points, I will place myself in a somewhat unpleasant position: I will seem to you to be an ideologue. If one must refrain from going into detail, if one is unable to show how one's ideas have been thought out and, gentlemen, fought out in detail and how they apply specifically to the burning questions of the day, one cannot avoid the danger of appearing to be an ideologue or even a dogmatist (Prinzipienreiter). But that cannot be avoided. In the question at hand we are ultimately separated not by details but by ideas and principles. Before I speak about our differences, I want to say a few words about what our party has always agreed on, despite all differences. Despite the profound seriousness of the moment, this consensus gives me great joy and hope. First of all, there is not a single member of our party who was not in favor, both before and during the war, of a vigorous effort to reform the Prussian state. Second, no member of our smaller faction, which for the sake of time I will simply call the "group on the left", fails to recognize the enormous difficulties that are involved in introducing a relatively democratic electoral system to Prussia, even if we now favor doing so. We recognize the difficulties. Along with our colleagues we feel their full weight. We are just as determined as they are to support every possible, practical, and just guarantee of the nation's continued well-being, and every guarantee with historical precedent, as Prussia has a right to demand from each of its representatives, just as it has a right to demand from them a sense of responsibility. Third, we agree with what our respected colleague, Mr. Lohmann, 44 said yesterday on behalf of the 4 3 Felix Porsch ( 1 8 5 3 - 1 9 3 0 ) , Center Party representative from Breslau 8 (Neurode, Glatz, Habelschwert) 1 8 8 4 - 1 9 1 8 , from 1 9 0 3 president of the Center Party delegation and first vice-president of the Prussian House. 4 4 Walter Lohmann (b. 1861), National Liberal representative from Wiesbaden 2 (Dillkreis, Oberwesterwaldkreis) 1 9 0 8 - 1 9 1 3 , then from Wiesbaden 6 (Oberlahnkreis, Usingen) 1 9 1 3 - 1 9 1 8 . He was a member of the central exec-

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other faction of our party: "Prussia will not be destroyed even if there is universal and equal suffrage." In truth, I do not underestimate this common feeling. In our present, difficult situation, it gives me genuine consolation and relief. Now, as I begin to set before you the reasons for our changed position, let me note that each and every member of our "group on the left" finds my first reason compelling and necessary. Larger or smaller numbers of our group assent to my other reasons. In essence, the following five points have decided our views. The first point is one that someone much more qualified than I has already emphatically stressed elsewhere. It is quite simply the fact of the royal proposal (Botschaft), and to be sure, gentlemen, not so much the royal proposal itself as the state of affairs that the royal proposal has created, a state of affairs that is essentially social-psychological - psychological, but not less real for that! It is not at all true - and I probably do not need to defend us against this charge - that we have done an about-face simply because something has been recommended to us or because some authority, even if it is the authority of the king, has told us what to decide. We know our responsibilities as representatives. We know as well as anyone the constitutional foundations of our government. It would provide the utmost in comic delight and entertainment if any of us thought he was limited in his activity by such authoritarian considerations. No, the fact is, we regard ourselves as politicians, that is, as men who calculate facts. But now, after the king's decree, a new fact of the utmost importance presents itself to us: the effect of the royal proposal in the consciousness of our people and especially in their legal consciousness. It has changed the sense that people among the most varied strata and classes have of what their rights are. ("Very good!" among the National Liberals). Here is what the people think, and no one will be able to change their minds: "If the king of Prussia himself, in the face of what may be the largest threat ever to his kingdom, declares that universal and equal suffrage is tolerable, indeed, that it ought to be instituted, then that form of suffrage is right." As you will discover, this is not simply the opinion of the socialists, and it is certainly not simply the opinion of the workers. To be sure, it is held much more enthusiasutive board of the National Liberal Party 1 9 1 2 - 1 9 1 7 , leader of the National Liberal delegation in the Prussian Abgeordnetenhaus 1917-1918, and second vice-president of the Prussian Abgeordnetenhaus 1916-1918.

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tically among those portions of the populace that would benefit directly from it. But it is also quite common and widespread among people who, so far as their personal interests are concerned, would be quite willing not to grant universal suffrage. The royal proposal, I say, has implanted in the legal sensibility of the broadest segments of our population this conviction: "Universal and equal suffrage is actually right." As a result, it has become a factor in the popular conscience, and that, gentlemen, is a fact of the greatest significance for politicians. ("Quite right!" among the National Liberals). Politicians do not practice "politics in general". They practice politics grounded in facts and real relationships, a politics fully cognizant of what is possible and what is not, as that is defined by our people and their psyche. ("Quite right!" among the National Liberals). Along with this goes another, very significant consideration. It could be dangerous not to take account of that first fact. The vast majority of our people have received the royal proposal, with its personal warmth and tone, as if it were the word of the crown, a gift from the throne. If this word should not be fulfilled, loyalty to the monarchy (das monarchische Gefühl) and confidence in the crown would necessarily be shattered. This danger causes us concern, the most arduous concern. To be sure, we are just as concerned as our colleagues on the right are with the Polish question, 45 with the possibility that our communal rights could be overturned, and with other "worry-stones" that we might name. But we maintain that all such concerns are only trifles compared with the threatened shattering of loyalty to the Prussian monarchy. ("Quite right!" among the National Liberals). On January 24, 1882, Bismarck 46 spoke a word of warning in the Reichstag. "If you set aside or destroy this mighty monarchy, whose roots lie centuries deep in our long and glorious history, if you relegate it to some Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, then you will bring us to chaos.'''' It is this sense that impinges on our conscience, that impresses us much more than all those other subordinate concerns that have up until now been expressed. That is especially true since we are convinced that no increase in the number of Polish representatives and no increase in the number of socialist representatives will ultimately 4 5 Presumably the concern, expressed more specifically toward the end of the paragraph, that universal and equal male suffrage would mean an increase in the number of Polish representatives, because Poles would no longer be at a disadvantage in the electoral process. 4 6 Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), the well-known "Iron Chancellor" responsible for the unification of Germany under Prussian rule.

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be able to shatter the foundations of the Prussian state. ("Bravo!" on the left). Now to my second point. Besides the preceding consideration, there is another that most of us find even more compelling. In the course of the war we ourselves have come to experience, acknowledge, and agree with the motives that, we believe and can partly demonstrate, underlie the royal proposal. Those motives include above all, as the royal proposal makes clear, the impression made by the enormous achievements of our people in the war, achievements of all of the people for all of the people. This is a second new fact that perhaps no domestic policy can overlook. It has given domestic policy an entirely new direction. As a result, the year 1914 will be remembered as a watershed in our internal political organization. The reason is this: a people that has arisen, as ours has, as a self-acting, organic totality, and that has become capable of an enormous collective achievement, an achievement by all and for all, such as history has never seen - such a people has inwardly become a completely new and different political entity. It is not enough to say that such a people has a "right" to a new political organization. We should say that such a people will no longer fit into political forms that were designed on the basis of much narrower and more primitive achievements of all for all. Such a people will slough off the earlier forms with the necessity and logic of a natural process. ("Quite right!" on the left). I cannot deny it: it sometimes gives me an eery feeling, when we sit here in our heated exertion to devise paragraphs that will distribute privileges among such a people once again, that will measure out strata and classes and demarcate special political rights. It is as if we have diligently set about cutting a jacket for a child who has long since become a giant. The third point that motivates our decision is the most powerful fact of recent times. It has for a long time been general and universal. Everyone notices it, but not everyone mentions it gladly. I am referring to that general, irresistible, and mysterious social impetus whose ultimate depths cannot be plumbed: the "democratic impulse" of our time. There can be no doubt that respect for this impulse underlies the royal proposal. It is also a powerful motive for our proposed legislation. One speaks of an impulse toward "democracy". I doubt very much whether one can simply adopt this old Greek name for a thoroughly modern cosmic, social, and psychic phenomenon. Is what stands before us, with all its aspirations, really a dèmos in the old Athenian sense of the word or in the sense of the plebs at Rome? Is an organized social stratum that has

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general access to education, general military duties, and political and parliamentary experience, still a dèmos in the old sense of the word? Does that word really apply to a people whose lowest strata have become politically educated, have become aware of political issues and interests through newspapers, lectures, discussion, and debates? Does that word really apply to a stratum that has become deeply imbued with the cultural ideas and ideals of the higher strata? ("Very good!" on the left). Does it make any sense to apply the old Greek word "democracy" to totally modern social forms, forms that the ancients did not know at all, forms that even as recently as the eighteenth century were totally non-existent? But I do not wish to argue about the word. I only wish to make one point: the impulse which is generally called the "democratic·- impulse" is an impulse that arises and bursts forth with the same power and force and thrust as a collective religious instinct. Indeed, what we experience today throughout the entire world as a democratic impulse really has in the history of the world only a single precedent (Parallele): the rise and spread of the great religions with elemental force. And it is respect for this most recent elemental force that motivates the royal proposal. It does not do so in the sense that thereby the crown might "yield" or "submit" to that force, but in the sense that it has, in its wisdom and insight, taken account of that fact. The crown acts on the basis of a double insight. First, it makes no sense to try to rule against the laws of nature. ("Quite right!" on the left). Second, it makes no sense to try to steer the history of a particular land against the prevailing winds of world history. 47 ("Very true!" on the left). I speak of laws of nature, but I understand that we are dealing here with laws governing social-psychic life. The psyche (Psychik) has its "nature", its "regular associations", too. Inviolable and irresistible laws and forces hold sway in this realm, too. Just as in the case of external nature, the laws and forces of the psyche burst forth from the dark depths "when the time is fulfilled" according to the predetermination of fate. In part these laws and forces can be ascribed to specific motivations; in part they can be traced back to general sociological laws; but in part they are completely hidden in the irrational, dark recesses of general social being. When they arise, they are simply there and exercise their effects the way nature itself does. Concerning nature, however, it is true: natura obtemperando vincitur 4 7 The metaphor is mine. Otto's text reads: zweitens in der Einsicht, daß es sinnlos ist, Landesgeschichte zu machen gegen den Sinn der Weltgeschichte.

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[one conquers nature by obeying it]. That person masters nature who recognizes its laws and seeks to govern it on the basis of those laws. What we must attempt to achieve is precisely this kind of mastery, this kind of cultivation; we must attempt to conjoin the "democratic impulse" with all the purest and best moments and possessions of modern national culture. 4 8 And if we do not wish to act in accordance with the nature of things, for example, if we stand in the way of these forces by maintaining an antidemocratic system of plural suffrage, we shall collide head-on with the laws and forces of psychic nature. In that case, we should not be surprised if we are simply run over. ( " Q u i t e right!" on the left). I also said that it makes no sense to attempt to steer the history of a particular land against the prevailing winds of world history. What we are discussing here was a general movement throughout the world long before the war. Long before the war, in fact, long before our time, each individual land had emerged from its isolation. After the war it will be even less possible to make Germany or Prussia an island and say, "We are making Prussian history; we do not care at all about world history!" ( " Q u i t e right!"). A world-historical perspective - the recognition that the history of each people most clearly affects and is affected by what is happening in all of cultured humanity — is still too little impressed upon the general consciousness. Despite every desire for isolation and every attempt to achieve it, all of those powerful global movements will overtake us. If we are not in a position to steer them into appropriate channels at the right time, they will overwhelm us like a violent flood and harm us. I am convinced that this insight, too, underlies the royal proposal. These are the motives that I, at least, and very many of my colleagues see at the heart of the proposal, especially with the impression that the experiences of the war have made upon us. Fourth: I now come, gentleman, to what in my opinion is the deepest meaning of the royal proposal. That meaning is what I would like to call the "German peace", that is, peace within Germany. (Spirited applause among the National Liberals). All of us want a German peace outside our borders: we want a peace that benefits our people. N o w , however, I am convinced - and my colleagues are, too - that we shall acquire nothing that benefits our people or its security, if we do not succeed in obtaining 48

A national democracy: cp. Friedrich N a u m a n n ' s ill-fated a t t e m p t at a national socialism.

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peace within Germany at the same time that we obtain peace with the outside world. ("Quite right!" "Bravo!" among the National Liberals). But what is internal peace? Social reconciliation. Yes, gentleman, what are we really fighting for? The answer is obvious: to have a German people. By that we understand, without any doubt, a single totality, in which each and every individual is in reality a true and proper member of the national community and feels himself 49 to be such. It is a community that in truth forms a unity in and of itself and that will not be burdened any further with those dangerous high explosives that would most certainly threaten us under a system of plural suffrage. If we obtain this noble fruit that derives from peace within Germany, then we may be sure that we will also later obtain every other internal war aim. But if we fail to reach this highest internal war aim, if we do not manage to reconcile the classes within Germany, then we can be certain that we are greatly endangering every other aim and that we are risking once again our national security. ("Quite right!" among the National Liberals). We advocate this German peace first of all because of our ideals, as I have already said. We desire a real nation (Volk) in which the broadest number of people share the same feeling for the German state. At the same time, we advocate this German peace for reasons of practical politics. There can be no doubt: the struggle for our national security will not end when the war ends; at that time it will only really begin. And it will be impossible for us to conduct this struggle if we do not have a united front at home. We must obtain from that broad, large mass of people, who today perhaps stand in irritation apart from the state and its goals and who are embittered against it, we must obtain from them a pledge and would that it were the pledge of the Almighty - that they are willing to participate in the state with conviction and commitment. ("Very good!" among the National Liberals). For this reason we are forced to oppose the motion of our friend and colleague Lohmann [Lohmann et al. 1918b]. We recognize with gratitude the sincere concern that was displayed by the other group of our colleagues when they opposed the position advanced in the government's original draft [Wilhelm II 1917]. I want personally to add that I have always been and still am of the opinion that it would be possible within a system of universal, equal suffrage to allow additional votes, provided such additional votes were made dependent upon universal and equal conditions, ("Quite right!" among the 49 Masculine gender in the original.

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National Liberals), that is, upon conditions and circumstances that were universally and equally attainable. If there were such conditions, and if additional votes were made dependent upon them, it would make no sense, so far as I can see, to claim that such a suffrage would not be universal and equal. If it would lead to peace at home, we might do well to discuss what conditions would be universal and equal in this sense, especially if the royal Prussian government were open to the idea. T h e tragedy o f the moment and of the issue that divides us, however, is just this: we unfortunately cannot concede that L o h m a n n ' s motion provides for such conditions. ( " Q u i t e right!" on the left). We feel most strongly that items (a) through (c) o f his motion generally require membership in the elite strata of our society. 5 0 ( " Q u i t e right!"). If we were to adopt Lohmann's motion, we would without a doubt acquire a system of suffrage that would in essence be weighted toward money and station, even if it were not actually plutocratic. It is impossible to deny that this motion strongly favors the monied classes and the social elite. It would give us a system of suffrage based on class in a way that is at least questionable. But we must especially oppose item (d) of L o h m a n n ' s motion. In many cases item (d) would directly reward inactivity and a lack of ambition. We also cannot agree with those who suggest that there is only a remote danger that employers will be able to misuse item (d) in a very harmful 50 As presented April 29, 1918, Lohmann et al. (1918b) sought to replace the requirements for an additional vote found in the committee's revised draft with the following stipulations: That person receives an additional vote who, after reaching the age of twenty-five (a) has been active for at least a year in agriculture, forestry, fishing, industry, business, trade, or a free profession independently or as a director (leitender Beamter) or some other kind of business leader, or (b) has held or had held for more than ten years (including military service) a full-time position in the service of the empire, state, community, church, or school and has not been dismissed from that position as a result of legal or disciplinary action, or (c) has been or was for more than ten years either a member of a German public corporation or active in the governance of such a corporation, whether professionally or voluntarily, and has not been dismissed from that position as a result of legal or disciplinary action, or (d) has been active in the same firm for more the six years, whether as a salaried employee or as a worker. This motion replaced Lohmann et al. (1918a), in which the length of time specified in item (d) was ten years, not six.

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fashion. ("Quite true!" among the Social Democrats). There is no getting around it. Item (d) makes a second vote dependent upon a condition that at best has very little to do with being able to make a better choice in the elections. In fact, it establishes a condition whose entire purpose is to limit a fundamental right for a large proportion of employees and workers. Without doubt this system of suffrage would become odious as a partial enfranchisement or partial deprivation of rights. For these reasons we continue to favor the position advanced in the government's original draft. Fifth and finally, gentlemen, I must speak a word about the truly royal trust that comes to expression in the proposal. It has impressed us most profoundly, not because it is the command or prescription of an authority, but because it has warmed our hearts, because we are willing in our inmost hearts to share in this trust, even if we should be derided as Utopians 51 as a result. Let me speak briefly about the three meanings of the word " t r u s t " . First, there is "trust" simply in the sense of cold calculation, a trust that as such has nothing to do with ethical qualities or deeds or opinions. For example, I might say that I "trust" a boat, because experience has shown that it will bear my weight. It would be very simple to engage in such cold calculation in the case before us. What does the war prove to be an obvious fact with regard to our people, an evident, psychological fact, subject to cold calculation? What is already present in the people that we do not have to instill? It is their enormous, tenacious, and unyielding instinct toward self-preservation. That instinct is simply given as a fact, and that fact enables us to make a simple calculation: it is impossible for a people that has such an enormous instinct to self-preservation somehow to lose it when it confronts constraints and dangers and threats to its national existence that do not come from outside its borders. W h a t would be needed in the face of such threats would be to broaden the basis of trust, to arouse a sense of mutual communal responsibility and achievement, and to instruct the people about the nature and size of the impending dangers. We can already confirm that this calculation is correct. For example, recall the raging nationalistic, even chauvinistic state of mind that already characterizes a broad cross-section 51

So far as I know, this is the first appearance of a thematic that will become prominent in Otto's work after the war. It correlates with a politics of ideals in contrast with a power politics (Realpolitik) that eventually supplants Otto's earlier concern for cultural as opposed to "political" and economic politics.

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of the English proletariat. This state of mind rests on the insight that the interests of the English proletariat, when properly understood, are closely entwined with England's power and its power politics. It rests, for example, on the clear insight that if England slips, if, say, it is surpassed by its colony India, so that India spins its own cotton, the workers of Lancashire will necessarily go hungry. As a result, Lancashire workers already have an extraordinarily strong interest in assenting most heartily to instincts of national self-preservation and national power. They have forgotten all cosmopolitan utopias, because a proper understanding of their own interests gives them every reason to work for the good of their own people. In addition to such cold, simple calculation, there is a higher sense of the word "trust": cheerful faith in someone else. Such a faith also rests upon the other person's consistently displaying ideal qualities and achievements. Our people give us good reason for this sort of faith: beyond the simple instinct and drive for self-preservation, they have displayed, even in the lowest classes, a wonderful, spontaneous surrender of their personal interests for the great, common good. Such self-surrender demands and begets trust of the highest order. And that trust should and must be the leitmotif of subsequent legislation. But finally, let me speak of trust in the highest sense of the word: that trust which is freely given. This trust trusts solely because it wants to and because it wishes to arouse trust by freely showing trust. This is a royal virtue. It trusts, in order to help others be trustworthy and have the ability to trust. ("Bravo!" on the left and in the center). I understand the king's proposal in terms of this royal virtue of freely given trust. For that reason it is not only the king's proposal but a royal proposal. I do not believe, and I do not want to believe, that the only reason for this proposal is, as some allege, that a weak minister could not bear to lose his office. ("Bravo!" on the left and in the center). One does not issue such a proposal because one has allowed oneself to be swayed by a suggestion or forced. One issues such a proposal only when and because one is, by station and disposition, a king. ("Bravo!" on the left and in the center). These are the general reasons, gentlemen, for the position we have taken. We concede that great difficulties lie in waiting for our plan. We perceive their weight and severity clearly. But we claim that these have been exaggerated, indeed, exaggerated to monstrous proportions. The disasters that some prophesy a democratic system of suffrage will produce are

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all too similar to the kinds of prophecies that always arise when great, internal, political and social reforms are underway. ("Quite right!" on the left and in the center). Compare the prophecies of doom that have arisen today with those that preceded the Stein-Hardenberg reforms 5 2 or the English parliamentary reform of 1832, which was an extremely similar process. Compare them with the introduction of constitutional rule in Prussia. Yes, recall that a man of such capable judgment as Rudolf Haym, 5 3 whose vision was both wide and deep, could prophesy: if Germany adopts a universal and equal suffrage, it will perish. Germany has adopted a universal and equal suffrage, and it has not perished. In fact, it has become a world power. It performs feats that we witness with gratitude and amazement. All of these examples prove how right it is to introduce what the times require and to introduce it expeditiously and without reservations, with sufficient breadth and in the proper manner. If that were done, it would have three effects. It would initiate a process of pacification. It would take the wind out of the sails of the ultras and radicals. It would happen (as we have often experienced in pursuing the liberal demands of our own party) that a concession, given freely and at the right time, will have a conservative effect. ("Quite right!" among the National Liberals). We should make this concession, and we should make it now, for there is still time for us to acquire necessary guarantees that are truly strong and powerful. I have already mentioned the first and most important of these guarantees: a monarchy that is once again anchored powerfully and deeply in the conscience, feeling, and legal consciousness of the people. A second guarantee is a strong government, whose difficult tasks we should not make any more difficult but should alleviate by supporting it now as unanimously as possible. The third guarantee is a broadened sense of responsibility for national needs that will arise if we venture to make the great pledge that the government makes when it speaks in trust. These guarantees are the most important, but there are others. It is particularly important to retain in Prussia the electoral districts that history has established. All of you 52

On Karl vom Stein and Karl August von Hardenberg, see " 7 . Rudolf Otto, National Liberal candidate", nn. 9 and 12, above. 5 3 Rudolf Haym ( 1 8 2 1 - 1 9 0 1 ) , German literary historian and a National Liberal member of the Prussian House of Representatives from 1 8 6 6 . An advocate of cultural liberalism, he co-edited from 1 8 5 8 the revived Preußische Jahrbücher. At issue in Haym's judgment is the German empire, not the kingdom of Prussia.

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know that this by itself compensates for a system that grants plural votes. And you feel certain, as I do, that if we act now, we can retain these districts. But we will in all likelihood lose that possibility if we hesitate too long in doing what we need to do. ("Quite right!" among the National Liberals). Another guarantee is the reorganized House of Lords [cp. Kommission 23 1918b]! The reorganized upper house will not be a weaker participant in the legislative process than it has been up until now but a stronger one. It will be more stable and more stabilizing than ever before because of the numerus clausus.54 That will make it virtually immune to influence, even, unfortunately, to the influence of the crown. There are many other guarantees, but I do not need to rehearse them here: proportional representation, the legal obligation to vote, and perhaps broader national and cultural guarantees, if these should be justified and necessary, and if the government should agree to them. I have come to the end. For the reasons given, we now support the government's original draft. We do not do so with an air of tired resignation, (Enthusiastic "Quite right!" among the National Liberals), or out of a feeling that there is now no other way to resolve the matter. Most of us support the government's original draft because in the course of time we have had an inner experience that disposes us joyfully and freely to agree with the royal proposal, ("Bravo!" among the National Liberals), and joyfully and freely to follow our royal leader. We do so in the unwavering certainty that by our action Prussia's greatness will not be obstructed but advanced. We do so in pride and conscious of our good fortune. For the government itself has now brought forward a proposal that proceeds from and bears the spirit of National Liberalism. This spirit has sustained and defined the origin, history, greatness, and past of our party, and, I have no doubts, it will sustain and define its future as well. (Enthusiastic applause among the National Liberals).

54 In general, a legal restriction on the number of persons who can assume particular positions, for example, the number of persons who can study a particular subject at a university. Although the Prussian king was to appoint members to the Herrenhaus 'House of lords', both the original and revised versions of the bill to reorganize the upper house (Kommission 23 1918b) carefully spelled out the number of persons of various positions who were to be appointed and the minimal qualifications that they were to meet.

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9. A League of Nations is not enough ( 1 9 2 0 , 1 9 2 1 , 1923) As early as 1 9 1 3 , Otto had envisioned the possibility that the religions of the world might join together to work for common moral ends. After the first world war, with the Peace of Versailles and the founding of the League of Nations, from which Germany was excluded, Otto experienced this possibility as an acute need. He proposed the establishment of a Religiöser Menschheitsbund [Religious league of humanity], which would eventually provide a religious equivalent to the League of Nations and the World Court. Only in this way, Otto felt, could the necessary forces be mustered to achieve genuine, lasting peace and moral progress. The organization flourished in the early 1920s and attracted participants from as far away as North America and Japan. At the end of the decade and in the beginning of the 1930s it collaborated with an American foundation, the Church Peace Union, in attempting to work for global peace. Dissolved in 1933, it was revived and reorganized in 1956 by Friedrich Heiler and Karl Küssner and became the German branch of the World Congress of Faiths (Heiler 1961b). Otto's 1913 speech was translated as " A universal religion (?)" in Religious essays (110-120), which also contains his proposal for "An Inter-Religious League" (Religious essays, 150-156). The Otto archives contain a preliminary translation of the second selection below (Otto 1 9 2 1 b ) , but so far as I can tell a final translation has never before been published. Source: (1) "Religiöser Menschheitsbund neben politischem Völkerbund", Die christliche Welt 34, no. 9 (Feb. 26, 1920), cols. 133-135. (2) "Religiöser Menschheitsbund", Deutsche Politik 6, no. 10 (Mar. 5, 1921): 234-238. (3) "Weltgewissen und die Wege dazu", Die Eiche 11 (1923): 88-89.

A Religious League of Humanity besides a political League of Nations I hope that the misery which all nations suffer today will finally teach them what religion and ethics should have taught them long ago: that they do not walk alone. People of every land and nation must constantly bear in mind that they face great collective tasks, and that to accomplish these tasks they need peaceful, brotherly collaboration and cooperation. By themselves, political associations cannot do what is needed, not even the political League of Nations now being organized. Will the League of

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Nations even manage to survive? Will it become anything more than a "limited liability corporation" that actively pursues the special interests of whatever groups temporarily find themselves in power? Instead of furthering the national aims of a few, will it actually help establish justice and work for the betterment of all nations and communities? Let us consider the best possible case. Suppose that the League of Nations makes justice and the betterment of all nations its goals, perhaps not completely but to an increasing extent. Will it by itself be able to attain these goals? We dare not believe that. In and of themselves, institutions, laws, decrees, and negotiations are powerless. They require the continual support of an awakened collective conscience, active interest on the part of the masses, and the will and dedication of the nations concerned. But who is best qualified to nurture a nation's conscience, interest, and will? The communities and organizations whose special duty it is and should be to arouse the conscience and will with respect to serious ethical matters, in other words, the churches - religious groups and communities and their representatives and leaders. Some people have already recognized this. They have made several significant attempts to establish a feeling of commonality among the Christian communities of various countries and to reflect upon their common tasks and work. I have recently received word from the far-sighted and energetic archbishop of Sweden, Dr. Söderblom, 55 that he is in the process of organizing an "ecumenical conference" later this year, indeed, an "ecumenical council". Its goal is to promote a sense of commonality and collaboration among the great church bodies. We wish this endeavor every success, and we hope that much comes from it. But at the same time, our gaze extends farther. Every cultured human being faces the same enormous tasks. To be sure, Christians make up the most significant contingent of cultured humanity, 56 and the unification of Christians was the first to be demanded. But Christianity hardly encompasses all of humanity. Outside its boundaries stand powerful groups of the greatest global significance. In fact, among these groups religious organizations are more important, and their influence is more effective, than is generally the case among Christians. Just think of the enormous masses in the Islamic world. How important these people are for global collaboration, and how much more important they 5 5 N a t h a n S ö d e r b l o m ( 1 8 6 6 - 1 9 3 1 ) . O t t o is referring to events that led to the f o u n d i n g of the World Council of Churches in 1 9 4 8 . 5 6 It is difficult to say whether O t t o is himself endorsing this view, or simply m a k i n g a concession to the views of his p r e s u m e d audience.

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will become! Religious structures pervade the Islamic world, and their leaders exercise great influence from the far east of China to the far west of Africa. Think, too, of the Jews who live among various nations, and of the 300,000,000 Indians. These Indians, part Muslim, part Hindu, have drunk deeply of religion, and their innumerable religious groups and sects powerfully guide and influence them. Think of the Buddhist churches (Kirchen) and Shintö groups that have begun to regain strength in Japan. Several years before the war several Japanese Buddhist bishops had already attempted to make initial contact with western priests and ministers by means of a written statement. They had hoped to initiate collaboration on ethical issues of universal significance. Think of the thousands of Buddhist priests, abbots, and leaders in Indochina and Tibet, China, Mongolia, Manchuria, Siberia and even western Russia. And think, too, of those communities that are independent of organized religion but still aim at nurturing ethical culture in various nations. Is it not possible to bring these groups together and create among them a common will directed toward the moral and practical tasks that all human beings face? Today all religious groups recognize these tasks as their own, at least in theory. And on one occasion, at least, all or almost all of them came together for joint activity, even if it was only fleeting: the Parliament of Religions held in conjunction with the Chicago World's Fair. 57 To be sure, that was not much. Nevertheless, it is not insignificant that at the Parliament of Religions groups which so often sharply oppose one another assembled for once on a common stage. But the present requires action that is much more compelling and urgent than simply putting one's religion on display. For that reason, the attempt in September 1919 to hold a "Conference on Work and Religion" in Browning Hall, London, was much more significant. Representatives from England, America, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Belgium, Italy, Greece, and India came together, representing the most diverse religious groups. Among them were even representatives of Hinduism, for example, Wadia, 5 8 the workers' leader from Madras. The conference addressed in truly ecumenical fashion a universal concern: the relationship between religion and labor.

57 The Parliament took place September 11-18, 1893, in Chicago. For a general introduction, see Seager (1995) and Ziolkowski (1993). 58 Presumably B. P. Wadia, a theosophist who attempted to organize British style labor unions in India.

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What would it mean if perhaps every three years those who represented the consciences of individual nations - the most influential leaders and emissaries of churches all over the world - assembled publicly to discuss issues of universal concern, to display personally their common feeling for all of humanity, and then to take back home a heightened will to create a global community? In time this assembly would develop into a forum that would be completely independent of the struggles and limitations of diplomacy. It could discuss the great issues of the day: issues of public and international morality, social and cultural issues that all nations share, unavoidable clashes between different nations and how to alleviate them, issues of class, gender, and race - all the countless things that must first be driven into people's consciences before they can become international law. The same body would also provide a natural court of appeals for oppressed minorities, classes, and nations. If the League of Nations refused to hear them, the oppressed could address their cries for justice to the world's conscience through this body. A Religious League of Humanity would have very limited powers, but its moral impact could be incredibly powerful. That would be especially true if every church were careful to send its most capable members and most effective leaders [beste Kräfte) as representatives. The Religious League of Humanity Who will rescue the world from the overwhelming universal misery into which we are all sinking deeper and deeper? Signs and wonders from heaven? Heaven only helps those who help themselves. The great hero and genius whom many are expecting to come? What can one person, even the most powerful person, do against something so overwhelming? Politics, science, economics - the collective wisdom of the sages? All these are sterile apart from the one thing most needful. And what is that one thing most needful? For every responsible person from every civilized nation to join together with a strong, unanimous, and united will to master evil through joint action and the pursuit of common goals, by taking responsibility for one another and working systematically for each other's good. The things most needed are a global conscience awakened to collective responsibility, the pressure of a public opinion shaped by collective concerns, a shared feeling and proper understanding that what is in the interest of others is in everyone's own interest as well, and a clear and profound insight, extending as broadly as possible, into the

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present situation, human wretchedness, and the inevitable need for all people to cooperate. Without such a universal public opinion, without such a global conscience and universal feeling, "international l a w " will remain powerless, and every "League of Nations" will be either a wall of paper or a tool that whatever nations happen to be powerful can use to force their will upon the rest. Apart from these most necessary things, all talk of justice between states and of the universal brotherhood of humanity is simply empty talk, faith without works. That, at least, is what everyone feels w h o does not believe blindly in the magical power of paragraphs and statutes. We must ask, who will arouse this public conscience? Who has power over the heart and the will? Who can nurture a collective sense of responsibility? Can the press do it, or associations of politicians, or experts in business or science or international commerce? No, their influence is neither profound enough nor extensive enough. None of them can set in motion the powers that are needed here, the powers of deep-rooted conviction and enduring enthusiasm. None of them acts upon and creates the strength of will that derives from conscience and the feeling of responsibility. There is only one thing that can accomplish this most difficult and important of tasks: religion, with its organizations, education, proclamations, and specially called representatives (Träger) and leaders. That only religion can meet the challenges of the present is true enough in the Christian world, but it is perhaps even more true among those peoples who are not Christian: in the enormous territories of the Islamic world, among the countless millions who belong to the tribes and peoples of India, among the equally numerous Buddhists and Confucians in China and Japan. If one could win the "churches" of the great world religions and their leaders for the cause of the great, common tasks of humanity - ordering relations between nations, classes, races, and genders in accordance with basic human rights; peaceful collaboration instead of war and aggression; reason and orderliness instead of chance and arbitrariness; the pursuit of the good of all instead of the interests of those who are temporarily in power; the deliberate shaping of destiny instead of blindly allowing nature and destiny to take their course - then there would be created, in universal conviction and united opinion, the spiritual soil from which would grow lasting forms of international law and powerful organizations of nations and classes.

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From this recognition a society has been founded "to promote a Religious League of H u m a n i t y " (Religiöser Menschheitsbund, R M B for short). We hope that this R M B will bring together not just individual religious people but the great, organized religions of the world and, so far as is possible, their official representatives and leaders. The goal is not to mix up the religions themselves or to create some sort of "Esperanto religion". T h a t would be senseless, and it would also violate the integrity of individual cultures. Instead, the goal is to address several tasks. 1. To establish a religious and ethical "parliament", made up of official representatives of the various religions. This parliament would convene regularly to discuss publicly and openly the great, burning ethical questions that all h u m a n beings face, t o address demands for justice between peoples and classes, and to p r o m o t e goals for which nations, social strata, and classes should collaborate and cooperate rather than fighting and pursuing their o w n interests to the detriment of others. 2. To spread these ideas and goals within one's o w n community through preaching and education and in this way to create a c o m m o n public opinion and a general feeling of collective responsibility. 3. In this way to create an ethical tribunal that will apply moral pressure in an attempt to influence public opinion on a global scale and to guide the actions of those w h o possess political power. The temporary president of our association is Rudolf O t t o , Professor of Theology, Hainweg 6, M a r b u r g ; its temporary secretary is Dr. [Heinrich] Frick, Instructor in the Study of Religions, Schießhausstraße 131, D a r m s t a d t . As soon as we have a sufficient number of members, we will draft a constitution, elect a president, and adopt by-laws. In the meantime, we invite everyone w h o is interested t o join us, to spread w o r d of our organization, and to make contributions in the a m o u n t of 5 m a r k s a year for individuals, 2 0 marks a year for groups. Reports, inquiries, and contributions should be sent to Dr. Frick. The following brief comments are intended to give a better idea of our plans and to preclude certain misunderstandings. 1. The plan has been proposed by a pair of "Jesus radicals". We k n o w we have supporters in every political party, f r o m the extreme right t o the extreme left. We insist that they all cooperate. 2. We are committed nationalists. We believe that the character of our nationality and of every nationality has been ordained by God. We reject all forms of cosmopolitanism as unnatural and contrary to G o d ' s

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will, and we expect our people and every people to have a national selfconsciousness. 3. Our guiding principle is not "peace - or reconciliation - at any price" but "right and justice at any price", right and justice for nations, classes, and individuals. In addition, we oppose any form of historical materialism that surrenders contemporary history (das Geschehen) to the dark forces of inexorable nature and the alleged inflexibility of blind social laws. We also insist upon a resolute faith in freedom and the ability of a collective conscience, insight, a conscious pursuit of goals, and a shared good will in association with the might of the Eternal, to overcome the forces of nature. 4. Participation in the RMB does not obligate anyone either to support or oppose the League of Nations. But it does require one profound conviction: that a true League of Nations is possible only if it is undergirded by an awakened moral enthusiasm and guided not by the interests of those who are temporarily in power but by a global conscience. 5. It is in the interest of conscientious people everywhere to establish an RMB. It is especially in the interest of those nations, classes, and minorities whose existence, freedom, and rights are threatened by those who are for the moment in power. It is therefore in the interest of our own people [i.e., Germans]. 6. We can only reach our goals if the will of Christian nations and groups is united with the religious conscience of the hundreds of millions of non-Christians in the east. We acknowledge the presence of these peoples and we invite them to work confidently with us. We do not aim to eliminate religious differences or to minimize the disagreements that arise between religions. We recognize that such differences and disagreements are necessary; in all likelihood, they will become stronger, not weaker, in the near future. We most emphatically reject any form of cosmopolitanism in the area of religion as in the area of politics. We maintain our own religion and cherish its claims, at the same time that we allow others to advocate their own religion to the best of their abilities. We consider the propagation and spreading of our own religion to be one of our most sacred duties, and we cannot allow anything to interfere with it. At the same time, we expect the proponents of other religions to do likewise. To these proponents the struggle among religions must look as unavoidable as it does to us. Nevertheless, it is possible for us all to join together to address great, universal ethical issues and to promote the ideas of right and justice that non-Christians, too, work diligently to plant in human hearts.

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Our League is growing in a most gratifying way. It is about to step into the public eye. Whoever wishes to help should communicate with the secretary, Dr. Frick, Schießhausstraße 131, Darmstadt. A global conscience and how to achieve it The following are the basic ideas expressed by Professor Rudolf Otto, Marburg, in his talk at the first general meeting of the Religiöser Menschheitsbund, held in Wilhelmshagen on August 1, 1 9 2 2 . 5 9 1. A "global conscience" is more than simple "public opinion". It is public opinion that rests on a heightened, deepened, and broadened awareness of several items: (a) of the responsibilities and obligations that human beings, classes, and nations have for and to one another; (b) of the binding force of right and justice as the supreme norms governing relations between individuals and communities; and (c) of the great, collective moral tasks that each community and ultimately each and every cultured human being faces, as distinct from the demands of a private, individualistic ethos. A "global conscience" is more than a "will to reconciliation", because in and of itself reconciliation is not an ultimate ideal; it is instead the highest means to achieve an ideal, universal order. Furthermore, a global conscience is more than and different from "pacifism", because peace, too, is not a goal in and of itself; it is subordinate to the higher moral ideal of a just order and distribution. 2. Apart from an awakened and deepened global conscience, every purely pragmatic or utilitarian undertaking on the part of the human community is morally worthless and has no hope of success. A "League of Nations" that is not anchored in a global conscience is not genuine. Any pretend League of Nations is nothing more than an association for promoting the interests of those who happen to be in power. 3. The task of creating a global conscience should fall above all to our religious and moral groups and communities. This task should be reflected in their doctrines, actions, and education. The weakness of our churches and religious communities - the declining interest that growing numbers of people have in them - essentially stems from the fact that 5 9 This was the first and only general meeting of the R M B . Held in conjunction with Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze's Versöhnungsbund 'Reconciliation league', it attracted roughly 9 0 participants (Otto Archives, Religionskundliche Sammlung, Marburg, 1 8 2 0 ) .

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the churches and communities have neglected or even failed to recognize these tasks. Contrary to the Scriptural injunction, " m a k e yourselves s e r v a n t s " , 6 0 they have ignored issues pertaining to the general collective ethos, public morality and immorality, the ideals ordained by G o d for social, political, national, and h u m a n organization and, more generally, for "ethicizing" and rationalizing the course o f nature. If the religious communities, as the "light and s a l t " of the world, do not try to mold a global conscience, they will only hasten and seal their own demise. 4 . With regard to these goals it is possible and necessary for religious communities to associate with one another and cooperate. Christian confessions can preserve their independent faiths and doctrines and still collaborate in m a j o r , collective moral efforts. This demand is nothing new. In many areas they have been doing this for some time. But their activities have overlooked an important fact. Although the injuries to be redressed and the goals to be achieved are " c o s m i c " , that is, universally h u m a n , Christianity constitutes only a portion of humanity. These activities have also overlooked that to an increasing extent non-Christian religious communities have taken stances on the m a j o r collective issues that are similar to those o f Christianity. Those Christians w h o earnestly w a n t to establish the reign of a global conscience and w h o aspire to an increased role for morals in human relations must do the following: they must take the lead and convene an interreligious working group. T h e members o f this group would be drawn from both the world's moral and religious communities and from individuals around the world who are interested in working on behalf o f morals. T h e y would devote themselves to finding ways of creating a global conscience and giving it the required influence.

10. A service to celebrate the fatherland (1925) Before the first world war, O t t o had advanced a realistic foreign policy o f military power and cultural colonialism. After the war, his views changed. H e adhered to an idealistic vision of international cooperation based on religion. But he never favored the fusion o f all religions or the creation of what he called an " E s p e r a n t o religion". Similarly, he always maintained that loyalty to one's own nation was a prerequisite for inter60 Cp. Matthew 20.27, Mark 10.44.

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national cooperation. In celebration of German nationhood, he issued in 1925 an order of worship for a service to celebrate the fatherland. Those interested in comparing this service with Otto's other liturgical proposals should consult "A form of divine service" and "A form for celebrating the Lord's Supper" in Religious essays (53-67). Sources: (1) "Eine Gottesdienstordnung für den Vaterlands-Sonntag", Die christliche Welt 39, nos. 20/21 (May 14, 1925), cols. 433-438. (2) "Nachträgliches zum Vaterlandstage", Die christliche Welt 39, nos. 46/47 (Nov. 19, 1925), col. 1055.

A service for Fatherland-Sunday (Constitution Day) In the Lutheran liturgy "introits" (prayers from the Psalms read responsively by the minister and the congregation) are used as an introduction to the service. I call them "choral prayers", because the congregation prays them in chorus, that is, in unison. Because they enrich and enliven the celebration, choral prayers do not need to be confined to the introduction. Protestant churches in America use them throughout the service in a variety of forms, as noted in our volume Cborgebete.61 In America these choral prayers are sung or chanted only in Anglican churches; otherwise, they are spoken in unison. That manner of recitation is what I actually have in mind for the choral prayers that follow. Where a congregation is unaccustomed to such recitation, a choir may sing them, either antiphonally with the minister (in those congregations where the minister usually chants from the altar) or antiphonally with a singer from the choir itself. In earlier times, such a singer was called a cantor or precentor. In what follows, I call that person a "deacon". In a congregation with two ministers, both could participate in the following liturgy. It distinguishes parts for a "first" and a "second" minister. In congregations where it is customary to sing from the altar, such singing can be done in the following liturgy, both in alternation with speaking and as an occasional transition from singing to speaking. In fact, the singing of "songs" from the altar ought not really to be a true singing but a cantillation, that is, a half-singing, actually a solemn, lightly modulating speech. Where it is not customary to sing from the altar, there should naturally be no chanting in the liturgy that follows. In that case 61 Otto - Mensching (1924). [Otto's note]

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it would be more appropriate for the congregation, too, not to sing but to speak its responses in unison. A sung response to a spoken versicle is a job half done. I. The proclamation of the Word On the wall behind the altar hang the national colors with oak leaves. A wreath of flowers lies on the memorial table for those fallen in the war. On the altar stands the cross. There are three candles to its left and three to its right. The outermost candles on each side are lit, the others as yet unlit. During the first hymn sung by the congregation, the youth, the choir,62 the deacon, and the minister process in, singing. The choir is divided and sits to the right and the left of the altar. The ministers sit to the right in simple choir-chairs. 1. Organ Prelude 2. Congregational Hymn: "A mighty fortress is our God" 3. Choral Prayer {sung antiphonally by the deacon and the choir, or read responsively by the deacon and the congregation) If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.63 Happy is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage. The LORD looks down from heaven; he sees all humankind. From where he sits enthroned he watches all the inhabitants of the earth he who fashions the hearts of them all, and observes all their deeds. A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. 62 In worship services among the puritan Congregationalists in America, choir members wear the same clothing for the celebration: a black mantel with a white surplice. That is not thought to be Catholic but festive. Priestly vestments are Catholic, but festal clothing is not. The spirited young people w h o constitute the choirs in America, the young men and w o m e n in their festal clothing do not look "priestly" or "Catholic" in the least. [Otto's note] 63 Psalm 137.5-6. O t t o follows Martin Luther's translation of the Bible, with minor deviations.

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The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save. Truly the eye of the L O R D is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love. Our soul waits for the LORD; he is our help and shield64 Know that the L O R D is God. It is he that made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.65 The L O R D your God is a merciful God; he will not fail you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them.66 O save your people, and bless your heritage; be their shepherd, and carry them forever 67 (The ministers stand before the altar.) 4. First minister: Kyrie [Lord] Deacon and congregation: eleison [have mercy]. Christe [Christ] eleison. Kyrie eleison. Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to those with whom he is pleased. The Lord be with you. And with your spirit. Let us pray. Eternal king, lord of hosts, you have called our people, too, through your word, that we may be your people and your heritage. We beseech you; allow us to recognize your counsel for our people, to understand its mission (Aufgabe) in the world, and to love our fatherland and our people with a love that is ever true and living, through Christ, your Son, our Lord. Congregation: Amen.

6 4 Psalm 3 3 . 1 2 - 1 8 , 2 0 . 6 5 Psalm 1 0 0 . 3 . (The Luther Bible follows the alternate reading in the New Revised Standard Version.) 6 6 Deuteronomy 4 . 3 1 . 6 7 Psalm 2 8 . 9 .

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5. First Reading

Second

minister:

Hear of the love of one's home and one's own people, as it is written in the first b o o k o f Kings, the eleventh chapter: Hadad fled t o Egypt with some Edomites who were servants of his father . . . . They set out f r o m Midian and came to Paran; they took people with them from Paran and came t o Egypt, to Pharaoh king of Egypt, w h o gave him a house, assigned him an allowance of food, and gave him land. H a d a d found great favor in the sight of Pharaoh, so that he gave him his sister-in-law for a wife . . . . [She] gave birth by him to his son, . . . w h o m [she] weaned in Pharaoh's house; [he] was . . . among the children of Pharaoh. W h e n Hadad heard in Egypt that David slept with his ancestors . . . , [he] said to Pharaoh, " L e t me depart, that I may go to my own c o u n t r y . " But Pharaoh said to him, " W h a t do you lack with me that you now seek to go t o your own c o u n t r y ? " And he said, " [ N o t h i n g . D ] o let me g o . " 6 8 Deacon:

Your w o r d is a lamp t o my feet. Hallelujah!

Choir and Congregation:

And a light to my path.

Hallelujah!69

6. Creed

First minister: Let us confess our faith in the Lord our G o d . We believe in the eternal, living G o d , the lord o f hosts, the king of all peoples and nations. We believe, that he has eternally furnished our people, too, in the person o f Christ Jesus, his son, our Lord, that it might be his o w n people and an instrument of his eternal counsel and will. We believe in the Holy Spirit, G o d ' s living breath {Odern), victoriously rushing in the storm of time, w h o raises the dead, renews the world, gives faith and hope and enkindles the heart to glowing love and voluntary sacrifice and service.

Deacon and Congregation:

Amen. Amen.

68 1 Kings 11.17-22. 69 Psalm 119.105, Hallelujahs added by Otto.

Amen.

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7. Congregational H y m n : 7 0 Ring out, bells. Let the organ resound. Greet our dearest Land with your sounds. Sweetest Mother, we, your sons, raise again our hands to pledge our truth to you. Eternal king, your powerful energy (Werde[n]) calls tribes together out of the darkness. Join them into a blood-band on German soil: What you have bound together, no devil can render asunder. Your wrath blazes. Let it not harm us. Fire merely transmutes iron into steel. Holy through your wrath, holy through your grace, From German blood we are a nation of your choosing. During 7 and 9, the offerings of the congregation are gathered. They are given as a memorial gift to the needy widows and orphans of those from the area who fell in the war. 8. Second Reading ( f r o m the chancel). Romans 1 3 . 1 - 7 : 7 1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. ... up to verse 7: Pay to all what is due them - taxes to w h o m taxes are due, revenue to w h o m revenue is due, honor to w h o m honor is due. Sermon on the value of the nation and the state and on one's duties toward nation, state, and those in authority. Concluding Greeting. Organ Solo, leading to 9. Congregational Hymn: The Lord, gracious and beneficent, loves Zion's gates above all. He makes their bolts strong and firm. He blesses those who live there, and rewards those superabundantly who permit only him to act and govern. How great is his favor; how he endures with patience all who are his own. 70 There seems little point in rendering this or the following hymns (Part 1, no. 9; Part 3, no. 9) into verse. 71 Otto gave the source as Romans 12.1-7.

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II. Pause Second minister (placing on the altar the basin filled with the congregation's offerings): Lord, in your mercy grant these humble gifts for the service of our brothers. Graciously regard those w h o for our sakes have sacrificed their lives: Ν . N. (Here he reads out the names of those fallen in the war.) Greet them with the greeting of your peace and enlighten them with your eternal light. Deacon and Congregation: Amen. The second minister reads the announcements if there are any to be read.

from the

lectern,

III. The adoration 1. Organ Solo (The deacon lights the remaining

altar-candles.)

2. Choral Prayer (read responsively by the deacon and the congregation or, where this is not customary practice, sung antiphonally by the deacon and the choir) God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in our great trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. The city of God with its spring of water, where the holy habitations of the M o s t High are, is glad. God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Come, behold the works of the LORD; see what desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. "Be still, and know that I a m God! I am exalted among the nations, 1 am exalted in the earth."

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is with us; the God of Jacob

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157 refuge.72

In place of the choral prayer may be substituted the first choral piece, with orchestral prelude, from Bach's cantata, "Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild. " (The ministers stand before the altar.) 3. First Minister: The Lord be with you. Deacon and Congregation: And with your spirit. Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is meet and right so to do. It is truly meet and right, proper and salutary, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to you, Holy Lord, Almighty Father, everlasting God, through Christ our Lord. (He gradually changes to speaking.) Especially do we thank you today, that you have allowed us to be members of your German people. You have established the seasons and the boundaries for the nations and have assigned them their tasks, as you have to us, too. We praise you for the dear land that from of old you gave to our fathers and through the centuries have preserved for us, the children; for our noble German language, which binds us together; for everything which up to now you have bestowed upon us; for your deeds and your place of honor among the nations of the earth; for law and right and fairness, which you have desired to inscribe ever deeper on our hearts; for your Holy Word, which you allowed to shine forth from Germany new and pure, through your dear servant, Martin Luther; for the noble arts and sciences, strong heroes and great men, poets and thinkers whom you have sent us. We give you thanks for your gracious guidance as well as for your judgments and your difficult tests. We also give thanks that you have raised us up from the depths of need and, after a long pe72 Psalm 46.1-5, 7-11; vv. 1 and 4 altered to reflect the Luther Bible, which Otto follows verbatim here.

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riod of darkness, have permitted light to shine again. (Changing over again to singing:) Lord, the angels praise your majesty, the authorities worship it, the powers fear it, heaven and all the hosts of heaven, together with the blessed seraphim, praise it with unanimous rejoicing. May we unite our voices with them and worship you saying: Deacon and Congregation: Holy, holy, holy is God the Lord of Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Amen. 4. Second Minister: Let us pray. Extemporaneous prayer. Confession of one's many failings with regard to the nation and one's national duty, of opposition to the new order, and of complicity in social misery and internal dissension. Petitions on behalf of the state and the government, the needy, workers and professionals, and the rebirth (Wiederaufstieg) of the nation. Deacon and congregation: Amen. 5. Choir (responsively with the deacon) Turn, O LORD! How long? Have compassion on your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the LORD our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands O prosper the work of our hands! Amen.73 6. First Minister (kneeling) Yes, Lord, turn again to your people and tarry again in our midst, as in the days of our fathers. We are weary of long sighing, and our hearts yearn for your peace. Open the heavens and descend. O Lord, Holy God, come even now in this hour, we entreat you from our midst, and let our weary souls drink in the light of your countenance. Second Minister: The Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the world keep silence before him. 73

Psalm 9 0 . 1 3 - 1 7 .

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The second minister, choir, and congregation worship. Quiet organ music.

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kneel for silent

t The angelus rings three peels three times. After the last peel, all rise. 7. First Minister: Let us lift up our hearts and pray with one another the Lord's prayer. Ministers and Congregation together: Our Father ... forever and ever. Amen. Choir (repeats the conclusion, singing) For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. 8. First Minister: Let us bless the Lord. Congregation: Thanks be to God forever. Minister: The Benediction. Congregation: Amen. Amen. Amen. 9. Congregational Song (with organ

introduction)74

Germany, Germany above everything above everything in the world if it always sticks together in brotherhood, defensively and offensively. From the Meuse to the Neman, from the Adige to the Baltic75 Germany, Germany above everything above everything in the world. Unity and right and freedom for the German fatherland Let us all strive for these like 74 The Deutschlandlied

("Deutschland,

Deutschland

über alles") of August

Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben (1798-1874). The first verse was adopted as Germany's national anthem on August 11, 1922. The second verse that Otto reproduced (the third verse of the original) was adopted instead of the first by the Federal Republic in 1952. 75 The Meuse (Maas) is a river that originates in France and flows through Belgium and the Netherlands; the Neman (Memel) is a river in Belorus and Lithuania; the Adige is a river in northeast Italy.

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brothers with heart and hand. Unity and right and freedom secure happiness. Bloom in the light of this happiness, bloom, German fatherland!

10. Organ Postlude Addendum concerning Fatherland-Day In number 20/21 of Die christliche Welt (May 14, 1925), we presented a draft of our worship service for the celebration of Fatherland-Sunday or Constitution Day. Perhaps it will interest others how the service was used in a simpler liturgical setting. Pastor B. writes: "I reversed and shortened sections 3 and 4-6 in Part III, because the congregation did not yet seem receptive to this liturgical richness, which in itself is extraordinarily valuable." Because the practice of having the congregation recite a prayer from the Psalms has unfortunately been lost, the "choral prayers" had to be recited by the minister alone. He organized the service as follows: after the prelude and choral song came the congregational hymn, "A mighty fortress is our God"; then an entrance psalm as an "introit", with a response from the congregation; then the printed collect as an "opening prayer", followed by our psalm of aspiration as a scripture reading; then came the printed confession, then the printed hymn, "Ring out, you bells" and a sermon on Romans 13.8. For the adoration he had a prayer that related to the sermon, then went into the petitions for fatherland and nation. After that came the silent worship, followed by the Lord's Prayer. The service ended with the benediction. With my consent, Pastor B. filled out the hymn, "Ring out, you bells" somewhat, so that the congregation could sing it to the tune of "Einer ist König, Immanuel sieget", which they knew. . 76 Because the congregation was not yet familiar with Stephani's tune, 77 this expedient was certainly appropriate. But as the tune becomes more familiar, the text should not be separated from it. 7 6 Otto gives the fuller version; those interested may consult the original. 7 7 Hermann Stephani (b. 1877), from 1 9 2 1 University music director at Marburg, and from 1 9 2 7 professor of music.

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We should also revive the psalm once again in its natural form, that of a responsive prayer in which the congregation itself takes part either by speaking or by singing. Someone has kindly sent me the order of worship used by the evangelical congregation in Paderborn. What is possible there and in Minden-Ravensbergschen and accords with holy usage ought to be possible in other places, too.

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Although Otto is best known for his scholarship, several essays have never been available in English. The first two essays translated here help situate Otto within his traditions. The former clarifies how Otto conceived of the institution within which he spent all of his adult life, the German university. The latter locates Otto's central idea, the idea of the numinous, in a religious movement with which he at times expressed affinity, Lutheran Pietism. The second two essays illustrate some of the breadth of Otto's interests. Otto is already well-known as an interpreter, some would say a misinterpreter, of Hinduism. An essay translated here shows how he tried to apply his ideas to Zen Buddhism and Islam. In addition, ever since his world tour of 1911-1912 Otto had taken an interest in the movement for Indian independence. He was perhaps most familiar with Rabindranath Tagore. He dedicated a book to Tagore, publicly invoked his name, 1 and acted as an interpreter for him during a visit to Marburg. But Otto also had a more than casual interest in Mohandas Gandhi. Despite the disavowal of politics at the beginning of the essay on Gandhi translated here, the essay adds a socio-political flavor to Otto's study of religions, and especially his work on Hinduism.

11. The idea of the modern university (1927) Otto's career came to a climax when he was appointed in 1917 to succeed Wilhelm Herrmann as professor of systematic theology at the PhilippsUniversität Marburg. "Philip's University", the first newly founded Protestant university, was established during the Reformation by Philip, Landgrave of Hesse (1504-1567). It opened its doors on July 1, 1527. In 1927 it celebrated its 400th anniversary. During the festivities, Otto, then dean of the theological faculty, gave an address that set forth both 1

Otto dedicated Otto (1917c) to Tagore. In addition, he used Tagore's name in several titles: "Aus Rabindranath Thakkurs väterlicher Religion" (Otto 1922a), " Z u m Verständnis von Rabindranath Tagore: Ein Stück altindischer Theologie" (Otto 1928-1929), " 'Meine Religion' von Rabindranath Tagore" (Otto 1931b), and Rabindranath Tagore's Bekenntnis (Otto 1931c).

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his ideas about the history of the German university since the reforms of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) and his ideals of what a university should be. The address is crucial for developing a sophisticated image of the interrelations between Otto's many public activities and his academic pursuits. In it, Otto champions a university that pursues "disinterested" knowledge, that is, knowledge whose value does not derive from any direct, practical utility. But the pursuit of disinterested knowledge intersects with Otto's public activities in several ways. First, Otto clearly does not see this knowledge as useless. ( Wertfrei is not wertlos.) As the vehicle of Bildung 'cultivation' it is good for both the individual and the state. Second, the self-proclaimed utopianism that characterized Otto's ideal of the university also characterized his public pursuits after the war, especially the Religiöser Menschheitsbund. This utopianism provided an explicit alternative to Realpolitik 'political realism'. It also provided, as a politics of ideas and ideals, an alternative to the politics of power. Third, the German phrase for "disinterested scholarship" or, as I have preferred to translate it, "pure scholarship" (as opposed to applied scholarship) has political overtones that English equivalents lack. Otto actually spoke of "free" scholarship (freie Wissenschaft), and this adjective distinctly recalls the traditions of German liberalism. In the years that Otto extols here, the early decades of the nineteenth century, the reformed German universities were hotbeds of agitation for Freiheit 'freedom'. 2 And in his younger days Otto, along with fellow neo-Friesians Leonard Nelson and Wilhelm Bousset, sparked unrest in a massive assembly of Göttingen students by asking the provocative question: "Is it still possible to arouse the old spirit of freedom once again in German students?" 3 Source: Sinn und Aufgabe moderner Universität: Rede zur vierhundertjährigen Jubelfeier der Philippina zu Marburg. Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1927.

2

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Otto's earlier philosophical guide, Jakob Friedrich Fries, lost his teaching position permanently due to his open advocacy of individual liberty and political equality, especially in an address he gave before students rallying for liberal causes at the Wartburg on October 18, 1817. See the remarks on the Akademischer Freibund in the introduction to " 5 . Early political involvement", above.

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Ave, Mater, Alma, Amata [Greetings, dear and beloved mother] Avete Sodales, Amici [Greetings, colleagues and friends]. The fourth century of our university is setting into the sea of the past. The fifth is rising, dark and uncertain. We are here to celebrate the moment that both separates the centuries and at the same time binds them together. May it be for us and for our friends a time of celebration. May we be still before the One in whose eyes a thousand ages are as the passing of a night and for whom the centuries are only, so to speak, the pulse of eternity. We are gathered not to chat idly about the passage of time but in a spirit of celebration to do what such a moment necessarily demands of us. What does it demand? Two things. First and without doubt, it demands our thanks. Thanks to a kind destiny that has led our institution through the storms and changes of time and has allowed it to grow from modest beginnings into a modern university, a rich bloom in the crown of its sister institutions. Thanks, too, to this our dear city, our beloved home; may God bless it today and always. Thanks to those past and present whose efforts have made the name of Marburg renowned in our fatherland and around the world. Thanks to all friends and benefactors of our university. And a special thanks to those whose efforts are responsible for the beautiful and dignified celebration that we enjoy today. But the present moment demands more from us than thanks. It is a moment of celebration, and to celebrate means above all to remain still and reflect, to reflect on oneself. Just as one becomes still on one's birthday or on some other anniversary and reflects, "What am I? What have I become? What should I be? What should I become?" so it is fitting for us today to remain still and reflect. What are we? What should we be? With what purpose do we enter the new century? What is the meaning and purpose of our university? The pages commissioned for this celebration from our colleagues Hermelink and Kahler (1927) tell how we have arrived at the present. Founded 400 years ago in a fateful era as the college (Hochschule) of a small territory, our Philippina was increasingly limited by the demands of the church, the state, and the lower schools. But in the course of the last century, and especially after the great turning point of 1866, it laid aside its initial narrowness. As have the other modern German universities, it has continually grown greater. Distinguished and successful, it

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steps proudly into the new century. Only by taking a broad, general perspective like this can we grasp in all seriousness our university's present purpose. True, our university has acquired distinction through the particular activities and achievements of its members. Indeed, in at least two areas of study members of our university have established research and educational programs that will be known for decades in the history of ideas as "Marburg schools". The first is the philosophical school of "Marburg neo-Kantianism", which was anticipated by Friedrich Albert Lange [1828-1875], then developed by Hermann Cohen [1842-1918] and Paul Natorp [1854-1924]. The second is the school of "Marburg theology", which received its distinctive stamp from Wilhelm Herrmann [1846-1922], But thinkers and accomplishments such as these are gifts of fate; they cannot be cultivated but simply appear and disappear. Furthermore, the time is long past when major approaches in thought and research will be identified with or limited to specific places for extended periods of time. We cannot fulfill the purpose of our university by cultivating local specialties, but only by realizing and maintaining the ideal of the modern university as fully and as vigorously as possible. What is that ideal? It is intimately connected with a new ideal of the university that arose a century ago. That new ideal, which developed throughout the last century, was a conscious attempt to leave behind the institutions of earlier times. It will forever redound to Prussia's glory that this new ideal was born on its soil at a most fateful and difficult time, and that it found its first expression in the newly founded University of Berlin. Today this ideal enlightens German universities from Freiburg to Königsberg as well as our sister-institutions in Vienna, Graz, and Innsbruck. Born when German idealism was young, it was given shape by von Humboldt and Fichte, [F.W.J, von] Schelling [1775-1854], Schleiermacher, Steffens, 4 and their followers. First let us consider the meaning of this new ideal of the university. Then let us consider its development. Finally let us consider what continues to link us most closely with that original ideal today. 4

Presumably Henrich Steffens (1773-1845), a natural scientist and philosopher influenced especially by Schelling, but also by J. W. von Goethe (1749-1832), the brothers August Wilhelm (1767-1845) and Friedrich von Schlegel (17721829), and Schleiermacher. He taught at Halle (1804-1811), Breslau (18111832), and from 1832 on at Berlin.

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I. The new ideal The fathers of the modern German university disagreed with one another on a number of points. Nevertheless, their ideas revolved around a single conceptual center that we can characterize as follows. 1. What is most characteristic of this new ideal is what realists and Realpolitiker would call - and have frequently called - its Utopian character. This utopianism is seen quite clearly in the situation in which these men advocated the founding of a university and dared to make their idea a reality. Prussia was defeated and divided. Its national existence was itself in question. Its coffers were empty, its revenues exhausted. The most basic needs of life were pressing on all sides. "Should one not economize wherever possible? Should one not - at least in such straightened circumstances - direct all one's abilities, interests, and intelligence to 'real' things and to the political requirements of national life?" That was what the realists asked. "No, one should not", the "Utopians" replied. "Especially now, in the present situation, one should not do so, and for the sake of the fatherland one should not do so. One should found a university." "If we really do create new schools and institutions of higher learning", the realists countered, "we should not expand such long outdated relics of the middle ages as universities. Let us create not educational institutions that are luxuries but schools that have a purpose and teach useful fields: industrial and craft schools, elementary schools oriented to practical education and graduated according to profession and class, specialized schools for training in the higher professions, schools for doctors, teachers, ministers, lawyers, and statesmen. All these schools would be of great benefit to the common good. They would provide farmers and craftsmen, businessmen and gentlemen with the practical knowledge appropriate to their stations, and they would foster a calm, blessed, and honorable life under the protection of the authorities." "No, one should not do that", replied the Utopians. "One should found a university, not as a school that fulfills the aims of particular stations in life but as a school for the nation, a school whose students will no longer recognize 'stations'." As Schelling said, "In academia nothing should count but scholarship, and the only differences should be differences that derive from talent and cultivation." One should create a university whose ultimate ideal is not the pursuit of "useful information" or even the idea of "information" (Kenntnisse [in quotes]) and its transmission but a much higher and quite different idea: the idea of Bildung 'cultiva-

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tion' not as a means to some other end but as an end in itself, an idea which rests upon the ideas of knowledge (Wissen) itself and pure (freie) scholarship. Indeed, the utopia was even grander. In the views of these men, more than the university should be governed by the idea of scholarly cultivation and cultivating knowledge as cultural ends in and of themselves. As Fichte demanded in his passionate Addresses to the German nation (1807-1808; Eng. trans. 1968), the entire German national educational system (Bildung) should seize upon this ideal and be enlightened and inspired (idealisiert) by it. Even the "elementary schools" should be removed from the realm of "useful information" pure and simple and at the very least approach the ideal of Bildung understood as the cultivation of a free, elevated humanity. What these men demanded was "cultivating knowledge" as the new, independent cultural value for all educated human beings, along with the ideal of "scholars" as the particular, elevated ideal for academics. Those who made these demands were precisely those among whom the new feeling of German nationality was most strongly awakened. The academy which they created was the incubator and nursery for this national feeling. And yet, the university was in their view no "League of Virtues" that directly promoted the national interest or delivered a nationalistic curriculum. These men did not discuss what direct, immediately useful service the university could provide to the state at the time. They dared instead to inquire into the meaning of academic life. They sought a unique, independent, non-utilitarian value that was characteristic of intellectual life, pursued for its own sake, and which they wished to secure for their people. And despite pressure from the strongest and most compelling material interests, they dared to seek a pure, intellectual ideal that was entirely divorced from every purely material interest. They did so in the conviction that it is always the mind (Geist) that constructs the body for itself, and that a body, even the body of a nation, is worth nothing, unless it is animated by the mind. In the present situation we might well be tempted to relegate the topic of the meaning of the university to a doctoral dissertation and spend our time considering another question: Whatever the university might mean, what service can and should it offer directly to the state in the present circumstances? It seems to me that there are three extremely important contributions the universities can make. If we wanted to, we could speak about each one for a long time.

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The first contribution, in addition to the inevitable production of knowledge, is to nurture the ability to think rigorously, sensibly, and clearly, an ability that we need today more than ever. We need rigorous, disciplined thinking that opposes extremism and fantasizing and fosters intellectual health. And we need it so that without distraction we may recognize what must be done and pursue what can be done in our difficult situation. The second contribution is to identify with scholarly precision the great, compelling historical necessities that are creating a new world all around us, and to acquire the courage and acceptance needed to adjust to this world. That should be held up as a model for our entire race. The third contribution is to take seriously our forefathers' ideal of a civitas académica [academic community]. That includes the idea of a new social unity, in which social distinctions based on station and birth as well as differences that derive from customs and monetary possessions will disappear in favor of a duty that is common to all. To my mind, this is by far the greatest task of a civitas académica, a task that is truly national. And all talk of the national significance of our institutions of higher learning is empty, if it does not understand this task, if it has not adopted it as its model and thereby begun to realize it in the nation as a whole. It is tempting to discuss each of these contributions in more detail. But let us instead be bold enough here to ask, as our intellectual forefathers did, what the university itself means. And let us do so in the recognition that the three contributions just mentioned derive directly from that idea. Despite the objections of the so-called realists, our forefathers were not Utopians. The university that they constituted rests on the natural foundations of an institution which creates knowledge that is necessary and practical. This knowledge is practical in the sense that it meets the material and ideal needs of a cultured people and prepares students for specific occupations that are essential in a national community. But on top of this foundation they placed a specific, unique idea. Stated objectively, this is the idea of pure intellectual cultivation, recognized as an intellectual value in and of itself, in conjunction with the ideas of knowledge and scholarship. Stated subjectively, it is the development and maturation of a particular type of person, the type that we call "scholars" (;wissenschaftliche Menschen [in quotes]). 2. Among our forefathers this ideal derived two traits from its context. One pertained to content, the other to purpose.

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Fichte's "theory of science", 5 Schelling's (1803; Eng. trans. 1966) program for the university, and Fichte's Addresses to the German nation (1807-1808; Eng. trans. 1968) developed the then new idea of "scholarship" very stridently but very clearly. In a number of repeated attempts, Fichte expounded this idea with the self-consciousness of a reformer, indeed, of a prophet, and he compelled an entire age to acknowledge its sway. In the almost religious pathos with which this idea emerges and the devotion and excitement with which the young embraced it, one detects its content. It is, I might say, a secularized religious idea that still preserves distinct connections with the old, mystical heritage. It is a religious idea in that the real content of this "knowledge" is knowledge of the absolute itself, which metaphysical speculation believes it is able to attain by bold leaps. In its very soul this "knowledge" is high metaphysics, and at the same time it is not only knowledge about metaphysics but a strong, passionate living and acting within it. This is the source of the priestly character of Fichte's person (Auftreten) and pronouncements. From this, too, derives the almost sacerdotal character that he ascribes to the "state of being learned". As a result, his "knowledge" is not what the term "knowledge" evokes for us today: slow, laborious progress, from a number of different angles, within a full range of subject areas that have already been defined. It is something much more primary and immediate, something a priori; it precedes comprehension and is grasped by intellectual contemplation or gifted intuition. A law unto itself, it provides the point of departure for all constructions and it defines the place and task of all specific knowledge. In accordance with its own a priori principles, it constructs the new university as its visible body. In addition to this context, the new ideal also contained its own particular purpose. This was defined especially by von Humboldt: the idea of humanitas 'humanity' inherited from the time of [J. G. von] Herder [1744-1803] and deepened and colored by Classicism and Romanticism. We demand that scholarship be free of goals. Nevertheless, it retains one last, intimate goal. One knows in order to shape oneself, through the possession of knowledge, in the image of free and elevated humanity, in the image of humanitas. Here, too, we can detect a "secularized religious idea". The ontological predicates with which it is associated, universality 5

Wissenschaftslehre 'theory of science' was Fichte's general designation for epistemology and metaphysics combined. The first two of his many works on the subject appeared in 1 7 9 4 (Fichte 1 7 9 4 [1969]). Otto seems not to have had a specific text by Fichte in mind.

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and totality, reveal its origin in mysticism. According to an incorrect etymology, the name "university" (Universität) itself appeared to signify a cultivation that aimed at universality ( Universalität). The aim is expressly linked with the old mystical notion that the human being is a microcosm which should collect in itself and reflect the fullness and richness of the macrocosm. In opposition to narrow-mindedness and philistinism, the two most favored pejoratives of the time, the task of true academic cultivation and of the civis academicus [citizen of the academic community, academic citizen] was to transcend the limiting partiality given by place, situation, and vocation and grasp the ideal totality, the universe itself, which, as Schleiermacher demanded in 1799, one should intuit, feel, and lovingly appropriate and imitate. Let me summarize: atop the natural and self-evident foundations of the schooling needed for one's occupation there arose the ideal of the new German university. Its task was to discover and create pure knowledge, and to conquer the universe by knowledge of its most remote and hidden points and thereby make it the independent store of values for the liberated, universal, and elevated life of the mind. Its aim was not to fashion docile students but to realize the type of the scholar, the person who recognizes the meaning and value of autonomous knowledge and as a result participates in the work of discovering knowledge for himself. Our forefathers demanded both of these things in a time of severe national distress: they were convinced that in their independence and inner freedom both the objective value and persons who cultivated it were indispensable to a nation that lives and should live on the basis of the mind.

II. Transformation Great intellectual changes separate us and our time from the period of origin that I have just been discussing. In fact, if our founding fathers would return today, they would not easily fit in with the style and methods of today's university. Have the changes been so profound that the university has now taken on a different meaning altogether, as some think? Does the university really have no single meaning anymore at all, as others think? Is the university really simply a historically conditioned, more or less arbitrary juxtaposition of disparate elements, whose sum lacks any unifying characteristic?

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Or does the university remain still today a living, meaningful unity? Is it possible to perceive its essential features and speak intelligently about them? I think the answer to the last two questions is "Yes". In my judgment, when the German university developed beyond its initial beginnings, it did not abandon the original idea and impulse but fulfilled them in significant ways. And I think, too, that this development establishes the direction we should follow to enter confidently into our university's next century. The first few decades of the nineteenth century are known as the age of "idealism". They were followed by a second age, during which a profound transformation of all intellectual life took place. There can be no doubt that this general transformation influenced the spirit and attitude of our universities. It marked a turning point, at which the universities left behind the speculative, high-flown idealism, spiritualism, and aestheticism of the first decades of the nineteenth century and embraced a sober realism and empiricism. This turn paralleled, affected, and was affected by general cultural movements of the time: industrialization, mechanization, and a precipitous capitalism. Critics reviled the changes as a loss of soul, a "bourgeoisation" and technicization of the life of the mind. The mind, some said, had sold itself to its own tools. Its life had dried up. A pure, free will to knowledge, genuine scholarship, and the living, full humanity of the "complete person" had been replaced by specializations and specialists, compartmentalized knowledge, and a mindless, technical pursuit of atomized, individual concerns. The earlier, fluid stream of hot lava had cooled and hardened into rock. It had become stiff and brittle, splitting and cracking into an increasing number of separate blocks, splinters, and pieces. The reaction to this development began gently but has become at times almost revolutionary. It marks the third period, in which we ourselves now live. The cry has gone up for the mind to live once again and for scholars to cultivate new, broad, and unprecedented intellectual virtues. This period calls scholars to throw off the chains of strict method. It demands immediate experience, intuition, and insight. It also demands a new expression of a presumed new feeling for life, for humanity, and for the world. As a result, it advances a passionate critique of the pedagogy, cultivation, schools, and universities that we have had up until now. The second period condemned the first as a time of fruitless construction and lofty speculation devoid of reality. The third has condemned

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the second still more harshly as a chaining and killing of the élan vital, immediate life and experience. 6 Again today people have arisen who criticize and reject this latest turn. We, however, want to claim with Ranke 7 and with J a k o b Friedrich Fries that each period stands equally close to God and each has its own meaning. And we want to recognize that the university has adopted elements from all three periods that have, in combination, lasting value. Whatever sins the era of mechanization, capitalism, and industrialization may have committed, it made two positive, original contributions. First, it made methodical work more intense. Second, it created a heightened, sober sense of reality. True, the guiding impulse of this period was the desire for profit. As that impulse grew, it eventually resulted in a distinct hostility to questions of ultimate purpose and meaning. Nevertheless, the period did awaken the impulse to work intensely and indefatigably, an impulse that earlier times lacked. And although its field of vision remained narrow, it nevertheless forced us to confront the fait brutal [brute fact], to grasp and master concrete reality. How could we overlook that it was this period which impressed these traits upon our universities? How could we not recognize in them a new, lasting moment of value? Whatever else they may be, modern universities must become, to a degree that far surpasses their predecessors, institutions of strict, methodical, austere, hard work on the part of both individuals and groups. To be sure, we do this work simply for its own sake (aus freiem Interesse) and with an autonomous, deliberate regard for the object of work. But it is still work as austere and untiring service, and beyond a doubt " w o r k " with the especially heavy accent and inflection that the word bears today. In fact, the charming figures of universal men like von Humboldt and his contemporaries are found less frequently in universities today than in earlier times. We have become workers; 8 in fact, we work very hard. But I think that we will remain hard workers, because that is what the object of study demands of us. This is what the "realism" that characterized the second period of the modern German university was about. It has in fact returned in the real6 7 8

Note the word play in German: des Lebens und Erlebens. Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) is still well-known as the historian who wanted to recover the past wie es eigentlich gewesen [ist] [as it really was]. In German, Arbeiter has a distinct social resonance. It refers to laborers as opposed to members of either the nobility or the bourgeoisie. Traditionally, university professors belonged to the grand bourgeoisie.

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ism of contemporary universities. The meaning of this realism is distorted when it is characterized as an enslavement to things, as an obsession with things or objects (als Verdinglichung oder Versachlichung). It is not an obsession with objects but a legitimate, heightened "objectivity" (Sachlichkeit [in quotes]). That sense does not entail any loss of value; it is a high value in and of itself. We call it a respect or reverence for the object. Before we speculate about an object or assign it a place in our system, it is simply there. It presents itself to us and asks us to conceive of it in the breadth and depth and fullness of its reality and inner laws. This change of attitude appears in our feeling for language. If we were required today to specify what the leading idea for academic work is, we would probably not reply with Fichte's idea of pure "knowledge" but with the idea of pure "research". By "research" we do not mean an unrefined empiricism but an idealism that is at heart related to the older idealism. Today "research" clearly denotes something different from what [Gotthold Ephraim] Lessing [1729-1781] meant in his famous prayer. 9 It includes Lessing's feeling that the search for knowledge never comes to an end as well as his aversion to the prefabricated knowledge dispensed by schools, but it also denotes what I have called "respect for the object". This new objectivity, I concede, is certainly related to great innovations in material (äußere) culture in which our people, too, has taken part. But to a much greater extent it is related to a different fact that arose completely apart from material conditions and influences, purely on its own. I have in mind the immense and in many fields almost explosive expansion of the object of study, increasing specialization within each field, and the much greater approximation of the object itself. Expansion and specialization have resulted from the powerful, independent penetration and emergence of ever new material and areas of study within the natural sciences, history, and the social sciences. The increasing approximation of the object has resulted from continual improvements in research practice, a greater clarification of what researchers see, and better methods and tools. The object of study has grown to enormous proportions and impinges much more closely on our own physicality. It stands before us and asks us to "explore" it. That experience does not raise questions 9

"If God were to offer me in his right hand complete truth and in his left merely the impulse always to seek truth, with the additional proviso that I would always and forever make mistakes, and say, 'Choose,' I would humbly take the left hand, saying, 'Father, give [me this one]. Pure truth is for you alone.'" (Lessing 1798 [1897]: 24).

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about our needs for personal cultivation, about our own humanity or universality, or about our personal fitness. Instead, it presents itself to us as a task. Through its problematic nature and its abundance, it entices us to forget our own precious selves and give ourselves over to an interest in objects. Furthermore, this experience does not at all raise questions about the "idea of knowledge in general", about a "transcendental perspective" or "most fundamental principle" from which it can be mastered or constructed completely a priori. Instead, broad and stubborn, it presents itself to us as a pure datum entwined with multiplicity and possessing its own peculiar law, its various elements linked only tensely and tenuously. Every time we answer one question, it raises two more. And it almost threatens to destroy the fundamental premise that all earlier scholarship had preserved as a self-evident axiom from the old, religiously based metaphysics: the idea of the universe itself, of the All united within itself, unitary and all-encompassing. III. Unity in transformation Indeed, a powerful transformation has taken place over the last few decades. Nevertheless, we claim that despite all changes, in fact, within them, an inner unity remains. 1. That is true first of all of the basic idea itself, the idea of " p u r e scholarship" as an intellectual value. As a value in and of itself, this scholarship is free from the imposition of any foreign purposes. It is probably true that today what I have called the natural foundation of every university emphasizes much more strongly the practical interests of knowledge. In a thousand different ways knowledge that has been acquired is useful and consequential in public and private life, in public welfare and economics, in politics and technology. But we will progress a thousandfold, provided we seek knowledge that partisans of pragmatic utility will always misunderstand as "intellectual luxury". We do not measure the distances to stars in order to make a profit. We do not study geography in order to plant colonies around the world. And we do not ponder the intricacies of set theory in order to provide our bankers with better methods of calculation. We pursue these objects out of a desire and duty to master them intellectually. As our forefathers did, we pursue them because they should be known and because there should be such a thing as scholarship.

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In addition, and this also links us with our forefathers, we, too, demand the "freedom of scholarship" which was inseparable from the new idea of scholarship and became a new shibboleth for a new age. It differs perceptibly from the earlier shibboleth of the age of Enlightenment, the demand for libre examen [free inquiry]. Libre examen, the freedom to perform one's own tests and come to one's own conclusions, was in its day a "human right". It arose from the demand for an autonomous conscience, free to make decisions for itself. This conscience assumed the right and duty to be responsible for itself and for the individual; in doing so, it rebelled against the patronage of authority, tradition, and heteronomy. "Freedom of scholarship", however, demands something different. On the basis of and on behalf of the very idea of new knowledge, it demands that knowledge must follow its own laws, if it is to count as knowledge. Knowledge has goals that cannot be established for it from the outside. It also has value in and of itself and does not derive value from something outside of itself. 2. Second, we have said that within our forefathers' initial idea of knowledge what I called a religious idea lay hidden, an idea that glowed within the idea of knowledge and gave it its peculiar power over the human heart (Gemiite). But does not the religious idea glow in what we have called the new realism, too, insofar as it has respect for the thing? Does there not glow in the peculiar devotion of the researcher to the object of study, in the will to know what is truly real, without any consideration of usefulness or practical application, a moment related to religion that is totally unconscious but nonetheless powerful? Strangely enough, it was a theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, who prophesied to the circle of young idealists in his speeches On religion (1958) that an age of realism was coming. If anywhere, this realism has appeared in the theological school known as the Marburg theology. "Religion is the defenseless expression of individual experience" - that is what Wilhelm Herrmann said. His view stands at some remove from and in sharp contrast to views current earlier. For him religion is an experience and encounter with a thing, a thing that knowledge cannot construe and that no a priori speculation can approach. It is the encounter with a thing that is simply given as a fait brutal, mastering and overwhelming the conscience and the heart simply through the self-distinction of its realitas. The result was that even theology bowed before what could only be encountered and stepped down from the throne of metaphysical speculation.

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3. Furthermore, we recognize in the new objectivity the basic character of our university: a surrender to the object that leads one to forget the self and a cognitive mastering of the object through hard work directed toward specific objects. Does that mean that we have abandoned what to our forefathers was a still higher ideal, the ideal according to which what is ultimately most important in life and in intellectual activity is the mind itself and its cultivation, the ideal according to which the mind, the personality to be cultivated, and the cultivation of a refined and elevated humanity is more important than attaining any object? If we had in fact forgotten that ideal, or if our universities had failed to serve it, then the thread that binds us to our predecessors would have been broken. We would have erected a building that bore hardly any relation to its foundations. Indeed, despite all our accomplishments the expanded sphere of objects that we study, our willingness to work and our drive to investigate, our refinements in method - we would ultimately be poorer than our predecessors. But we can see what links us with our predecessors, as well as what separates us from them, if we compare two men who typify each age: Wilhelm von Humboldt and one of " u s " , the biblical scholar Julius Wellhausen, who, of course, had connections with Marburg. 1 0 Julius Wellhausen was not a homo universalis, intent on his own cultivation or on shaping himself as a microcosm, nor did he want to be. Instead, he was a typical modern academic. He wrestled with a single, concrete area of research through hard, relentless work. He advanced methodically from specific, established points and gradually expanded the object he studied. He stayed quiet more than he spoke, and only timidly and from a distance did he relate his work to some ultimate idea. But in and through this work a complete and distinct personality emerged: an individual totality of elevated humanity that rose above the banal but was undesired and unsought, a model of modern academic culture. Wellhausen presents us with an outstanding example of the kind of mind for whose cultivation the university will always be the premier institution: the kind of mind that we call, with a particularly modern accent, a "scholar". 10 Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), a biblical scholar best remembered for his theories on the origin of the Pentateuch, taught at Marburg from 1885-1892. From Marburg Wellhausen went to Göttingen, where he was eventually one of Otto's senior colleagues.

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According to its guiding principle, our university is not a pedagogical institution. It is not even an institution whose mission is to teach humanity or universality or some other special kind of "fitness" that is consciously and methodically sought. Quite simply and clearly, its purpose is and remains the acquisition and increase of knowledge. It does not seek to lead hearers to a premature universality. Instead, it points, with a deliberate, wholesome partiality, to its own special field,11 and it does so in such a way that it does not train pupils but shapes students. By introducing and attracting students to work in progress on a problem, it makes them seekers who are inwardly permeated and illuminated by the spirit of living, active intellectual life. As a result, it cultivates human beings in the highest degree. It also demonstrates directly that its ultimate and highest meaning encompasses more than simply attaining and advancing a growing body of knowledge. It wishes much more to cultivate "scholars". What distinguishes a scholar is not the sum total of knowledge that has been acquired or the size of the field studied. On this point we are in complete agreement with our forefathers. The distinct mark of a scholar is not any sort of mental content but a new form of living, awakened mind. It is a new and unique mental attitude of awakened interest, an attitude that, acquired in the university, should continue in one's professional and practical life. This attitude will always distinguish academics from simple technicians. To the pragmatists, it will always seem to be a mental luxury, just as scholarship itself does, to the extent that it transcends a simple pursuit of practical aims. Despite that, this attitude is of greater worth than any so-called "practical sense" or technical ability. Its meaning and essential value can scarcely be defined. But we can directly intuit 12 the presence in it of what Fichte envisioned in his Addresses to the German nation (1807-1808; Eng. trans. 1968): what we might call the spontaneity, independence, freedom, and light of the mind. 4. In conclusion, we say that there lies in this idea of a vigorous striving for knowledge a new but not less powerful incarnation of the same hidden spirit, the old idea of scholarship itself as the final unity and totality. For when the individual field of research, although conceived with decisive partiality, is infused with the spirit of "research", it always offers 11 The antecedent of the preposition "it", "university", does not make complete sense, because the university does not have its o w n special field. But the ambiguity is Otto's. 12 The language is characteristic of Otto's thought about religion: unmittelbar fühlbar ist.

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a view that goes beyond itself. On the one hand, it offers a glimpse of the higher universal (Allgemeine) in which it is encompassed. On the other hand, it offers glimpses of the competing, unfamiliar spheres against which it defines itself and with which it frequently stands in tension. In this way it stimulates speculation and inquiry into the final, highest unity of our mental life and the final meaning that unites reality. A genuine realism impels us to take reality seriously, wherever it presents itself to us: in the field of the theoretical, to be sure, but also in those fields that are necessarily untheoretical, in artistic intuition as well as in the world of ethics and in the religious experiences of the heart and the conscience. But one question always stands over all of these individual fields of study, the question of their compatibility. H o w is it possible for all of these fields to exist simultaneously? H o w do they do so? In other words, what is the final and highest unity of reality itself? Granted, we do not work down from ideas given a priori; we work meticulously up from below. And instead of constructing and deducing on the basis of a principle that at its most profound is conceived a priori, we work hard and we carefully synthesize from particulars. Thus, what was initially the point of departure has become today a goal that we intuit and long for from a distance. But it remains nonetheless the secret fire that warms and animates each area of specialized research. It would continue to be so, even if it directed human minds from a point in infinity that they could never entirely reach. 13 In this way we who are alive today also perceive and greet the enduring idea of universitas, even in the midst of change. * *

*

Our forefathers wished to enkindle this idea in human hearts and to engender this particular type of mental attitude. In doing so, they intended properly to serve their nation (Volk), and indeed, to serve it properly in the time of its deepest distress. Have they not prevailed in the face of all pragmatism and "political realism"? Were they not in fact the real "political realists"? Through their efforts, they gave their people a mind and a soul. They infused the educational establishment of their people with the high energy of a new, free, intellectual value. 14 13 Here again Otto's idealistic view of education and his view of the holy merge. 14 For the sake of readability I have omitted one phrase from the text: "[the value] that itself provided a new liveliness".

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They created the mental atmosphere in which the force behind the people forsook the hollowness of pure group-instinct and was spiritualized to the purity and clarity of the national "idea". In doing so, they unchained the new, most truly real forces of a free, mental self-surrender, which no political realist could have created. They did so, because they set sharply before the university its own most proper goal, the goal of "the independent search for truth by a mind which liberates". This is at the same time the most precious gift that the university owes to its nation and to humanity at large. Fellow members of Philip's University, it was with this spirit that the new German university first appeared. It is in this spirit that we greet the new century. In this spirit please join me in the cry: Philippina nostra nunc et semper [Our Philippina now and forever]: long may it live.

12. Zinzendorf discovered the sensus numinis (1932) Shortly after Otto's death, Theodor Siegfried (1937) recalled Otto's final lecture: "In an emotional farewell to his students on the occasion of his retirement in 1928, Otto called himself a pietistic Lutheran." When one reads the description of Pietism by Ernst Troeltsch (1981: 719), that selfassessment seems curiously at odds with many of the selections presented in this volume. "Pietism is, in fact, a revivalist form of Christianity, fitted to meet the needs of small groups, which seeks and finds its support in the Territorial Church, while it leaves the world and secular civilization severely alone. When it does influence civilization at all, particularly on the political and social side, it does so reluctantly and almost involuntarily." But much in Otto's thought and activity is in fact reminiscent of Pietism: his emphasis on small groups of the devout as the leaven that leavens the whole loaf, his concern with personal experience as prior to language and reason, and his confrontation with an orthodoxy that insisted not upon personal experience but upon faith. After Otto had explicated the numinous experience in The idea of the holy, he sought to find its traces in any number of places. One of them was the thought of Nikolaus Ludwig, Graf von Zinzendorf (1700-1760), a German nobleman who provided asylum for a group of refugees, later known as the Moravian Brethren, on his estate. The settlement became the community

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of Herrnhut, and Zinzendorf became a Moravian bishop. This essay can be read as sketching a terse and not altogether fluent answer to questions left open by "Our lady of the candle", above. Source: "Zinzendorf als Entdecker des Sensus N u m i n i s " , in: Das Gefühl Überweltlichen (sensus numinis) (Munich: C. H . Beck, 1932), 4-10.

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Zinzendorf belongs to that direction of eighteenth-century Pietism that Ernst Troeltsch called "the more freely directed Pietism". 15 He was versed in the intellectual currents of his day. With a breadth of interest that is occasionally staggering, he entered into endeavors and investigations of the new age that were not easy to harmonize with the enterprise of dogmatic theology. 1. Mystics had long pursued introspection, exploring the soul and its grounds. In the process they developed profound ideas about the soul, and the Pietist groups of the eighteenth century zealously continued their efforts. It was in this context that eighteenth-century psychology, which devoted itself to a fervent study of the higher moral and aesthetic feelings, arose. But systems of dogma and accounts of religion used in schools were almost entirely uninfluenced by these concerns. True, they made some initial attempts to define religio, but these attempts were formalized, said little, and did not involve any fundamental investigation. Even Calvin's wise hints in the introduction to his Institutes,16 in which he pointed to dependentia 'dependence' as the moment of religious feeling, had hardly any effect on successive dogmatic systems. And however refined psychology became and however carefully it analyzed feelings (consider David Hume's Treatise on human nature17), it did not succeed in identifying within the human passions that very specific group of impulses that we should designate as specifically religious or better yet

15 I have been unable to locate the precise source of this phrase, which aligns Zinzendorf with those w h o separated themselves f r o m the church. But it expresses ideas found generally in Troeltsch's account, e.g.: Zinzendorf no longer regarded Pietism as an attempt to reform the Church; to him it w a s a voluntary association of individuals w h o are united with the Saviour w h o is spiritually present a n d can be found in the Word, just as he regarded the Early Church as due solely to the personal influence of Jesus and as a personal union of believers. (Troeltsch 1981: 789) 16 Calvin (1960); cp. 35-47. 17 H u m e 1739-1740; title in text sic.

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numinous. (It came closest to doing so in distinguishing and discussing the feelings of the "sublime".) For this reason Zinzendorf is especially notable, for in the matter of identifying specifically religious feelings he was an exception. He clearly recognized the numinous feeling in its particularity. Indeed, he already used the correct name: sensus numinis. To be sure, people had begun much earlier to use the term numen, even in dogmatic theology. The dogmatician J. F. Buddeus, 18 who was influenced by Pietism but remained an orthodox Lutheran, used this term often in his Institutiones theologicae (Buddeus 1723). But in his case the term probably represents nothing more than a certain flirtation with classical Latin. He uses it simply to denote the concrete and complete sense of God that is found in a finished, dogmatic theism. The soaring, indefinable, overwhelming, mysterious aspects of this designation, those facets that make it fit for deeper exploration, played no role in his thinking, and he knew nothing of a sensus numinis. Zinzendorf knew Buddeus and his work. He probably borrowed the term numen from him and also more broadly from current usage. At a synod of his community on December 9, 1745, Zinzendorf presented an essay entitled "Naturelle Gedanken vom Religions-Wesen" [Natural thoughts on the essence of religion]. 19 The idea for this talk "shot into his heart" on a journey during the preceding year. As the title indicates, Zinzendorf did not want to develop a dogmatics or even a theology but a theory of religion. His topics were the fundamental nature of religion, its expressions, and its manifestation in institutions and history. 20 His talk was an attempt, apart from traditional dogmatic speculation, to formulate a theory of religion or, as we would say, a "phenomenology of religion", in search of the original, essential moments of religious feeling. To this extent Zinzendorf is a precursor of another "Herrnhuter", Schleiermacher, and his talk anticipates Schleiermacher's speeches On religion (1958) and the initial sections of his later 18 Johann Franz Buddeus (1667-1729), professor of philosophy at Halle and then of theology at Jena. 19 The essay itself is not available. Uttendörfer (1919), which Otto follows, reproduces first Zinzendorf's prospectus for its chapters, then a draft of the introduction that dates from May 1748, and finally protocols from a synodical conference at Marienborn, October 27, 1744, that touch upon similar themes. 2 0 Cp. Uttendörfer (1919). [Otto's note]

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compendium, The Christian faith (1928). Unfortunately, only fragments of Zinzendorf's essay remain, but we do have the following remarks, which deserve our attention. 21 I have provided the text in brackets by way of elucidation. 22 2. From the table of contents let us note only a couple of items that pertain to our interests: On eulábeia = sensus numinis.13 On the institutions of religion that Nature itself creates [religious feeling as a human predisposition] - the rising of the yearning for the creator, without conscious thought 2 4 and apart from the perception of [any] illness or other pain. 2 5 T76: [initial attempt at a theory of religious forms]. 2 6 In the exposition Zinzendorf says: All creatures, whether capable of more or less thought, have an inner dread and horror, which mostly arises when they are alone and is not so much lost when they are with others [that is, it does not entirely disappear] as dissipated [that is, it becomes latent], until it has an opportunity to return even more forcefully, especially when great loneliness arises after associating with others. And that [dread and horror], which people [in this way] find themselves in, [and] which honest [reliable] reporters from the farthest regions among the wildest heathens do not fail to recognize, is properly called the sensus numinis. Each and every creature has a feeling of something that is superior to it. 27 Schleiermacher's term "feeling" ( G e f ü h l ) appears here as sensus. This feeling is independent of reflective thought, and it is not discernible so 2 1 The essay contains other material that also pertains to a theory of religion. [Otto's note] 2 2 All brackets in the text of this selection are Otto's. Editorial references are given only in footnotes. 2 3 Uttendörfer (1919: 65, A. Sect. 1). 2 4 The eruption of religious feeling as a vague pressure from the unconscious. Cp. The idea of the holy (1950: 124-125). [Otto's note] 2 5 Uttendörfer (1919: 65, C. Sect. XII). 2 6 "T. [Sect.] LXXVI. Vom Spiritu practico (Ζ. pragmatisiren Constant baar haben)" (Uttendörfer 1919: 68). 2 7 Uttendörfer (1919: 73, η. 12), ellipses unnoted (omitted by Otto).

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much in its implicit, intellectual content, which remains obscure, as in strong emotions. Wherever this sensus appears spontaneously and in its initial stirrings, these emotions assume forms that are characterized by "repulsion": dread and horror. Zinzendorf does a good job of distinguishing these moments from ordinary and natural emotions of fear: he uses for them the adjective schaurigt 'causing to shudder'. These movements of the heart, however, are pronounced "feelings of relation". That is, they imply a conceptual core, even if it is a core that is completely obscure. They are not pure states of the heart, which come and go "of themselves", but fear of "something" that human beings know only darkly. Something that is given, in this case loneliness, touches off an obscure notion of this something; it arouses it, brings it to "intuition", and then stirs the emotions involved. In Zinzendorf's own words: His praemissis28 it is easy to show that there is a sensus numinis in all creatures. To be sure, it often lies very deep [that is, in the sphere of that which is only dimly held or entertained]. But the slightest contactus from outside makes it perceptible to the subject and palpable to experience. 29 In Kantian terms we would express it this way. The sensus numinis is a vague notion or the possibility of a notion a priori. It cannot be given through sense perception, but sense perception can touch it off and arouse it. It then can lead to a specific conceptualization (Sinn-deutung) of the object which set it in motion. It attaches itself to this object and introduces it into the realm of "mythical" objects. Zinzendorf is correct in recognizing this sensus numinis as the fundamental element in the religions of even the most remote heathens. There can be no doubt that if he had known about the phenomena of primitive prereligion, he would have used this moment, and used it properly, to explain how in this world of numinous fantasy "sticks and stones and dead men's bones", solitude, caves and mountain peaks, heavenly bodies and natural objects, unusual forces and occurrences, enter the sphere of the mythical and there become mysterious "bearers of power". As such all these things become either the stimulus and contactus that sets the sensus numinis into wider and higher motion, or else a destructive chain that binds it, deprives it of its potential, and then descends into the superstitious realm of ghosts and magic. In order to conceptualize the nature of this feeling, which 28 On this basis. 29 Uttendörfer (1919: 73).

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is at first vague and precedes all conceptual comprehension, Zinzendorf uses either the term "intuition" (Ahndung), which Schleiermacher and especially Fries also use, or else the phrase "the scent of the numen of which one has become aware". He recognizes that the feelings "of the wildest heathens" and the stirrings that come upon him spontaneously when he is in the fields in the evening are related, and he uses the same term for them that we do: eulábeia, which he turns too quickly and universally into Andacht 'devotion', 'rapt attention'. "The scent of the numen of which one has become aware is what among human creatures is called devotion." 3 0 And Zinzendorf does not hesitate at all to recognize (durchzufühlen) the fundamental, unitary character in its most elementary and most intimate forms. "It is eulabia, when one shudders 31 in church or in the fields at evening or on coming to communion." 3 2 For Zinzendorf, that is the general meaning of religieus. And it is obvious to him that all devotion is an experience of reality, a reaction of the heart not to what is dreamt but to what is known. "Devotion is quite simply the general effect of the impress of God on one's innermost being: του γνωστού φανέρωσις έν χω voi." 33 3. Naturally, Zinzendorf is under no illusions that he has provided a comprehensive description of the essence of religion, still less of the Christian religion. He would admit that religion in general and Christianity in particular have content, experiences, and occurrences that cannot be explained simply in terms of the sensus numinis and that in theological terminology would be called "revelatory events". Nevertheless, he hints that even in these areas a peculiar relation to a primary sensus numinis prevails. "Human beings first become faithful [in the sense of having faith in a higher revelation], when they have acquired a claim to an intuition and feeling of God, to a very small sensus numinis, that is suited to the time in which they live.'"34 That implies, first of all, the unquestionable, mysterious fact that the ability of human beings to be faithful varies according to whether they have a general "religious talent" or not. Second, those higher experiences 3 0 Uttendörfer (1919: 74). 31 The German construction is passive and impersonal: daß einem schaurigt wird. 3 2 Uttendörfer 1919: 79. 3 3 Uttendörfer (1919: 74). The Greek reads: "The manifestation of the known in the mind." 3 4 Uttendörfer (1919: 78, η. 14).

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on which religion as faith in and experience of salvation depends are only possible if a general religious feeling is present that is suited to the time, in other words, that is already developed in a certain, characteristic direction. Here Zinzendorf is right. The experience which the Israelite prophets had of God cannot be explained simply in terms of a graduated progression of the sensus numinis. The same is true of the experience of great, cosmic unity that is found in the high religions of India, as I have discussed in Mysticism east and west, or of the vision of the eternal "heart of the Buddha" and the unity of samsära and nirvana.35 All of these are more than mere numinous feelings. Here, too, that person who has had the experience knows himself as the one specifically chosen and gifted with the completely new spiritual vision of the "celestial eye". And when a certain complex of ideas arises in a person as "the Word of Truth", beyond all rational consideration, "through the Spirit", in the word of scripture, in Christian proclamation, in reading or hearing, that too is a radically new experience. But they all have a numinous character, and they are all only possible "in their own time", and in those terms "that are suited for the time in which they live". 4. There is no doubt that if Zinzendorf were asked about the relation of this general, prior sensus numinis to the religion of the actual believer, he would have had recourse to the categories of revelatio generalis and revelatio specialis36 that are common in Christian dogmatics. I would, too. The relationships that Schleiermacher later drew in his second and fifth speeches On religion (Schleiermacher 1958: 26-101, 210-253) between the general experience of transcendence and the Christian idea of salvation, and then in the introduction to The Christian faith (Schleiermacher 1928: 31-76) between the general feeling of dependence (clearly a variant of the general sensus numinis) and the pious feelings specific to Christianity, are very similar to these ideas of Zinzendorf. In fact, they are so similar that one would like to suppose that one Herrnhuter drew his ideas from the other. 37 3 5 See "Professor Rudolf Otto on Zen Buddhism". [Otto's note] 3 6 General and specific revelation. 3 7 One should compare Zinzendorf with a very weak attempt that dates from the same period: B. L. Eckhard ( 1 7 3 3 ) . This study is purely philological and always examines the issues from a distance. Cp. the phrase numinis reverentiam in the Motto. Further: reverentia — veneratio amore et timore permixtis temperata; árréton, áfthegkton, áfraston; sacrum silentium und eufemia·, the

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13. Buddhism, Islam, and the irrational (1932) Otto wrote a brief article about Zen for the second Mitteilungsblatt 'newsletter' of the Religiöser Menschheitsbund. It depended largely on several articles in the Eastern Buddhist by D. T. Suzuki, a member of the RMB. The Eastern Buddhist returned the favor by publishing Otto's article in English translation: "Professor Rudolf Otto on Zen Buddhism". Several years later, Otto combined the German text with two further essays under the title, "The numinous-irrational in Buddhism". The first additional segment was originally a book review; the second was, somewhat incongruously, a discussion of Islamic architecture. It is debatable how much Otto knew about either Zen or Islam. For example, there is no evidence that he ever sat in zazen, and in discussing Zen he is never able to surrender talk of personhood or his Germanic analysis of the human personality. Nevertheless, as the editors of the Eastern Buddhist noted, it is interesting to observe how Otto's intellect dealt with these traditions, especially because on some criticisms Otto's account of the numinous cannot apply to mystical or contemplative traditions like Buddhism (see "Introduction", above). Source: " D a s Numinos-Irrationale im Buddhismus", in: Das Gefühl Uberweltlichen (sensus numinis) (Munich: C . H . Beck, 1932), 253-260.

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Dhyäna 3 9 masters were at the same time masters in forms of art that possess the most profound content and the most vigorous powers of expression. In painting, temple building and furnishing, and sculpture they expressed their irrational experience in, so to speak, great ideograms. Through art they could suggest the content [of their experience] even tremendum in the q u o t a t i o n f r o m the Orphic writings in Eus., pr. ev. 666; cp. also 668: bXK' ου μεν θεμιτόν σε λέγειν, τρομέω δέ γυία [it is not proper to speak, but my limbs tremble]. O n Zinzendorf himself, see an essay which has appeared since the above was written: Konrad (1922: 207). [Otto's note] 38 This section w a s originally published as O t t o (1922b). [Otto's note] 39 As O t t o noted in "Professor Rudolf O t t o on Zen B u d d h i s m " , Dhyäna 'meditation' is the Sanskrit n a m e for the Buddhist school k n o w n in J a p a n as Z e n .

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to those who were far removed from it. I mentioned in The idea of the holy several western authors who have given us information about this high art form. I noted especially the writings of Otto Fischer, who has penetrated into the spirit of this art as no other has. 40 In West-östliche Mystik I reproduced and attempted to analyze an especially characteristic painting from this school. 41 To supplement that material I would like here to say a few things about a beautiful book by Bernd Melchers. 42 What is by far the most impressive feature of this impressive, beautifully illustrated book, is the section on the Buddhist Lo-hans [described below]. Melchers has most admirably photographed depictions of them in the Ling-Yan 'Spirit-peak' monastery, an old, half-collapsed building in the quiet mountain solitude on the eastern slopes of the Shandong highlands. By classifying these depictions, the book aims to give an impression of the great and vigorous art of North China. The Lo-hans are, in fact, wonderful works of art. But even more important here is the direct influence of that peculiarly distant and strange religion and spirituality that flourishes throughout much of the east under the Buddha's name. It is altogether proper to speak of a "typology" of religion and religions, and this book is a direct and eloquent contribution to that pursuit. Recently Hamann has tried to identify the "Gothic type" by collecting "German heads" from Gothic times. 43 It would be similarly profitable and important to try to depict the types and kinds (den Typus, die Art und die Sonderart) of religion and religions not so much by recounting their teachings and representing their formulas and concepts as by collecting and comparing heads and faces. In this way one could conceptualize and compare, in the most living reflex, what is common to various religions and what distinguishes them (den Geist und Sondergeist der Religionen). Perhaps we could see the pax Christi [peace of Christ] reflected in pictures of Christian saints and worshipers and detect how it typically affects the demeanor, the facial expressions, and the disposition of the muscles and the body in a way different from that of, say, sänti, 4 0 The idea of the holy (1950: 65-71). Otto Fischer (1886-1948) was instructor in art history at the University of Göttingen (1913-1920), director of the Museum of Pictorial Arts in Stuttgart (1921-1927), then an associate professor at the University of Basel. 41 Otto (1926), 396-397. [Otto's note] This brief section was not included in the English translation, Mysticism east and west. 4 2 Melchers (1921). [Otto's note] 43 Presumably Hamann (1922).

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the state of rest of a fully realized Indian devotee, or from the stillness of nirväna in the faces and the half-smiles of East Asian images of Buddhas and bodhisattvas or in the vïrya - the passionate passionlessness, the conquest of the self and the world, the concentrated energy in the highest concentration - that sparkles like a gathered magical power from the faces of many of these Lo-hans. Lo-hans, known in India as arhats, are the chief disciples of the Buddha. They were first given shape, individually and as a group, partly from historical reminiscence, partly from legend, and in the course of time their stories have undergone alterations and modifications. The group includes the first disciples of the master, heads of schools, patriarchs, and later saints. Some sources give their number as sixteen or eighteen; more inclusive versions number them at 500. Their images sit, at times life-size or larger, in special halls in Chinese and Japanese temples. A santa conversazione [holy conversation], a communion of saints, they are collectively sunk in contemplation and thus resemble one another; at the same time, they generally follow traditional patterns that stipulate set, differentiating characteristics. But when a genuine artist has created them, they allow for the most wonderful individuality of design and conception. In Ling-Yan, a real master was at work, and he created masterpieces that are at the same time remarkable commentaries on his religion. In legend the Lo-hans are elevated to the level of the marvelous and superhuman. They have almost become miraculous beings. But one knows they are not supernatural Buddhas or transcendent bodhisattvas but were once flesh-and-blood, individual humans beings, with traits that derived from their place of origin and their race. The Chinese saints who were later admitted into this circle are quite different from the ancient Indians, and among the Indians light-skinned northerners are distinguished from the dark-skinned non-Aryans of the south. In portraits, each head is different from the rest. At the same time, and this is even more interesting, the distinct spiritual character of each Lo-han is clearly marked. Not at all do we find in them the uniformity, dreaminess, dissolution of the personality or flattening of the character that we usually associate with the ideas of contemplation and nirväna. On the contrary, these figures manifest an astonishing fullness of inner agitation and "wide-awakeness" inextricably joined with beautiful material. In many cases one gets the distinct impression that, although every saint allegedly possesses the same interior disposition, each possesses it in his own unique way. Many of these men were dogmatic advocates of a theologia negativa in a sense so

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strong that it makes our hair rise. But no matter how tightly this theology sticks to their lips, their faces give us the distinct feeling that they do not sit there simply for the sake of nothing (einer Null): they have noble, expressive gestures, a bright, sharp gaze that sees to profound depths, mouths that speak little but express very much more, clothes whose beauty is truly costly and whose flowing is almost musical, fingers and hands that speak magically. One should reserve all judgments about the Buddha and Buddhism until one has seen these images. In them one sees just how much the artist wanted to depict and delighted in depicting the human, over against the abstractions of Buddhist theology and its representations in stone and paint and over against Buddhism's fabulous and miraculous mythology. In these images the artists mirrored the interior side of the human being in the face, the flow of the clothing, the body, the limbs, and the posture, and they allowed the expression of the soul to flow from the top of the head to the soles of the feet - in some cases quite literally to the soles of the feet (see Melchers [1921], plates 7 and 13). But what is expressed in this book in wonderful variation is the fundamental element that underlies Buddhism from its origin to its most recent developments and creates unity in the face of differences that we all too often consider divisive: the numinous element that we might call the "magical" in a refined sense of the word (das "Feinmagische").44 It emerges dimly already in the Buddha's own statements about the eternal place (Stätte) and uncreated bliss {Heil) of nirväna, which is absolutely beyond Being and Nonbeing as well as beyond the expressibility of the "magical" condition. It soars in the calm of the oldest sütras, whose magical, broadly undulating rhythm has something of the enchanting song about them. It becomes more intense in Mahäyäna, which climaxes in the dhyäna 'meditation' of the Zen schools but also assumes the crude form of rituals and other sorts of magic. It is precisely the numinous as magical power, concentrated and taking shape as high mystical experience or as the force behind the powerful effects which the soul has on the external world, that shines from the eyes of these Lo-hans (on the first, see Melchers [1921], plate L.8, on the second, Plate L.7). Melchers appends to his book a study of temple architecture in North China. It traces the development of the temple from its simplest elements and forms to the rich, complex, massive compounds of the artistically 44 I use this misleading term only with the qualifications that I have already set forth in The idea of the holy (1950: 66-67). [Otto's note]

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designed Buddhist monasteries. Melchers' pictures, ground plans, and elevations show the richness of the artistic form. They show the temple harmoniously situated in nature with respect to mountains, landforms, roads and paths, and other features. They detail its external appearance, internal arrangement, and furnishings. In this way the appendix helps to complete Melchers' typology of this eastern religion. Just as in the paintings, the typical element of the "magical" numinous penetrates into and expresses itself in these temples and monasteries. Probably no one can avoid that element who walks through these temples with an open heart. The

empty in Islämic

architecture

It is instructive to turn from the self-expression of the numinous feeling in Buddhism to the self-expression of a numinous experience that takes a profoundly different form, the numinous experience in Islam. Perhaps no form of religion is farther from Mahäyäna Buddhism than puritanical Islam. Muslims looked upon Buddhism as an abomination. Especially the rich means of expression found in Buddhist temple art and images led Muslims to think of Buddhists as particularly great "idolaters". Nevertheless, one means of expressing numinous feeling that was used powerfully and impressively in Mahäyäna Buddhism also played an important role in Islam, specifically in the architecture of mosques. I am referring to the moment of the empty which I discussed in The idea of the holy (1950: 69-70). Many who have visited mosques have noted the strong effect which this means has. Mosques are "empty". This is often confused with austerity and attributed to the alleged rationalism of Islam and its cultus. To be sure, there are mosques that are very austere, but there are others in which the empty speaks so impressively that it puts a lump in one's throat and takes one's breath away. This is true first of all of the lofty, domed buildings of late Islamic architecture. Here two schemata of the holy join together, the powerful and the sublime. This high art does not work by means of sculpture and painted figures. It works instead with space and through spaces that it orders, divides, and combines. At the same time, it works with light, or rather, with half-light, which it wonderfully guides, gradates, mixes, augments, and interrupts. The use of both space and light makes the empty and the quiet meaningful and expressive. It does so without a word and more powerfully than cathedrals filled with

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images, figures, and ritual implements that diffuse, refract, and establish meaning through the all-too-significant and all-too-conceptual. Instead of altars and tabernacles, mosques have mihräbs, niches that point out the direction of Mecca. The mihräb is empty, too, but it speaks so forcefully that it impresses one every time one enters a mosque. It attracts the eyes every time, as if by magic. Without question a mihräb is much more than a simple device to indicate the direction of Mecca. It is, as the festive frames that surround this empty and nothing prove, a sanctum, regardless of what the theoreticians may say. Through this means, those with refined feelings receive a much more powerful and living sense of the numinous relatedness of everything, indeed, of the numinous presence or one's own presence before the numinous, than they do through the coarse, all-too-explicit reification and spatialization ( Verdinglichung, Verörtlichung) found in, say, reliquaries and tabernacles. In the same way, a great cathedral is at its most festive before it is filled with the bright colors and variety of the cultic apparatus and furnishings or after they have been removed, in other words, when it is pure size, lofty emptiness and breadth, the forceful expression of the architectural form itself. In aesthetic terms, the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople became much poorer when its numerous images and its great, scenic apparatus for Byzantine ritual were removed. But its position as the most numinous architectural structure in the world derives from this "emptying". 45 And the Islamic cult of quiet bows and prostrations suits this building extremely well: timid whispers and silence in front of the empty niche and below the flooding, spreading half-light from the broad emptiness of the absolutely incomparable dome. To put a tabernacle in this remarkable structure would not heighten its mystery; it would kill it. The mysticism of emptiness is augmented in mosques through the unique art of inscribing interlaced passages from the Qur'än on the walls. One calls this art "calligraphy" and says that it is a poor substitute for the representational art of churches. But this "substitute" has reached peculiar heights of artistic expressibility. It follows its own laws and has a remarkable affinity to music. It is, so to speak, music with lines. Granted, it provides fewer possibilities than does music with tones, but 45

"Dès qu'on entre . . . , on éprouve ce frisson mystérieux et saint que certainement ni les temples classiques ni ceux de la renaissance n'ont jamais su inspirer." [On entering, one encounters a mysterious and holy frisson that certainly no classical temples and no Renaissance churches could have ever inspired.] (D. Pulgher 1 8 7 8 : 2 1 ) [Otto's note]

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it also opens up many possibilities for artistic creation. And calligraphy, too, has its irrational side, which is not that of music but a higher one. Although this form of writing partakes of beauty, its chief impression is not one of beauty but of wondrousness. It allows this wondrousness to recur like a motif, in order to modulate it, indeed, to compound it in an inconceivable variety of ways. In doing so, calligraphy draws the words of the Qur'än back into the mystery from which they flowed. As oil does to paper, it makes the text transparent, so that its depths and foundations can once again be seen. Probably only Arabic script - or in a quite different way Chinese script - is capable of creating this kind of music with lines. Both forms of writing, however, demand to be used in this way. What I have said here about Islamic calligraphy was written immediately after encountering it. I did not know that it had long been studied by specialists. I have since become aware of the beautiful book by S. Fleury (sic), who writes (Flury 1920: 23): This sober analysis does not exhaust the enormous significance of the inscriptions in the mosques. The rational dissection of an inscription into its individual components and the search for the rules according to which it proceeds are without a doubt valuable aids that allow us to approach the inner beauty of the object. But one will never fully comprehend the inscriptions as individual works of art in this way. Only when one has appreciated intuitively the peculiar characteristics of an inscription does it disclose its entire content. Then the dead letters appear to be the living messengers of the artist's imagination. Only then does the viewer encounter the mysterious charm of this writing, which strides across the surfaces in proud rhythms, surrounded and elevated by the distinction of the accompanying ornament.

The punctuation and the vowel signs that playfully surround the consonantal text act in such inscriptions like the tenor descant in ancient music. But consider the band that Fleury reproduces on page 46. Here the cantus firmus of the old, practical Küfl proceeds from right to left. The decoration of the background encompasses it, to be sure not with the confident unity of a chordal harmony but still with the euphonic harmony of a rich, independent concertus. But on the bottom of page 47 we detect a counterpoint, on which in a firm chordal relationship a system of trebles is superimposed. Fleury is right to speak of a "mysterious" impression. There is an irrational dimension to this writing. Just as in the case of music, this dimension is not in itself the irrational of

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the numinous, but set in a holy place and attached to holy things it is overshadowed by the numinous irrational. As a result, it schematizes the irrational of the numinous in a way similar to music, which I discussed in The idea of the holy (1950: 70-71). Quite different in form from the late, covered mosque is the earlier one: a wide room, open to the sky and surrounded by colonnades. In later mosques, the "sublime in the vertical" - a lofty emptiness - prevails, but in earlier mosques it is the "sublime in the horizontal" - a broad emptiness - which dominates. The latter is no less impressive than the former. For example, the Jama Masjid in Delhi defines a broad, well-proportioned area that is large enough for thousands. Around it are enormous, broad steps that elevate the mosque above the plain. Compartmented colonnades, closed to the outside but pierced by tall gates, encircle the structure and separate it sharply from the world. The halls on the side facing Mecca merge into a superb, lofty wall, in front of which the dominant qiblah-niche, the mihräb, rises and reproduces itself in five vaults to the right and to the left (Liwan 4 6 ). In this rectangle, paved with flat stones, is wide, empty space, its breadth heightened and emphasized by the weight and costliness of the frame. Yahweh's temple in Jerusalem had an empty holy of holies: an empty chest, no divine image, no monstrance. His glory "dwelt" there. For this very reason it was "my house of prayer", as the gospel freely admits. 4 7 We also find this trait in impressive form in the most primitive religions, for example, in the empty Shinto shrines of Japan, of which the great imperial shrine at Ise is the most impressive of all. Over broad, lonely fields, surrounded by lofty cryptomeria and covered by remarkable graygreen pebbles, one wanders in ever more quiet stillness and stands at last before an extremely plain shrine made of pure, natural wood, closed in front by a curtain (like the holy of holies in Jerusalem). And behind the curtain? "Nothing." This emptiness is, significantly, the center of the broad, solemn grounds. H o w much more impressive it is than the most magnificent divine images, tabernacles, and reliquaries with which Japanese temples are so often filled.

4 6 Presumably Otto means twart, the vaulted chamber with open front at the center of the portal area where people are seated for prayer or audience. 4 7 Matthew 2 1 . 1 2 , Mark 1 1 . 1 7 , Luke 1 9 . 4 6 ; cp. Isaiah 5 6 . 7 .

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14. Gandhi, saint and statesman (1933) The f o l l o w i n g selection makes clear the nature of Otto's relation to Gandhi. H e missed his chance to meet the M a h ä t m a in 1 9 2 8 because of illness. Nevertheless, as an acquaintance and enthusiast of Rabindranath Tagore, he seems to have followed the Indian independence m o v e m e n t and M o h a n d a s Gandhi closely. The original date of this selection adds to its significance: it appeared in 1 9 3 3 . W h a t are w e t o make of Otto's troubling refusal at that date "to talk politics" - of the bald claim t o political incompetence by a former member of the Prussian legislature, albeit o n e w h o w a s n o w aged and infirm? O n the o n e hand, Otto's claim to apoliticism seems to secure safety for the writer. Perhaps earlier it secured safe passage from the British, w h o immediately after the first world war did not a l l o w Germans to travel through India. In 1 9 3 3 it w o u l d seem to secure safety from the new N a z i regime. 4 8 O n the other hand, Otto's apoliticism makes Gandhi c o n f o r m t o the "utopian" ideals of the Religiöser Menschheitsbund. Otto contrasts Gandhi's apolitical, reli48 Otto's personal attitude toward Nazism can be gauged in part from his letters. He criticizes and indeed breaks off relations with Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, the former head of the Religiöser Menschheitsbund, who left the RMB to direct the pro-Nazi Deutsche Glaubensbewegung [German faith movement]. At the same time, he had little sympathy for the anti-Nazi Bekennende Kirche [Confessing church], for it was populated by theologians who had been attacking him vigorously for over a decade. In the preface to the second edition of The idea of the holy (1950: xi), John Harvey wrote, with not a little speculation: The advent to power of Hitler and the Nazis must have outraged his deepest political convictions. He had become Professor Emeritus in 1929, so he had no active part to play in any academic resistance to the Third Reich, but one might certainly have expected that he would have been whole-heartedly on the side of the Confessional Movement of resistance to the subtle Nazification of the Lutheran Church. In fact, however, he felt, at first at any rate, little sympathy for this movement of protest, and for a time had hopes that the "German Christian" movement might live up to its name and effect a rejuvenation in the religious life of his country which he felt was sorely needed. That hope cannot have survived for long. The political and neo-pagan development in Germany had become to him more and more heartbreaking, and when death came to him in March of 1937 as the result of a tragic accident, the grievous loss to his friends may have been to himself a merciful release. He must have foreseen clearly the inevitable catastrophe that loomed ahead, and caught the sound of Niagara thundering beyond the upper rapids.

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gious power to move people with the forces of mass-psychology and the powers of suggestion that German leaders (Führer, plural) occasionally indulged. His preference was clearly for the former. Source: "Geleitwort", in: Gandhi: Der Heilige und der Staatsmann in eigenen Aussprüchen, ed. B. P. L. Bedi and F. M. Houlston (Munich: Ernst Reinhardt,

1933), 7-16. Foreword to Gandhi: Saint and

statesman

In 1927 I went to India for the second time, "not to talk politics", that is, not to study India's political situation, but to study the history of religions. I traveled through Ahmadäbäd, where Gandhi lives, to Mount Abu, one of the chief sanctuaries of the Jains, which lies not far from Ahmadäbäd. From here I wanted later to return and visit Gandhi at his invitation. In his house an interreligious "fellowship" gathered in which representatives of various social classes and different religious communities - Hindus, Muslims, Parsis, Christians, and Christian missionaries met in order to work together on religious, moral, and social concerns. A severe inflammation of the eyes detained me on M o u n t Abu, but I sent my friend and assistant, Rev. Birger Forell, to see Gandhi and in this way entered into personal contact with him. I have read some of his writings. I have many times met his closest friends, British as well as others. All of these activities have helped me better understand his character, which struck me at first as being so strange. Now, I think, I have a clear and accurate image of Gandhi. But if I venture to speak about him here, I do so not "to talk politics", for which I have neither the competency nor the calling. I only wish to give a "religio-historical" account of some things that strike me as pertinent to the way Gandhi will appear to us in Germany, whether we admire or criticize him. Much against his will, Gandhi is called the Mahätma, which is usually translated as "the great" or "the great man". But mahätma is a specifically Indian religious term. It is wrong to take it as meaning simply "the great" in the universal sense of this term. True, Gandhi impresses us through his profound humanity, and we admire "the human" in him. But he is an Indian, and it is as a great Indian that he is a great person. We see him improperly when we neglect or fail to understand this, that is, when we are too quick to see the general and ignore his specific character, which cannot be imitated or simply transposed to another context. We misunderstand Gandhi when we attempt to understand the strong powers

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and virtues of this man simply in terms of a generalized humanity, when we praise him with leveling, general designations: "the great nationalist", "the friend of the people", "a clever politician", "a born leader" (bedeutenden Führernatur). He is all these things, but he is so as an Indian sädhu. He is these things as the result of his situation, but if the situation were different, his character as a sädhu would remain the same and it would find other ways to express itself. The title of this book, Gandhi: Der Heilige und der Staatsmann [Gandhi: Saint and statesman], recognizes this when it places Heilige 'saint' before Staatsmann 'statesman'. It is very difficult to find exact equivalents in one language for words that express what is most intimate in another. It is most difficult to do so for religious terms. That is true of the word sädhu and the various words that designate Gandhi's ideals. They all derive from the age-old Indian and Aryan religious vocabulary. In translations of Gandhi's statements they have found equivalents that, to the extent that they try to communicate in a western fashion, as they should, necessarily introduce western connotations that were not originally meant. Furthermore, they fail to communicate eastern connotations that are indispensable if one is really to understand Gandhi's meanings. Above all, these equivalents omit the profound and pervasive influence of Indian metaphysics and religion. To the extent that one overlooks in Gandhi the sädhu who lives according to his own laws, one admires as "political" what to him is the will of God; one smiles at what seems to be caprice but what to the sädhu is simply necessary; and one criticizes as illogical or foolish what for him is completely logical and even "clever". All of Gandhi's terms - satyam, ägraha, satyägraha, ahimsä, brahmacarya, äsrama, selfrealization 49 (ätma-siddhi), God-realization 49 (ïsvara-siddhi), even political terms like svaräj 'self-rule' 49 and svadest - certainly have a "general human" significance. They also have, except for his spinning wheel, a very real political significance. But they must be understood in terms of the Indian notion of the sädhu. Gandhi comes from a family that has traditionally been Vaisnava. That is, its members have worshiped God under the name of Visnu, the all-pervader. This is a religious community with specific doctrines and a strict style of life. At the same time, in Gujarat, Gandhi's home territory, the influence of Jainism has always been strong, as the influence of the Buddha and his gentle teachings has been in all of India. 4 9 English in original.

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Early in life Gandhi's Amma taught him the Rämanäma. Later, he recited the Rämaraksa daily, and before he studied the Bhagavad-gïtâ, he venerated the Rämäyana of Tulsïdâs more than any other sacred book. (From this we can conclude that Gandhi grew up not so much in the tradition of Krsna-worship as in the purer form of Vaisnavism devoted to Râma.) But as Gandhi himself reports, his real "conversion", as Christians would say, occurred in South Africa when he was somewhat older. Christians took him to their evangelism meetings; they gave him Christian literature to read that stressed conversion. He read it eagerly and devotionally and today speaks with profound gratitude of his friends. Indeed, their desires were fulfilled, but in a different way than they had hoped. Gandhi turned - or better, was turned - to God, but to his God, a God who spoke to him in his native language. Modernizing theologians have tried to reduce the traditional divine call to repentance and conversion to God's "claim" and our "decision". 5 0 But for Gandhi's experience this modernism is too weak. It obscures the mystical depth that is given in all such experiences. Nevertheless, Gandhi experienced a compelling call to a fundamental decision, and a decision was made. 1. Gandhi speaks above all of satya-ägraha. A friend suggested this expression to him, at first in the form sat-ägraha. Sat is the age-old Indian expression for the transcendent mystery, what we call "God". In itself it means "Being". The goal was to arrive at true Being, leaving behind the flux and unreality of the world's half-being or appearance. Gandhi chose satyam instead of sat. Satyam and sat can be used synonymously. Nevertheless, Gandhi's choice was not purely arbitrary. For although sat, like satyam, can mean "the true", "truth", satyam emphasizes this meaning more. And in a much different, stronger, and more compelling way than the word sat, satyam issues a call "to live in truth". The person who answers this call aspires to be a satya-ägrahin. Agraha means, quite literally, a firm and uninterrupted reliance upon and devotion to something. Its meaning is similar to that of κρατείν in the New Testament: "to keep hold of", "hold fast to", to observe and fulfill a rule or commandment with constancy. A satya-ägrahin is someone who holds fast to the truth and who is thereby true. Gandhi did not invent this notion. Already in the Mahäbhärata one reads satyam paramo dharma [truth is the highest law]. Thus, a satya-ägrahin is first and foremost a 50 The terms used, for example, by Otto's Marburg rival, Rudolf Bultmann.

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truthful person, one who values truthfulness above all else. And of all of Gandhi's traits, truthfulness is perhaps the most essential. But satyam also means "justice", and indeed justice as a binding demand. A satya-ägrahin is a person who struggles for justice against all injustice. In this way, satya-ägraha can lead to "passive resistance" 51 to injustice, say, to injustice done to one's people. Thus, it can take the form of "political" protests - a hartal 'boycott' - and in this way reveal its "power" - for ägraha also means "power". It is, then, a "spiritual power" and a power of immense strength. But it is simply a distortion to translate satya-ägraha as "passive resistance" or "boycott" and to say that in this technique Gandhi has revealed to India the power of the boycott. It is also a distortion to translate satya-ägraha as simply "psychical power". 5 2 "Soul-power" 5 2 is better. The second expression has a definite sense, but only when one understands it from the perspective of the sädhu. It includes the belief that when a human being is united with the eternal satyam - which is after all God, since God is truth that person possesses spiritual, indeed, supernatural powers that in the long run are superior to every earthly force. Agraha, then, is δύναμις in the old, numinous sense of this "magical" word. In satya-ägraha, this old, purely Indian mystical sense is present. It has nothing to do with "psychological forces", perhaps the powers of suggestion or forces in mass-psychology that at times leaders (Führer) in our own country have embraced openly enough. This idea of ägraha also does not derive from experiencing the political utility of boycotts. It has its roots in the ancient idea of the sädhu, that each person in whom the eternal sat has realized itself acquires thereby siddhis, that is, δυνάμεις. With time, Gandhi has increasingly used this "power of truth" in the service of his people. It impels him to "passive resistance". But satyaägraha is not simply passive resistance, and it is not in itself specifically "anti-English". Gandhi's satya-ägraha has occasionally led him to perform actions that were pro-English. Before the world war Gandhi had not yet entirely rejected England's dominion over India, as he did after the Rowlatt Act and the bloodbath of Amritsar. 5 3 It is true that before 51 Although Gandhi did use the term "passive resistance", he also recognized its inadequacy. Thus, he could write: "[There] is a great and fundamental difference between passive resistance and Satyagraha" (Gandhi [1928: 178], as quoted in Fischer [ed.] [1983: 87]). 52 English in original. 53 The Rowlatt Act continued martial regulations that had been imposed on

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the war he rebuked English domination and longed for freedom for his people, but he still thought that India should be a loyal partner in the general British commonwealth. He felt that he himself and the millions of Indians belonged to it, and he felt himself obligated by this bond both in the Boer wars and in the world war. And in direct observance of what appeared to him at that time to be the duty of national citizenship, he observed his idea of satya-ägraha by urging Indians in South Africa to work in the ambulance corps during the Boer wars. That seemed to him to be satyam. In doing so, he risked all the confidence that he had acquired from the difficult struggles for his fellow Indians in South Africa. He had to consider the possibility that the English might eventually be defeated and that the consequences for Indians, of whom the Afrikaaners were not at all fond, would be severe. On top of that, he had been forced to endure suffering inflicted by the English and had himself escaped a lynching only with difficulty. But he held fast to justice, that is, to what his conscience at that time held out as right. For Gandhi, this demanding satyam is God. Although he insists that love is necessary, he prefers the expression, "God is truth", to the expression "God is love". For him, the "true" is God. This is not an abstract moral law; it is a call from the depths, beyond all worldly values or position. His God is therefore not an object of mystical rapture, of peculiar transcendental experiences or fanatical gushes of feeling, as has been so often the case in Indian as in other religions. Instead, his God is eternal reality; it is justice and truth; it is the power that overcomes all untruth whenever human beings hold on to truth. 2. Only that person finds God who practices ahimsä and brahmacarya. And whoever finds God comes, through these two practices, to selfrealization (ätma-siddhi). Ahimsä is an ideal that has long been inscribed in the Indian conscience, especially through the teachings of the Buddha and of Mahävlra, the founder of Jainism. Literally, it means "no killing, no injuring". But only the form of the word is negative. It denotes altruism, and indeed, altruism as a disposition and as a warm feeling. True, one cannot say that ahimsä reaches the powerful emotion of agape 'love' in the New India during the first world war. The massacre of people assembled, in technical violation of the act, at Jallianwala Bägh in Amritsar on April 12, 1919, effectively destroyed any prospects the British might have had of Indian support for their continued rule.

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Testament, for example, in the 13th chapter of Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. Ahimsä also lacks the mystical depths of agape, for agapë is the reflection of God's saving love, which seeks out and rescues the sinner, and ahimsä lacks this dimension. In other regards, too, ahimsä preserves its specifically Indian coloration. It is significant that Gandhi occasionally links his ideas on ahimsä with the respect Indians show to cows and which strict sects like the Jains extend to even the smallest living thing. Indians find here the superiority of their ahimsä to the Christian commandment to love. The Christian will answer that the love that is given as God's grace cannot be seen on the same level as the compassion that even Christians owe to animals as fellow creatures of God. Ultimately, the Indian notion of ahimsä is bound up with the specifically Indian notion of transmigration, according to which there is in principle no difference between animal and human souls and animal souls have the potential of becoming human. Again, Christians will oppose this, because it seems to them to threaten the uniqueness of the morally responsible, spiritual essence that only human beings can have. But for all the differences from Christian and western ideas, Gandhi's ahimsä is surely deeper. It is a fundamental altruism that reflects a strong will bent on strict self-denial, a benevolent attitude, a will to serve, a respect for all living things, a tender politeness in interaction with others, a will to recognize good will in others, even in one's fiercest political opponents, despite appearances to the contrary, and a will to understand their motives, even when one must oppose their actions. (Gandhi's socalled vegetarianism derives directly from ahimsä. It is not a diet adopted for reasons of prudence or worldly sense. It is an expression of India's deep respect for all that lives.) 3. Brahmacarya is translated "chastity, sexual abstinence". And as Christians do, Gandhi claims that only the pure in heart can see God. At the same time, it has in his case specifically Indian associations. For Gandhi it is not, as it is in Christianity, the spiritualization and bridling of a natural instinct in itself ordained by God and belonging to the orders of creation. Brahmacarya is instead the complete suppression of this instinct. Again we see Gandhi's Indianness. But Christians can agree, at least generally, with what Gandhi says about abstinence. Only through sexual abstinence, Gandhi believes, is satya-ägraha possible. Bondage to the slavery of instinctual life obscures the knowledge of the truth. Abstinence, however, opens one's eyes, first of all because only a pure heart can see God. In addition, sexual abstinence has been valued in

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India since antiquity as a necessary condition for higher powers. It was itself an âgraha as power and as the ability to employ powers. This attitude recurs in Gandhi's estimation of abstinence. A very peculiar "politician", he demands from himself and from his followers abstinence as a weapon in the struggle for "home rule" 5 4 and Indian industries. In fact, he would be even more peculiar were he not an Indian, whose religious traditions have from the most ancient times had faith in the power of sexual abstinence as a δύναμις. He is peculiar, too, in striving with svaräj and svadesï for something completely different from home rule 54 and autarchy, namely, for an India, indeed, for his India, India as it appears before his eyes as a sädhu. But however peculiar this "politician" may seem to western politicians, with sexual abstinence as a political tool, perhaps he is, precisely with this sexual abstinence, the most clever politician of all. For in India the "suggestive personality" skilled in "mass hypnosis" counts for nothing. But every last coolie in every Indian village bows before the ancient Indian ideal of the sädhu and admires the sädhu's brahmacaryam.55 4. One can say similar things about Gandhi's svaräj. One translates it "home-rule" 56 and means thereby "political freedom". It means both of these things. But svaräj 'self-rule' does not mean for Gandhi first of all government of the people by the people (das Regiment über sich selbst). For him this idea has its roots in the ancient Indian ideals of jitendriya and krtätman. A person is jitendriya who has conquered the indriyas 'senses'. By doing so, that person becomes a krtätman, a person who has come to himself or herself, in fact, a person who has come to the Self, who is essentially and genuinely realized and stands in free security above the play not only of the senses but of the entire content and every impulse of the soul. This is in fact an ideal of räjyam 'control' that one honors with the title mahätman.57 Only the person who has acquired svaräj with regard to his or her own person is genuinely worthy of, and indeed capable of, svaräj in an external sense. Such a person will in fact obtain svaräj, despite all attempts at para-räj 'foreign domination'. 5. Gandhi wants freedom and independence for his land and people. But that means he wants an India, and he wants to achieve it in Indian ways. He rejects not just England but Europe in general. He sees in the 54 55 56 57

English in original. Otto uses both forms, brahmacarya and brahmacaryam. English in original. Otto uses both forms, mahatma and mahätman.

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western mechanization and technicization of life, in the "modernization" that he believes threatens his people's soul and way of thinking, a danger that is perhaps even more menacing than foreign political domination and economic exploitation. Closely linked to this perceived danger is Gandhi's cakra, his spinning wheel. By rediscovering and reintroducing this antiquated instrument (following Gandhi's lead thousands of families now use it) and by beginning a cottage industry of spinning and weaving, Gandhi has created an important weapon in the economic struggle against England and other foreign countries. As is often critically remarked, this move was also an uncommonly clever step to take in national economics. To be sure, many see it as grossly reactionary to call for a return to the spinning wheel in the age of the machine, when one factory could process more cotton than many thousands of these old spinning wheels. But this criticism overlooks the fact that in India millions and tens of millions of women's and men's hands are simply without work for well over half the year, when heat makes it impossible to work in the fields and there are no other employment opportunities. It also overlooks the incredibly low incomes of those who work the land. In a situation of general poverty, the simple manufacture of one's own clothing already gives a great deal of assistance. But at the same time, the spinning wheel also has a deeper significance, and it is justly called Gandhi's weapon and symbol. The reintroduction of the spinning wheel was motivated first of all not by economic considerations but by the ancient Indian ideal of life in an äsrama. Gandhi's äsrama in Ahmadäbäd is usually thought of as a school, especially as a school for his "political" and "social" co-workers. But already in South Africa Gandhi had started to realize his äsrama-ideal. The idea was to create a closely knit community, as self-sufficient as possible, in which physical labor and spiritual striving would complement one another and be pursued simultaneously. This conjunction would foster a unity of life that, far from mechanistically dismembering and dividing the facets and functions of human existence in a manner that finds its logical conclusion in the Taylor-system, 58 would instead bring them together. This conjunction of physical labor and spiritual striving would also unite human beings in personal service to one 58 The approach to industrial management of the American Frederick W. Taylor (1856-1915), who increased productivity in manufacturing by eliminating wasted time and motion.

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another and enable them really to live with and for each other. As a result, it would finally lead back to the simplicity, plainness, and unity with nature that Gandhi believed had been found in the ancient Indian äsrama. 6. So far as I can see, Gandhi's struggle on behalf of the untouchables must be seen as a modern element. Feelings of caste are deeply rooted in the consciousness and conscience of contemporary Indians, and what Gandhi has accomplished in this regard really is, as Tagore said to me, "a miracle". 5 9 It is perhaps a greater miracle than the awakening of national feeling against foreign domination. The history of India is filled with cases when Indians reacted strongly against foreign occupation, and the young Gandhi inherited this tradition. But this devotion to the rejected among his own people and those whom his own people rejected, this reverence for what is below us, grew first in Gandhi himself. I would like to assume that the example of Islam, Christian missions, the Christian work of love in India, and western social ideals had influenced him in this matter. But Gandhi's own Indian heritage provided some instruction, too. In this contemporary Indian, the gentleness of the Buddha, an Indian who recognized no castes, has arisen once again. Ever since the Buddha's time efforts to eliminate differentials of caste have never completely disappeared in India. Some of the ancient poets, some singers of hymns, and some of the most revered saints have been südras.60 The Bhagavad-gïtâ had already declared that the way to salvation was not the path of traditional ritual rules but the path of bhakti alone, that is, the path of faith and love for "the Lord". And North Indian singers like Rämänanda and Kablr did not recognize caste. But that did not eliminate the social distinction: the fifty million untouchables remained what they were. The prejudice of a fundamental untouchability, which created absolute social distinctions, remained in effect until Gandhi came and conquered the prejudice by means of satyägraha and ahimsä. Gandhi's last victory, through his menacing fast unto death, was less the victory over English opposition that it was thought to be and more a victory over opposition inside India

5 9 English in original. 6 0 The lowest of the four traditional varnas 'classes' in Hinduism, the brahmins being highest. Nevertheless, südras rank higher than untouchables or Harijans (children of God), as Gandhi preferred to call them, or Dalits, the preferred designation today.

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from voices of caste prejudice directed against the " u n t o u c h a b l e s " . 6 1 F o r Gandhi himself this struggle simply conformed to his conceptions of

ahimsä and satyam.

7. F o r a long time I was not able t o understand Gandhi's faith in the Bhagavad-gïtâ. This holiest of India's scriptures, which Gandhi reads daily for support, proclaims an admirable ethics, including an ethics for warriors. As the poem opens, the valiant Arjuna despairs and drops his b o w because of his devotion to ahimsä and his aversion to killing, indeed to killing dear friends and revered masters in battle, which is what his duty demands. In the rest of the poem, he is admonished to be mindful of his duty as a warrior and t o fight and conquer. Indian nationalists have appealed to the Gïtâ to support fighting with violence, but Gandhi, devoted to ahimsä, forbids the use o f any external violence. Gandhi's position with regard t o the Gïtâ can be explained as follows. The Gïtâ subordinates the initial requirement for Arjuna to fight as a warrior to three higher ideas. These ideas are, in fact, the leading ideas in Gandhi's w o r k and, combined with ahimsä, define his life. T h e ideal that the Gïtâ sets forth is actually its own new ideal of the sädhu. In the Gïtâ, a sädhu is not the old-style sädhu who abandons the world and its duties to live the life o f a wandering mendicant. R a t h e r , a sädhu is a person who (1) completes the work that must be done ( a v a s y a m karma kartavyam), (2) completes it without attachment ( a s a k t a m ) , and (3) in so doing fulfills his own dharma, his svadharma. Gandhi himself embodies this threefold requirement. T h e w o r k that must be done is nothing else but the duty assigned to each person. One must perform this duty, not abandon it and wander aimlessly. One's service to G o d consists precisely in performing this duty, not in some self-chosen flight from the world. O n e ' s duty must be done " w i t h o u t a t t a c h m e n t " , that is, without any interest in the profit and enjoyment that the person who acts may receive. It is the selfless performance of duty; it is satya-ägraha. Finally, a person should fulfill his svadharma, that is, the duty that pertains specifically to his own position in life. These are, in fact, the teachings of Gandhi himself. He is a sädhu, but a sädhu in the sense o f the Bhagavad-gïtâ. He does not strive after the earlier ideal o f a non-acting, world-fleeing penitent. Instead, he engages, like Arjuna, in constant activity and in the heat of battle. H e 61 In September 1932 Gandhi undertook a fast to protest the British government's decision to establish a separate electorate for untouchables.

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realizes the self not in mystical dreams but in the achievement of battle. Furthermore, the sense of "without attachment" recognizes neither acquisition nor profit, neither whim nor desire, but service as the meaning of life. Finally, Gandhi fulfills his svadharma. The way he leads his life bestows upon him his special calling as the leader (Führer) of his people. Moreover, he fulfills his svadharma in the sense of the Gita, especially insofar as he conducts his struggle not with or out of hate, vengeance, or brute instinct but in the clarity of spirit, calm contemplation, and imperturbable equanimity of the krtätman and mahätman, which the Gîta holds up as the ideal of the true warrior. Arjuna's noble bearing appears once again in Gandhi, inasmuch as he, like Ar juna, still recognizes his opponents as relatives, as friends, indeed, as masters. He himself confronts his opponents with understanding and personal respect and displays in all his struggles a noble loyalty. When Rabindranath Tagore was in Marburg, he was asked, "Will Gandhi achieve his political goal?" "Who can tell?" Tagore replied. "One thing I know, he worked a miracle. He has made us one. He gave us dignity. He raised us to ourselves." 62

62

English in original.

D. The work of the church

In the matter of church activities, Otto seems always to have had a scheme. Before the first world war, these schemes were often floated and carried out within the group of liberal Christians known as the "Friends of Die christliche Welt". {Die christliche Welt was the magazine for liberal theology founded and edited by Martin Rade.) In 1904 Otto was elected Vertrauensmann 'representative' for the Friends in the province of Hannover ("Vorstand und Ausschuß" 1904). Poor health forced him to resign the next year ("Vorstand und Vertrauensmänner" 1905). In 1904 he also addressed the assembly of the eastern branch of the Friends at Liegnitz (now Legnica, Poland) on the topic "Theology and natural science". In 1912 he addressed the entire assembly on a topic more readily associated with his name: "Religion and religions" ("Jahresversammlungen der Freunde der Christlichen Welt" 1927: 1000 & 1002). As the following selections testify, Otto's schemes for these years included, in succession, the establishment of church offices for women, the direction of a fund for providing liberal ministerial candidates with practical experience in ministry, and a musical revision of the creed. After the war, with a promotion to full professor and the publication of The idea of the holy, Otto achieved independent prominence. His best-known mature efforts sought to reform the liturgy, but they should be seen as part of a broader program to renew religious life generally.

15. Establish church offices for women (1903) Today the first of Otto's ecclesiastical schemes seems, like his Religiöser Menschheitsbund, somewhat ahead of its time: he advocated establishing a "separate but equal" ecclesiastical office for women. He did not advocate ordaining women to the office of ministry, that is, to the office of preaching the Word and administering the sacraments. But those seem to be the only activities that he reserved for men. It is likely that Otto's experiences teaching theology to female students (see selection) helped give him the idea. Nevertheless, we would be wrong

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to see him as a vigorous campaigner for women's issues. The campaign speech that he gave in 1913 (see "7. Rudolf Otto, National Liberal candidate", above) did not mention women's issues, although Emma Titius, wife of Otto's colleague Arthur Titius, did. The suggestion to create ecclesiastical offices for women recurs, without much emphasis, in Otto's post-war program for reform (see "18. The church's mission in a secular society", below). Women's issues are also among the many questions that Otto vaguely expected the Religiöser Menschheitsbund to address. Source: "Kirchliche Aemter für Frauen", Die christliche (September 24, 1903), cols. 920-924.

Welt 17, no. 39

The topic that I raise for discussion here may sound unusual, but it may be timely as well. It is the admission of women to church offices and their employment in the service of the church. Let me immediately reassure those who are already worried that I am not talking about the preaching office itself but about church offices and positions that would somewhat parallel the office of ministry in rank and calling. Like the preaching office, these offices would provide those who held them with their own social standing and would in time produce solid, lasting organizations. Again like the preaching office, these offices would require special education suited to the calling and, not the least, theological schooling and study. One "woman's office" of rather modest form and rank has already become generally known and accepted and is well on the way to becoming a "church" office: the office of "parish sister". 1 Its functions, such as caring for the sick, the poor, little children, and women in childbirth, are well known, and within these settings the sisters provide a modest amount of pastoral care either through the activities of associations or through their own personal communication. It would certainly be desirable to make this "office" a permanent institution, attach it to congregations, and provide these sisters with special training that would be theoretical if not theological. Such training could perhaps be modeled on the eight-month course that is already given in Berlin to women called to work in home missions. But in addition to these sisters, might there not also be, especially in very large metropolitan congregations or groups of congregations, both a 1

The first Protestant deaconess house was established by Theodor Fliedner (1800-1864) at Kaiserswerth, where Fliedner was minister, in October 1836.

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place and need for a higher grade of offices for women, offices that carry more responsibility and therefore require a more fundamental education, especially in theology? Let us not simply speculate but start with a real example. K. is a midsized city with large congregations, a mixed population made up of all classes and professions, and a great deal of industrial development. There Ms. C. 2 is engaged in a rich and blessed activity of her own creation. This activity already anticipates in many respects what we are trying to make into a lasting institution, professionally organized and staffed by specially trained personnel. Ms. C. was kind enough to answer my query with a brief description of her many activities. With the help of an assistant Ms. C. has for the past twenty years run a large Sunday school for 1000 to 1200 pupils. She has divided the students into groups, raised funds, recruited helpers, both men and women, in part seen to their training (in cooperation with the appropriate ministers), and organized the school's various celebrations. In conjunction with the congregational diaconate as well as with the women's association for nursing the sick, she has organized visits to the sick. She directs a young women's association, from which she trains assistants for her Sunday school and in which she herself conducts such activities as independent Bible studies. She organizes young women of the educated classes for Bible study, the support of missionary activity, and group activities. As president of the local chapter of the Deutsch-evangelischer Frauenbund [German Evangelical women's association] 3 she has opened a home for women who work in factories and helps direct many different benevolent undertakings for the city, especially by recruiting and directing women volunteers. She is vice-president of the city's employment service for female domestic servants. She directs aid for the Association for the Care of Released Prisoners. In this connection her main tasks are visiting female prisoners, arranging employment and housing on their release, and caring for the families of prisoners. She enlists and organizes women to help with cooking for the sick by identifying and visiting those in need. She also works with infants and toddlers, making visits and inquiries, and she is active in the ambulatory care of patients with, among other diseases, tuberculosis. She concludes her description 2 3

Identity unknown. Founded in 1899 to unite various women's and youth groups. It aimed to renew German religious and moral life and address women's issues.

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by saying that there are still unlimited opportunities for developing such work. Successes like those of Ms. C. in K. are possible in countless other places. But it would also be possible to eliminate the accidental and temporary nature of the undertakings by establishing an office for such tasks within a congregation or a group of congregations. Such an office would insure that creative individuals who initiate undertakings such as these find reliable, trained successors. It would also insure that the group of women gathered around such a "Mother Superior", or whatever else we want to call her, would be broad enough to address whatever tasks may arise. Perhaps the most difficult question here is how a woman who holds such an office would relate to the ministry itself. What would be the respective duties and powers of each office? Would these not clash and interfere with one another? Under normal circumstances the two offices should be mutually beneficial. The newly established office would give the overburdened pastors of large congregations considerable freedom; it would allow them to do tasks for which they never have enough time. I envision an arrangement in which the "Mother Superior" would report not to the individual pastor but to the same authorities he does, to the church council or association of church councils that called her. She will have to work closely with the minister or ministers concerned, and the two will need to consult one another. Obviously, too, she must be under the continuous control of the appropriate authorities, but at the same time, at least as concerns those matters which are her responsibility, she must have a seat and a vote in the governing body. Perhaps her most important duties would be to identify the many women (Frauen und Töchter) of the congregation who are willing to engage in volunteer work, to attract them to the various tasks of the congregation, to educate them, organize them, and then lead them. These tasks include caring for the poor, the sick, and children, schools in home economics and continuing education programs for women, and the church's various associations for women: the Young Women's Association, the Mission Society, and the Gustav Adolf Women's Society. 4 She would discover that there are any number of things that need to be done in 4

German Protestants had begun to form Young Women's Associations (Jungfrauenvereine) as early as 1847. In 1893 the Vorständeverband der evangelischen Jungfrauenvereine [Association of the executive boards of the young women's associations] was created to coordinate the various local

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these matters, and she would always find the means at hand to address genuine and urgent tasks by mobilizing any number of women who are willing to volunteer for genuine service but now find their talents untapped. She would be able to unite and centralize many undertakings that are now done separately. She could write for newspapers and newsletters; she would also come to assume direct pastoral duties. Ministers could turn over to her and her volunteers entire areas in the pastoral care of women and family counseling, and in many cases these tasks would be performed better. In addition, tasks that are now often enough performed by rank amateurs would be in the hands of educated, professional women of high spiritual standing: the leading of private devotions, continuing religious education for young women who have left school, and the nurturing of community spirit. In fact, it is impossible to predict what new tasks and areas of activity might open up if one created organized places and positions for talented women, but we can predict that there will be such tasks. We can already anticipate distinctly one such area of activity: the continuing religious, moral, and cultural education of young women who leave school, not the least of whom would be the "daughters of the higher classes" among whom Ms. C. is already doing basic work. It is however of the utmost importance that the entire enterprise be institutionalized as an "office" and that it be based, as the office of the ministry is, upon a fundamental education that is theoretical and theological. The tasks under discussion are much too important to be left to haphazard management and to the accidental availability of isolated persons and talents. Of course, one should rejoice when such individuals appear and when they know how to create their own places and duties, especially when they do so in such a superb form as Ms. C. has done. But only when congregations establish specific offices, facilitate the development of an increasingly organized ecclesiastical calling for women, and groups, which varied considerably in size. The Mission Society Otto had in mind may have been the Frauenverein für Bildung des weiblichen Geschlechts im Morgenlande [Women's association for the education of Asian women], also known as the Morgenländischer Frauenverein [Women's association for Asia], founded in 1 8 4 2 and publisher of the Missionsblatt des Frauenvereins. The Gustav-Adolf-Frauen-Verein was the women's branch of the GustavAdolf-Verein, a Protestant association founded in 1832 to provide both material and spiritual assistance to German congregations in straightened circumstances outside Germany.

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create for the entire enterprise its own technical knowledge and proper relations to other church activities, will it be possible to overcome the accidental and temporary. Only under these conditions will it be possible to set about the entire endeavor methodically and especially to insure the continuity of specific undertakings. Without "offices", everything that is done voluntarily by individuals depends entirely upon individual volunteers. If for any reason they stop working, then as often as not the work is abandoned, precisely because there is no one to succeed them, there is a lack of organization and cohesiveness, and the undertaking has been too ephemeral. Even further, theoretical and, indeed, theological education is necessary. To demand such an education may seem very doctrinaire and academic. But one needs only to ask the women themselves who are engaged in such undertakings how much they sense this lack. The work that we are discussing cannot be performed by servants but only by those who collaborate as equals with those who exercise the office of ministry. It leads to and includes pastoral tasks that require a more fundamental education and training in regard to religious, moral, and "spiritual" matters than any recollections of one's confirmation instruction or any dilettantish, personal study could possibly give. These tasks require an independent, fundamental knowledge and mastery. In other words, they require study in the proper sense of the word. The most desirable form of theological study for women would naturally be no poorer, no more one-sided, and no more restricted than that for men. In other words, the entire spectrum of theological study should be opened up for talented women. But until that happens, we have a very good substitute for the academic study of theology proper. In Berlin, Bonn, and Göttingen special courses have been held for the last several years to prepare school teachers for the school mistress's examination (Oberlehrerinnen-Examen), so that they might assume the appropriate positions in girls' schools. These courses include a specific academic field of study in concise and abbreviated form. They are led by university instructors (Dozenten) and consist mostly of lectures and discussions. They last about three years and conclude with an examination by a committee convened by the Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs. Among these courses is one on theology for those women who wish to pass the examination for high school religion teachers. The course on theology covers almost all areas of theology, and in any case it is the best substitute for the academic study of theology available at the present time. Any woman is free to participate in these courses, and a woman who feels

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herself called to ecclesiastical office could acquire from them the schooling and independent theological cultivation necessary for successful and effective w o r k . By attending selected lectures on introductory philosophy, the history of literature, and similar subjects, which are also offered in these courses, they would be free - and in fact well-advised - to broaden and deepen their specifically theological interests and knowledge, just as university students are. It would also be possible and most desirable to make available, perhaps through individual courses, the most important elements of economics and sociology. It is self-evident that this " o f f i c e " must provide those who exercise it with the means of livelihood. In other words, the congregation, congregations, or other church bodies that create the office must guarantee the social standing that the office requires and provide a salary commensurate with that standing. T h e way to create such an office is perhaps easier than it seems. The office of "parish sister" has developed rather quickly. It is becoming increasingly c o m m o n for insightful church councils and congregational councils to allow virtuous women from the congregation a relatively long period of time for technical education, perhaps in a deaconess-house, in order then to place them into the office of " p a r i s h sister". Would there also not be, at least in large cities and congregations, enlightened consistories and church councils w h o would value what could be accomplished in church and society by a w o m a n w h o was talented, had a basic education in theology, and was supported by a call f r o m the church? Would they not allow such w o m e n to be educated and create positions for them when they had acquired and demonstrated the necessary preparatory education? School councils have already done something similar. T h e y have granted women school teachers up to three years, at times with stipends, to prepare for and take the school mistress's examination. At the same time, one must allow talented w o m e n w h o are in a position to acquire the necessary theoretical education on their o w n to enter later upon ecclesiastical or social work. T h e first way would probably be much better, because at least for the time being the second would supply the church only with those w h o entered upon the calling by chance or circumstance. O n e may also wonder whether a supply o f educated women would not occasion a demand. And even in the worst possible case, several years devoted to serious study in the sense that I have mentioned would not be a waste. T h e y would certainly be m o r e profitable than years spent without a calling or working sporadically.

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The idea of "church offices for women" first recommended itself to me because such offices are so obviously desirable and necessary. The idea is even more attractive because there are already an apparently large number of personalities and volunteers in our midst who are ready to apply themselves to this endeavor. It is well-known that young women who lean toward liberal Christianity and are interested in religious and ecclesiastical affairs often become deaconesses because they have no opportunities for a more far-ranging service. It is certainly praiseworthy that they choose the high calling of the diaconate. Many of them, however, are so well endowed with organizational and pastoral talents, among others, that for the sake of the church itself it is to be lamented that they are not able to engage in more interesting activities and until now have not had the opportunity to acquire a basic theoretical education. I have very specific examples in mind. My own experience preparing women for the school mistress's examination has helped to guide my thought. And a conversation with the late president of the High Consistory, Barkhausen, 5 moved me to express my ideas here: Barkhausen asked for a short, programmatic sketch of my ideas for further consideration. Perhaps the printing of this article will stimulate reflection. 6 I would be thankful if interested persons would share their views with me either in letters or some other form. For this purpose I include my address below. 7 Göttingen

5

6

7

Lic. Rudolf Otto

Friedrich Wilhelm Barkhausen (1831-1903), a career civil servant w h o in 1881 became director of the ministerial division of the Ministry of Educational and Cultural Affairs and served as president of the Prussian Oberkirchenrat 'High consistory' 1891-1903. At this year's Kirchlich-soziale Konferenz Paula Muller spoke about the duties and rights of women in church and middle-class communities; see Die christliche Welt, 17, no. 18 (1903), cols. 428-429. Apparently, she will repeat this talk before the assembled Deutsch-evangelischer Frauenbund, which she leads, on September 24 in Bonn. Cp. the announcement in the preceding number [Die christliche Welt 17, no. 38]. [Martin Rade's note] After the first world war Otto was still advocating the desirability of establishing church offices for women; see "18. The church's mission in a secular society", below. Presumably, then, this particular proposal did not meet with much success.

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16. Liberal Protestants need practice in ministry, too (1910, 1911) Otto initially called the organization to which the following selections pertain both the Schleiermacher-Stiftung and the Hermann-SchmidtStiftung, but the name that eventually stuck was more prosaic: the LehrStiftung 'Teaching fund'. The proposal met with success. At the 1 9 1 0 annual meeting of the Friends of Die christliche Welt in Nürnberg, a steering committee was established with Otto at its head. The goal was to support five candidates each year for half a year, at an estimated cost of 1 , 0 0 0 marks each (Rade 1911). Some candidates were placed, but Otto's absence during much of 1 9 1 1 and 1 9 1 2 on his world-tour interfered with the promotion of the fund. By July 1 9 1 4 interest seemed to be waning (Otto 1913a; Rade 1914). The second selection reproduced here, "Schmidt Candidates", is as important for the autobiographical sketch that it contains as for the account of the proposed fund (see further Otto [1908]). Sources: (1) "Schleiermacherstiftung. Ein Vorschlag für die Nürnberger Tagung", An die Freunde, no. 33 (September 20, 1910), cols. 369- 370. (2)

"Schmidt-Kandidaturen", Kirchliche nover 10 (1911): 7-9.

Gegenwart.

Gemeindeblatt

für Han-

Schleiermacher fund: A proposal for the meeting at Nürnberg Several years ago at one of our meetings in Eisenach I brought to the attention of the Friends, and especially of our officers, an idea that in one sense could probably be viewed as a "necessary work of charity". Probably all of us know how difficult it often is for a person who is attracted to the views of modern theology at the university to enter the Christian ministry and preach, teach, and provide pastoral care. Many never succeed at all. Since they receive no guidance and support, they often slide back, whether quickly or gradually, into the customary ruts of tradition. What we must do is create opportunities for a period of instruction and apprenticeship with learned, talented, and experienced masters of ministerial practice. We must find liberal Christian ministers who would be willing to take candidates into their homes, introduce them to the activities of their calling, and show them how one can begin to preach, teach, and provide pastoral care on the basis of modern the-

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ology and with the means it provides. At the same time, we must find candidates who want to learn in this way, and we must also find a way to support them. We should provide them with at least room and board, and perhaps with a stipend as well. How much of a blessing such an introduction to the practice of ministry can be, even if it lasts no more than half a year, is familiar to those who spent, as I myself did, their spiritual apprenticeship as a "vicar" with my fatherly friend, Hermann Schmidt [1840-1908], in Cannes. Ministers in large city congregations would be able to introduce candidates to many different sides of the spiritual calling, and those engaged in "social" ministry would probably be especially suited. (It seems to me very desirable to have such positions permanently established in a university town or in a place within easy reach of one, so that the candidates could also pursue the spiritual calling theoretically from the standpoint of modern practical theology. Indeed, practical theology only becomes genuinely interesting when it is pursued in conjunction with one's own practice. Then it is studied with a great deal of benefit.) The officers of our group of Friends have already responded favorably to this suggestion and will place it on the agenda for discussion at our meeting in Nürnberg. To the extent that we are discussing a matter of money, I would suggest that we call this endeavor the SchleiermacherStiftung 'Schleiermacher fund' and consider how we might acquire the necessary funds. A small beginning has already been made. 8 One objection to this proposal is that many territorial churches already require candidates to undergo a vicarage year. Nevertheless, I think that we will find enough candidates who will be willing to spend another half-year in an apprenticeship of this sort. At Easter one such candidate made himself known to me, and I would recommend him to anyone who would be willing to be his supervisor in this matter. 9 I ask the Friends to take this plan under consideration, especially those who will be coming to our meeting in Nürnberg.

8

9

Would there be any moral or procedural objection to using some of the money we have for the Gemeindehelferschule 'School for congregational assistants' for this purpose? Please make your views known without delay, if you feel moved to do so. [Martin Rade's note] Since our officers are mostly excluded from being entrusted with vicars, I should think that there would be ministers among us who would gladly take them on. [Martin Rade's note]

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Schmidt candidates What are Schmidt candidates? Absolutely nothing yet, but they might become something. There once was a theology candidate who had finished his first examination and asked himself, as doubtless many in that situation have, " W h a t n o w ? " He had gone to Erlangen as a " f o x " . 1 0 That was still in the time when "one sought to attain the kingdom of G o d " . 1 1 There he had studied Frank 1 2 diligently, with the express purpose from the very beginning of returning home as "Frankian" as possible. After five semesters of spirited resistance he realized that that would never happen. He himself started to speak the "modern theology" against which he sought to arm himself. He went into his first examination fearing it as if it were some menacing inquisition, but the modern theology did not make his examination any more difficult at all. The event only gave him reason to recall, with sincere thanks, the kind, helpful, confidence-inspiring manner of the examiners, who all stood completely on the " r i g h t " . But "what n o w ? " What he had just acquired, what he had initially fled from as if it were an enemy but then experienced personally as a liberation and enhancement of his own religious treasure - could he also apply that within the structure of our collective religious life? Could he use it in exercising the duties of pastor, religion teacher, or some other servant of our current church body? If so, how? This candidate did what many of his kind did at the time. He went to the man who served as "father confessor" for students and candidates in difficult circumstances, the respected Professor Häring 1 3 in Göttingen, and said, " W h a t do I do now?" "Let me think about it", Häring said. And the candidate went away. Another day, as the candidate was about to board the train to spend the period of waiting at home, something caught the tail of his jacket from behind. That something was Häring. " C o m e quickly. I have the answer to your question." " H o w ? Where?" "It's sitting outside, in front of the station, in a one-horse carriage." 10 German slang for a first-year university student. 11 Man das Reich Gottes zu erlangen suchte - a play on words. Capitalize erlangen and the sentence reads: "One sought the kingdom of God in Erlangen." 12 F . H . R . Frank ( 1 8 2 7 - 1 8 9 4 ) ; see " 1 . My life", n. 11, above. 13 Theodor von Häring ( 1 8 4 8 - 1 9 2 8 ) ; see " 1 . My life", n. 3 1 , above.

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In the carriage sat a person of whom at first one noticed only the eyes bright, brown eyes with a look of kindness and trust, never to be forgotten. From them a play of fine creases spread out, giving a mischievous look to the face. "That is my friend, Pastor Schmidt from Cannes, the 'waiters' pastor.' You will be his vicar. Everything is already arranged", said Häring. "Good", said the candidate. And that was the most sensible thing that he could have said, for there could not have been a better and more fortunate answer to his question. And he has remained thankful for that answer right up to the present moment. Cannes sits on the French Riviera. The German congregation there (Augsburg Confession) consists of Germans who live in Cannes, those who visit it for their health (a different group every year), and a large number of Germans employed in various occupations. Pastor Schmidt was the spiritual center of this diverse and instructive community. He sparked much enthusiasm, and he and his assistant, his vicar, received the benefits of that enthusiasm in return. A vicarage with him was advanced training for the modern ministry in the best sense of the word. The work involved the greatest conceivable variety of social classes. Activity in social ministry, which far surpassed "home missions", was especially instructive. Schmidt was widely known, especially for his efforts on behalf of the spiritual and physical welfare of the waiters, efforts that earned him the nickname the "waiters' pastor". The situation was an uncommon blessing for a young beginner in ministry. Before he set out upon ministry in a territorial church with its firmly established directions, he could get to know a freer, unconstrained form of pastoral activity that gave personal initiative and creativity a great deal of room to operate. The most important aspect was Schmidt himself, with his warm, open, instructive, arousing, and stimulating personality. In his theological youth he had himself experienced "critical" theology in all its pointedness, and all his life his "theology" was defined by that experience. It was completely undogmatic and constantly in touch with and informed by the historical study of the Old and New Testaments. It is probably best designated a variety of religious subjectivism, on the basis of its most inward and completely personal Pietistic character. For young people weighed down by theological difficulties and searching for answers, Schmidt was a born leader. He was understanding and helpful, and he pointed the way. Without forcing others to adopt his own position and without, as so often happens, covering over or mechanically

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rejecting more recent convictions simply because he was accustomed to traditional forms, he awakened love and confidence in the spiritual calling and allowed candidates to discover for themselves how that calling should be conceived and conducted. In the time since the events recounted above t o o k place, the candidate concerned has himself often enough served as "father confessor" for candidates in difficult circumstances. In the intervening time, these candidates have become more numerous, not less, and he has often had to w a t c h with sorrow as the best of them either take refuge in the teaching profession or find another way out, since they do not usually find the solution to their problems driving around in one-horse carriages. This former candidate has n o w joined with several friends, among w h o m are three other former "Schmidt C a n d i d a t e s " , to see if they cannot help create new Schmidt Candidates. W h a t they have in mind is briefly as follows. It ought to be possible to find opportunities for young people like those w e have been discussing t o spend a period for spiritual education, even if it is only brief, with a teacher w h o m they could trust, a teacher w h o m they could possibly choose themselves. He would be versed in the specifics of modern theology and would lead and inspire them to conduct joyfully the many forms o f ecclesiastical service and religious education in such a way that the convictions they have acquired at the university are not simply rejected but bear fruit in ecclesiastical service, pastoral care, and spiritual nurturing. This should protect them from two dangers: from displeasure in conducting the office of ministry, which unfortunately arises easily and often enough, and from the spirit of denial, radicalism, and an absence of discretion and good ecclesiastical sense. T h e latter danger often arises when a t the university modern theology is conceived and understood, as it frequently is, primarily as a critique and not just as much as a positive renewal and development of faith-filled convictions. Such a candidacy would be a service, one hopes, to both the candidates involved and to the life of our church. T h e major requirement is to find as many " S c h m i d t s " as possible. T h a t is m o r e important than location, type of ministry, or any other factor. But if we could find situations that were especially suitable for learning, teaching, and observing, that would be even better. Especially suitable situations include those like Cannes, which provide an overview and interesting combination of ministerial relations and duties, and congregations with youth ministries, home mission activities, and social ministries. W h o e v e r has been outside

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our borders and felt the stimulating attraction of a congregation abroad would also gladly place candidates in such congregations. Wherever congregations like those named need and pay young assistants, the enterprise will proceed without difficulty. But we must also find places, teachers, and candidates who are willing to undertake this venture purely for its educational value. Indeed, we are already starting to receive word of such places and people. If the matter is conducted properly, even the brief period of half a year, the length of the vicarage in Cannes, can be a rich blessing. The half-year period could also be useful preparation for a subsequent period spent in a "teaching vicarage" or Predigerseminar, 14 as was the case for the candidate mentioned above. That, then, is what Schmidt Candidates might be. Whoever has something to contribute, either in word or deed, is requested not to hold back. Professor Dr. Rudolf Otto, Göttingen

17. The creed set to music (1911, 1913) Otto had difficulty finding a professoriate because the church authorities found his theological views too far to the left. This difficulty plagued many other scholars at Göttingen, too, such as Otto's older fellow neoFriesian, Wilhelm Bousset. Perhaps that explains Otto's eagerness to endorse what was originally a conservative proposal - to use an alternative musical setting of the creed in worship services - and to work hard to create a consensus between the two opposing factions, left and right. In any case, Otto recommended the proposal to a liberal public on liberal grounds. It would provide an alternative to the traditional Apostles' Creed, which liberals could no longer recite sincerely and honestly. The Apostles' Creed had become a standard part of Prussian worship services in 1816, but it gave rise to many disputes. For example, in 1892 the well-known church historian, Adolf von Harnack, expressed doubts to his students about whether someone trained in history could endorse the creed in its entirety, especially its assertion of the virgin birth of Jesus. Conservatives attacked him. In response, several liberal theologians met 14 A Protestant theological college, run by the churches, that German ministerial students attend for at least a year following their university studies in preparation for the actual practice of ministry.

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in Eisenach in October to form a new association, "The Friends of Die christliche Welt". This was, of course, the association in which Otto made his early ecclesiastical proposals. Sources: (1) "Ein erfreulicher Vorschlag", Die christliche Welt 25, no. 13 (March 30, 1911), cols. 304-306. (2) "Das Bekenntnislied", Die christliche Welt 25, no. 39 (September 2 8 , 1 9 1 1 ) , cols. 922-925. (3) "Das Glaubenslied", An die Freunde, no. 4 3 (January 14, 1913), cols. 4 7 3 - 4 7 4 .

A gratifying proposal The Hannoversche Pastoralkorrespondenz is the leading newsletter for ministers in the church of Hannover who are conservative with regard to church policy and dogma. It is all the more gratifying, then, that a proposal has been made in its pages that each of us can only greet with enthusiasm and for which we can only be sincerely thankful. Number 6 of this newsletter contains an essay entitled "Das Credo als Gemeindelied" [The creed as a congregational hymn] that I recommend to everyone. According to this essay, it would be in accord with the spirit of evangelical worship if the confession of faith were sung not by the minister but by the congregation itself. Unfortunately, the well-known poetic rendering of the Roman symbol (the so-called Apostles' Creed) which Luther made in three verses is too long to be used in the regular Sunday liturgy. Therefore, the essay recommends two shortened forms of that version. The one runs: We all believe in one God, creator of heaven and earth; w h o through Jesus, his son, has become our Father. He will always nourish us, and preserve us in blessedness in faith through his holy Spirit; no harm shall ever befall us. After this misery eternal life awaits us. Amen. 15 15 Wir glauben all an Einen Gott, Schöpfer Himmels und Erden, Der sich durch Jesum, seinen Sohn, uns zum Vater hat gegeben. Er will uns allzeit ernähren, uns zur Seligkeit bewahren

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The other runs: We all believe in one true God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Ever-present Help in need, Praised by all the heavenly host, By whose mighty power alone All is made and wrought and done. 16

The essay indicates that the first form is actually already in use in several German territorial churches. Then it adds valuable liturgical and historical comments. That the first form is superior to the second seems obvious to me. The author of the essay himself notes that this abbreviation of Luther's version comes from the time of the Reformation itself. Every sentence in it is taken from Luther's version. Furthermore, aside from the Trinitarian formula, the second hymn contains virtually nothing that is specifically Christian, not to mention characteristic of the Reformation, while the first summarizes in simple, brief, and pithy statements the leading ideas of the gospel: belief in the Father, his Son, and his Holy Spirit; our communion with him through the grace of Christ; the new assurance of life, given by Christ, in communion with God for time and eternity, and our eternal hope. The author of the essay is of the opinion that the well-known melody of Luther's hymn is difficult to sing. We should note that this melody, which derives from pre-Reformation times, is one of the grandest in our entire hymnody. Constructed in the wonderful and ancient Dorian mode, it proceeds with an austere strength. It would be a real loss if we gave it up altogether. But it is correct that it may be too austere and, as is usually said, monotonous for the musical sensibilities ( M u s i k g e f ü h l ) of contemporary congregations. Perhaps one could save this melody, in four-part harmony, for the choir and adopt for the use of the congre-

Durch den Heiligen Geist im Glauben. Kein Leid soll uns widerfahren. Nach diesem Elend ist breit uns ein Leben in Ewigkeit. Amen. 16 "Wir glauben all an Einen Gott, Vater Sohn und Heilgen Geist", by Tobias Clausnitzer (1668); translation by Catherine Winkworth, as altered in The Lutheran hymnal (1941), # 2 5 2 (omitted from the more recent Lutheran book of worship [1978]).

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gation the Ahlhorn adaptation which we will print in the next number [Otto 1911]. The Pastoralkorrespondenz is only interested in a singable and usable form of the creed. I believe, however, that its recommendation could also be of perhaps the utmost importance in another regard. This brief form expresses a genuine Christian faith, and any one who seeks edification in a Christian worship service would have no reason not to recite this confession from the heart. That is not true, however, of the Roman creed, which is still used in many places today as part of the liturgy. Anyone who does not simply recite the words of the Roman creed unthinkingly must engage in a greater or lesser amount of reinterpretation, weakening, and "mental clarification". That is all the sadder because just at this climax of the celebration one naturally wants most to declare, in clear words and without any reservations or reinterpretations, what fills one's heart. It would be a great advance if it were possible to express one's faith in the manner recommended here, at least in alternation with the traditional form. Once a congregation has become thoroughly familiar with this form, one might consider whether we might not also find here a way to address an ever growing need of our confirmands. In many places it is now the custom at confirmation for the confirmands to sing alone some sort of dedicatory hymn, for example, the well-known " M e i n Schöpfer, steh bei mir".í? In a similar way it might be possible to introduce the custom of confessing the Christian faith that they are affirming by singing this verse before the congregation. Obviously, no form, whether this or another, can be forced on them, their parents, or the congregation against their will. For example, where the Roman creed is still used and recognized as a genuine expression of faith, it should not be arbitrarily displaced. But one should not deny that, especially for students in city schools, and most especially for those in gymnasia, there is a genuine and ever growing need for a confession of faith. At least for such situations we should have a replacement for the Roman creed ready that does not compromise the honesty of young people confessing their faith. The form that I have recommended here seems to me the worthiest one conceivable.

17 Text by Johann J. Rambach (1729); translated as "My Maker, be Thou nigh" by R. E. Taylor, in The Lutheran hymnal (1941), #335.

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The confessional hymn 18 In number 13 of Die christliche Welt I reported on a "gratifying proposal" in the Hannoversche Pastoralkorrespondenz to use Schöberlein's 19 brief confessional hymn in worship. In number 14 we invited readers to submit singable musical settings of the confessional hymn that were of a churchly nature. From the submissions we proposed to select the one that was most usable and make it available and affordable by publishing it as a musical supplement in the Monatschrift für Gottesdienst und kirchliche Kunst. Our invitation evoked a large number of responses, and these were examined by a committee consisting of Professor Smend, 20 Strassbourg, Pastor Oberdieck, 21 Meensen, the author of the essay in the Hannoversche Pastoralkorrespondenz, and myself. We sought advice from several liturgists and church musicians, for example, Pastor Drömann, 22 a liturgist well-known in Hannover. The composition by Professor Mendelssohn 23 in Darmstadt was unanimously deemed to be the best by far. It has just now been published in the Pastoralkorrespondenz and has appeared simultaneously as a supplement to the October issue of the Monatschrift. The publisher, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, has kindly placed the plates needed to reproduce the hymn at our disposal and at the disposal of other magazines as well. Drömann writes to Oberdieck: "Mendelssohn has created a composition that is both contemporary and worthy of church use. It avoids monotony and superficiality equally. Every congregation will be delighted, provided the melody is in18 The actual music was published in conjunction with this selection. Those interested may consult the original. 19 Presumably Ludwig Friedrich Schöberlein ( 1 8 1 3 - 1 8 8 1 ) , from 1851 professor of systematic and practical theology at the University of Göttingen and cofounder of Siona, a monthly magazine devoted to liturgies and church music. 2 0 Julius Smend ( 1 8 5 7 - 1 9 3 0 ) , prominent German liturgist and hymnologist; professor, author, and associate editor of the Monatschrift für Gottesdienst und kirchliche Kunst, and younger brother of the Rudolf Smend whom the young Otto listed as a major influence on his thinking (see " l . M y life," above). 21 (Heinrich) Karl (August) Oberdieck (b. 1858), pastor in Meensen from 1 8 8 5 until his retirement from the ministry in 1920. 2 2 Christian Theodor Drömann ( 1 8 6 3 - 1 9 2 3 ) , pastor in Waake near Göttingen and Eltze near Peine, author of many publications on liturgies and hymnody, and an early leader in the twentieth-century liturgical reform movement. 23 Arnold Mendelssohn ( 1 8 5 5 - 1 9 3 3 ) , professor of music in Cologne, Darmstadt, and Frankfurt and a prolific composer of church music.

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troduced in the right way." Another judges the hymn "simple, powerful, sonorous", a third "clear, really magnificent". Smend calls the composition " a work that towers above all the others submitted". In my opinion, its superiority appears especially in the following characteristics. It is especially suited for Lutheran congregations in that it is adapted without difficulty to the form of antiphonal singing that they use. In Thuringia, for example, the minister intones, "We all believe in one true G o d " ; the congregation replies, " w h o created earth and heaven"; and so on. T h e clear, powerful, and serene composition of the first line fits this use excellently. Furthermore, the melody is neither sweet nor ingratiating, and one must hear it a few times before one can internalize it. Then, however, it remains quite fixed in one's mind. One does not grow tired of it with repetition, and it does not lose its charm but acquires it. It is serious and strict without acerbity, sonorous without softness, and it has a distinct character without being affected. Once comprehended, it cannot be forgotten. The subtly different characterization of the opening, middle, and closing phrases corresponds properly and beautifully to the three groups of text. Each of them has its own distinct character, but the same style permeates them all. T h e opening is solemn, strict, objective, confessional. T h e middle phrase is one of contemplative calm with sober movements. T h e final phrase beautifully and properly expresses the hope of eternal salvation through subjective and melodious movements that vigorously press forward. The broad, unloading, fully resounding Amen is wonderful. Once the congregation is accustomed to the hymn, it would certainly possess something that would be impressive and valued each time it was used. O n the reverse side of the musical supplement is a special arrangement of the composition for four-voice choir. Allowing the choir to sing the hymn will, to be sure, always be only a substitute for congregational singing. But in cases when, for whatever reason, it will not work for the congregation to sing the hymn - and perhaps also for festival worship services and other exceptional cases - the choral arrangement is quite appropriate and in any case musically very well done. Wherever this confessional hymn is already part of the official liturgy (Saxony, Thuringia, Alsace, and in parts of Hesse, such as Giessen), or where individual congregations have a certain amount of liturgical freedom (for example, Bremen), one should try this melody in church. I would be very grateful if anyone wished to inform me when such an attempt was made and how it was done. I have already received some accounts, in part

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enthusiastic, about such attempts from those to whom the hymn had been shown ahead of time for evaluation. On the recommendation of one of these persons, the publisher has already printed the new melody, with text but without harmony, in the form of a small insert for hymnals. Those who use the hymn will have to determine the best way of introducing it into the order of worship. I would, however, like to pass on a recommendation that was made by the Pastoralkorrespondenz. The confirmands could sing the hymn every Sunday; if their number is large enough, they could sing it in harmony. In any case, congregations in the kingdom of Saxony and in Thuringia have used various melodies for the (three-verse) confessional hymn in place of the old Doric melody. But the new setting does more than just provide a new melody, however beautiful. It acquires contemporary significance from the possibility of being used instead of, or at least in addition to, the Roman creed (the so-called Apostles' Creed). The force of this last point will be widely felt even among those who lean somewhat to the right. Many signs - among them the favorable decree of the Prussian High Consistory, 24 the debate at the Berlin synod between von Soden and Lahusen, 25 and the circumstance that conservative newsletters like the Pastoralkorrespondenz have printed essays like the one repeatedly referred to - indicate that there is a willingness even on the right to remedy the difficulty. One can now justifiably expect those on the left who are individualists and all too subjective to abandon their arbitrary positions on the congregational confession, positions that must ultimately call into question the very possibility of having a congregational confession. The best way to remedy the situation and create peace would be to admit into the hymnals or congregational agendas the text of this worthy confessional hymn, as was sincerely and urgently recommended by Spitta 26 twenty years ago, a recommendation with which distinguished practi24 Presumably Otto means the decree of June 6, 1911, in which the High Consistory rejected the position that using the Apostles' Creed at confirmation signalled a literal endorsement of the entire creed. 2 5 Friedrich Lahusen ( 1 8 5 1 - 1 9 2 7 ) was one of the leading preachers of the day, at the time General Superintendent in Berlin, and eventually vice-president of the High Consistory. About this time he endorsed a form of ordination that did not require a literal subscription to the Apostles' Creed and was sharply attacked by journals on the theological right. Hermann Freiherr von Soden ( 1 8 5 2 - 1 9 1 4 ) was at the time on the theological faculty in Berlin and an avid collector of manuscripts and manuscript fragments of the New Testament. 26 Friedrich Spitta ( 1 8 5 2 - 1 9 2 4 ) , professor of theology from 1 8 8 7 in Strassbourg

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cal theologians have concurred. That would clear a middle ground on which people f r o m the right and the left could come together. The hymn is not the arbitrary product of any contemporary faction; its use is not simply an innovation. It only improves what has already been admitted into almost every agenda: a confessional hymn to be used instead of the R o m a n creed. This tradition goes back to Luther and already represents recognized practice in many German territorial churches. It is not some washed out formula that everyone can confess only because it really confesses nothing. Even dogmatic conservatives can undergird and amplify it directly with their usual catechetical tradition. Yet it is broad enough that no serious, sincere member of the church can be constrained by it. M a y all w h o have good will with regard to the present, dangerous situation of our church, whether they are on the right or the left, unite to make this middle ground accessible and real! If the impetus came f r o m both sides, perhaps the various factions would find themselves agreed to bring the subject up for consideration in the authoritative church bodies. Then, one hopes, it would be carried to completion. The present is a favorable time, because various churches are planning to reform their hymnals. The creed set to music O u r musical version of the creed is progressing nicely. Over 7000 copies of the small insert for hymnals have been sold, as have 1200 copies of the setting for four-voice choir and organ. Reports are multiplying that in one f o r m or another congregations are using this version. I ask all the Friends w h o have tried it to send me brief reports and tell me h o w they used it and with w h a t success. This version is certainly usable if a choir occasionally sings it. I have a report that that is even being done in small rural congregations - " t o the delight of the congregation". In this case the version was sung by a children's choir on festival days. This does not yet fulfill our desire to replace the Romanum27 completely in the liturgy, but it is a gratifying beginning. We should expect things to develop gradually. As our version becomes known, it will win the confiand from 1919 in Göttingen; editor of the Monatschrift für Gottesdienst und kirchliche Kunst. 11 Otto always calls the Apostles' Creed the Romanum, and correctly so. But if that name would catch on, so much the better. [Martin Rade's note]

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dence of congregations and in time, one hopes, become quite familiar. In this way the time may come when we can propose more vigorously that the song be included in hymnals and liturgies. We are not so far from that point as many think. I had already received promises from men who are most decidedly on the "right" to support the inclusion of this song in the hymnal at last year's synod of the Hannover church, if a proposal to do so had been made. Hymnals are now being discussed and revised everywhere, and everyone who has influence in these proceedings should forcefully support the inclusion of this song. They can point out that three German hymnals already include it and it is already being used in a number of local liturgies. Just recently our song has been included in the new hymnal of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hamburg as well as in the hymnal of the German congregations in England. Occasionally someone writes to say that there was no need for the new song, because his congregation was not using the Romanum anyway. But even in these cases I heartily request that the song be introduced, perhaps sung by a children's choir or some other choir as an addition to worship services on festival days. By doing this, one congregation will help others. And besides, it may prepare the way for replacing the Romanum at confirmation. For the Romanum is still used everywhere without question for confirmation, even where it is no longer a part of the Sunday liturgy. Whoever seriously desires that we finally proceed beyond simply protesting the Romanum should work with us. Couldn't the Friends in Württemberg manage to include the song in their new hymnal? The most recent issue of the Türmerjahrbuch contained an article entitled "Ein Weg zum kirchlichen Frieden" [A path to peace in the churches] that recommended the introduction of our musical version of the creed into hymnals and liturgies. At the same time, I have received from the Kunstdruckerei Künstlerbund Karlsruhe [Printing-house of the artists' league, Karlsruhe] four beautiful Steinhausen confirmation certificates in which our song is printed partly with and partly without the music. These certificates deserve a wide circulation. In congregations where it is too early to replace the Romanum at confirmation, they will show the confirmands in a clear and memorable fashion what is important in the confession: not the legendary but the ideal content, which our version summarizes simply and nobly.

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I might add that, along with Schuster and Thimme, 2 8 I have in mind to assemble a religious songbook suitable for use at home and in schools that will give expression to contemporary piety. Schuster will write about it in an upcoming issue of Die christliche Welt. I have recently written generally as follows to a friend in the ministry who is a gifted poet: "Allow what you preach on Sunday to filter through your soul so that it assumes the form of a song, not a song that fits into a 'lyrical album' but one that you would want to sing with your children at home, with your confirmands, and in your congregation." We want our book to preserve much that is old and genuinely good, but at least half of it should be contemporary. In his article, Schuster will make the same request to a wider audience. Whoever would like to contribute something, whether old or new, please do so. We have already received friendly encouragement from several quarters. When we have the verses assembled, we will look for people who can set them to music. Schuster will have more specific things to say in his article.

18. The church's mission in a secular society (1919) The following selection originally appeared in 1 9 1 9 in a book of essays by leading theologians devoted to the situation in postwar Germany. It was then reprinted as the first chapter of Otto's major book on liturgical reform (Otto 1925). Together with the selections on the Religiöser Menschheitsbund, it defines the shape of Otto's numerous practical efforts after the publication of The idea of the holy. The two relate to one another as foreign and domestic policy, respectively. Otto's "domestic policy" is noteworthy for many features, including the assertion of the need to address social problems before cultivating the religious life, the crystallization of Otto's interest in small groups rather than in social institutions, the endorsement of the separation of church and state (contrast Otto's campaign speech in 1913), a multi-faceted ex28 At the time Hermann Schuster (1874-1965) taught high school in Hannover and coedited both the Zeitschrift für den evangelischen Unterricht and the Theologische Literaturzeitung. Otto was friends with several Thimme's, but his correspondence with Wilhelm Thimme (see "5. Early political involvement", above) from 1911-1912 discusses liturgical matters extensively. See letters to Thimme in the University Library, Marburg, Hs. 797:20-24. No letters to Thimme from 1913-14 survive.

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tension of liberal economic principles to religious life, the transposition of techniques that Otto had advocated for mission work to home missions or "inner colonization", and the advocacy of a general education in worldviews and philosophy as a way of instilling an outlook favorable to religion. The essay, which broadly advocates a bourgeoisation of the proletariat, is the most socially daring piece that Otto ever wrote. It also provides evidence of a tight relation between Otto's conception of numinous experience and liberalism. Otto felt that liberal political and ecclesiastical policies, seasoned with a moderate amount of economic socialism, were needed to create the situation in which it was first possible for people to cultivate religious feelings. Source: "Die Missionspflicht der Kirche gegenüber der religionslosen Gesellschaft", in: Revolution und Kirche, ed. F. Thimme and E. Rolffs (Berlin, 1919), 273-300.

My theme is so comprehensive that it really requires an entire book and a set of collaborators for the various areas of religious practice. It would be best to found a journal and assemble a group of helpers to deal with these issues. What follows is only an overview that offers some hints. 1. At the heart of our theme stands a single question: H o w can we win for religion those who are not religious? This question invokes a whole series of others. With what means and in what ways does one cultivate religiosity? H o w can these means be augmented, made more effective, and applied in new directions? In general, how can the entire religious enterprise be improved and modernized? What new challenges do the changed circumstances pose, and what methods are best suited to meeting them? There is yet another question: What are the "irreligious" like? One set of them has been found in every age: those whom the religious proclamation reaches incompletely or not at all, the uninformed, the indifferent, the doubters, and those who simply reject religion. The special circumstances of our time have caused the number of these people to grow, but that number varies according to kind and class, and our leading question applies to each class differently. We should distinguish three forms of irreligion that are specifically modern. Different forces have given rise to each one. The first form characterizes those who are irreligious as a result of the general secularization of contemporary social practice. The second form characterizes those influenced by intellectual changes, "science", the modern world view, and modern values, especially in theoret-

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ical fields. Third and most important, there is the massive secularization of the "proletariat". To be sure, this movement is not unrelated to the first and second moments, but it also has its own special causes and problems. The first form necessarily arises as the modern, "secular" character makes itself felt in life, business and trade, society and state, culture and social interaction, morals and law and develops its own forms apart from theological guidance and shaping by the church. It seems to be spreading generally in both metropolitan and rural areas and in every social class. This movement does not so much entail enmity or opposition to religion and the church as competition and the presence of new, powerful, independent, secular interests. In making their own claims, these interests suppress and displace the religious interest and the forms of both individual and communal life that religion has defined. We have felt this tendency for some time, and in the future it will influence the life of our people much more intensely, because the struggle for existence and for the means of existence has reached tensions previously unheard of in both the individual and political arenas. The simplest and most basic of these interests will assert themselves and attract attention with a power more robust and a natural right more indisputable than has ever been seen before. Groups two and three entail not only competition with religion but also opposition to it. Throughout history, the need to argue against theories that oppose religion has followed it like a shadow, but the third group presents a problem that derives specifically from present circumstances and poses for us very specific challenges. To be sure, the "materialist view of history" has introduced the proletariat to materialism, "monism", and a complete set of other modern theories that are opposed to religion and church. But the deeper reason for its enmity to religion is not theoretical but practical. The rejection of religion by the proletariat is essentially a part of the "class struggle". The church and Christianity are understood as the inheritance of the upper classes, whom the proletariat wishes to oppose. They are the means by which the upper classes dominate, by which they keep the people in ignorance and in chains. They are the buttresses and guarantors of capitalism, the police state, and the conservative, reactionary system. We should also ask: What does it mean to win someone for religion? Does it mean to bring them back to one of the historical, established types of Christianity, to one of those closed systems which, as "con-

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fessions" or "sects", are associated with specific teachings, rituals, and social forms and whose time is past? Or does it mean to lead them into an updated, broader, and more elastic form of the older systems, a form that allows more freedom? Perhaps it means to bring them into a form of Christianity that is looser and freer, modernized and spiritualized, harmonized with the modern worldview and saturated with new values and ideals. Or perhaps it means to instill in them a more general religious and moral idealism, which is more a state of mind than a form of society or ritual, more a general attitude (Einschlag) than an independent moment of spiritual life, more an accompaniment to life than its highest or ultimate meaning. Even those who understand the matter in this last way will not be able to overlook the significance of the great, established, historical types of religion and their continuing force. They must recognize that these actual religions and their communities have provided for a long time the strongest centers and the major starting points for disseminating and cultivating religion. Conversely, those who find their ideal in bringing people back to the closed communities of confessional Christianity will not fail to recognize that today the challenge of winning people for religion has taken on the most general of forms and that even the fourth form mentioned above - winning people for a more general religious and moral idealism - must be pursued as zealously as possible. In any case the following points remain valid. Christianity in a deeper sense, in the fullest sense, is a "religion of salvation". As such, "repentance" and "conversion", "reconciliation" and "absolution", "rebirth" and " a life concealed in G o d " are its genuine mysteries and goals. To the extent, however, that this is what Christianity is, there has perhaps never been a "secularization" of the masses, for this Christianity is not and never has been a religion of the masses but a religion of the few, the qualified, the chosen, the called. One must sharply distinguish this inner Christianity from Christianity as a public and national religion, from second-hand Christianity. The latter has actually been - although not in the sense that one often means - to a much greater extent than today a social possession and a common religion. It is weaker and more general; it is, so to speak, the forecourt, not the holy of holies. It is more tradition, custom, and decorum than one's own experience, more "religiosity" than confession and doctrine. But even so, it is a wonderful, lofty good, and its loss would spell unbounded danger. We must release every force to hold it fast, and even that person to whom its mysteries are remote can be called upon to nurture it. And indeed, the church itself

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should welcome the collaboration of every force and will, even if it does nothing but further this second-hand Christianity. We should finally ask: Who should win the irreligious back to religion? The assigned theme answers, "the church". That points first of all to the professional representatives and nurturers of religion. What these people should actually do will be an important question. But what is most important is to understand how the work that needs to be carried out extends far beyond the church as an established institution and the circle of its professional advocates. Besides minister and religion teacher, synods and ecclesiastical authorities, congregations and entire church bodies, the work here requires old and new associations, the free or organized collaboration of the laity, the interest not only of all church members but of all religious people generally, even when they are no longer or have never been "churched" in a strict sense. And the "church", whose duty our theme identifies, must be a congregatici fìdelium [gathering of the faithful] in the broadest sense of the term. 2. With this understanding of our theme, we may now consider what ways and means there are to win people back to religion. Those that are ultimately the most important evade human intention and activity and can only be longed and prayed for. They include a spontaneous, new stirring of religious interest, desire, and craving, a heightened appearance of religious vigor and talent, apostolic zeal and prophetic character, and an outpouring and "blowing" of the spirit, which one cannot cause to happen but only wait for, because it "blows where it chooses". 2 9 After these means, which may be the most important but which lie outside the realm of human volition, the next most important instrument, and one to which all lesser means cannot be compared, lies within the realm of social action and volition, but the action and volition of the human community generally, not of the religious community specifically. I am referring to social reform. Even without social reform, it will be possible for true and heightened religious work to be effective among individuals. But without reform there is no hope that it will have an effect on "a secular society". For this reason, every religious person, regardless of specific religious orientation (Richtung), 30 must be a social reformer. Without a will to reform society, all talk about a duty to undertake mis29 John 3.8. 30 Not religious affiliation in the American sense but one's inclination to conservative or liberal Christianity.

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sionary activity in a secular society is simply meaningless. It makes no sense to call people to religion when the conduct of modern life and business robs men and increasingly women of the leisure - hours unburdened by work, Sundays, vacation days - which is necessary for nurturing the character and without which religion and devotion are absurd. It makes no sense to call people to religion when exhausted bodies and spirits can devote themselves only to the most necessary rest or to quick refreshment. As often as not, this exhaustion and lack of leisure characterizes the upper classes as well as the proletariat. But in addition, the proletariat suffers all the evils of poverty: the struggle for existence itself as an all-absorbing interest, wretched accommodations, disease, obstacles to a full family and social life, a lack of education, insufficient child care, the mechanization of the life of the mind through the mechanization of work, and the degradation and brutalization of one's entire existence. If we do not succeed in freeing the total character of modern life, especially of business life, from the pressure of competition, overwork, and restlessness, so that leisure is once again possible, if we do not succeed in solving "the social question" so that massive poverty disappears, we will not succeed in freeing the general populace for a higher life of the spirit. The possibility of making religion once again something that is generally practiced stands and falls with that freedom. But if we do succeed, then and only then is there a possibility that the general resistance of the proletariat to the influence of religion will diminish. If this is to happen, some unavoidable preconditions must be met. Class barriers must be eliminated. The lower and upper classes must sympathize and interact with one another. The "two peoples" must be united into one, organic, popular whole. The spiritual and cultural values of the burgherly classes must widely infiltrate the working classes. We must establish common popular education (standardized primary schools!). And the various classes must participate mutually in social interaction and associations. Only when these ends are achieved will it be possible to win people back to a common religious culture. Therefore, the first duty of all religious people is vigorous participation in the search for a general answer to the social question. That does not mean, however, that there are no other important and direct means of influencing the lower classes in the matter of religion, or that one must wait until the social problem has been solved before one can employ them. Many gratifying initiatives were begun long ago, and they need to be pursued vigorously. When one considers the church's at-

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titude to the proletariat, it is obvious why the proletarian classes do not come to church any longer. The church must supplement its usual methods and change in many respects. In many cases our paradigm must be not the "church" but the sects and the Salvation Army. Ordained (,beamteten) " p a s t o r s " and "preaching" must give way to popular orators and speeches and lectures, and as far as is possible these orators should be members of the "people". Each and every spiritual stirring that arises from the proletariat itself must be welcomed and, if requested, nurtured. Social and Social Democratic church leaders and preachers must not be proscribed but joyfully embraced; the so-called settlement movement 3 1 should be powerfully supported and immediately made a part of "practical theology"; evening lectures and discussions should be sponsored; popular religious literature should be created for a mass audience and supplied to public libraries; and libraries should be founded in churches and schools. It is worth exploring to what extent the work of the churches with the poor, the sick, and those seeking jobs, along with similar acts of compassion, should be expanded and put into the service of proclaiming the gospel. We should also explore whether congregations and ecclesiastical communities could and should use their funds to participate directly in such social undertakings as building apartments, workers' settlements, and small garden plots to be let out (Schrebergärten). I might also point out that the proletariat still generally retains its formal and legal church membership and as a result its right to vote in ecclesiastical elections. Until now, people have worried that it might one day exercise this right as a mass and assume positions in the governing boards of churches, the ministry, and church assemblies and thereby influence them according to its wishes. This worry should be transformed into an explicit desire, and one should immediately make the proletariat aware of its rights and remind it of its duty. First of all, one would thereby deprive the enemies of the churches of their strongest point of attack. "If it is true that the church has become the church of a specific class and an anti-social insti31

" S o c i a l settlements, associations of m e n a n d w o m e n of the educated classes w h o take up residence in the p o o r quarters of great cities for the p u r p o s e of bringing culture, knowledge, harmless recreation, a n d especially personal influence to bear u p o n the poor in order to better a n d brighten their lives. Practically, the w a t c h w o r d of such settlements is personal service" ( E n c y clopaedia Britannica 2 5 : 308). Although the "settlement m o v e m e n t " was m o s t active in Britain and N o r t h America, it a l s o had some success on the E u r o p e a n continent.

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tution, that is your fault. With the right to vote in ecclesiastical elections, you have a powerful means to shape the church according to your own ideals. But you have not used it. Therefore, you have only yourselves to blame." Second, it is true that such self-help on the part of the proletariat could result in many mistakes: strange, "free religious", "monistic", even "secular" governing boards, congregational educational efforts, preachers, and orientations. But the benefits would outweigh the losses. Such a development would attract to at least some form of religious activity and interest broad masses of the population that today completely reject religion. And after occasional, initial missteps, calm and salutary developments would begin. One must only have faith in the indestructible ability of religion to restore itself, to transfigure itself, and to make itself more profound, when it is once again stirred up and evoked. 3. Apart from collaboration in social reform, what can the religious community do directly to win back those who have left the church and to win new converts? Above all, it must do one thing without which nothing else will be of any use: it must gather together within itself its own religious heritage. It must increase among its own members the vigor and scope of this possession, broaden and deepen it and transform mere crumbs and fragments - for in the church today there is hardly anything more than crumbs and fragments - into a comprehensive attitude toward life, a characteristic purpose in life, its own religious style of life and at the same time a religious culture and character. These would then either attract or repel those who are outside the church, but in any case the church would have its own explicit, unambiguous identity and specific content. In this regard we must consider the following points. (a) We must overcome the naivete and the childlike, occasionally childish primitiveness that characterize our religious teachings and education. In these undertakings there is plenty of simplicitas, but no sancta - plenty of simplicity, but no holiness. Our people set out upon life and continue to live with the simplistic ideas and spiritual attitudes that they have acquired in their study for confirmation, in catechism, and in instruction when they were young - if they retain any religious ideas and spiritual attitudes at all. It is left entirely to chance whether and how they will complete their religious life and make it more profound. There are almost no means and methods available to them for cultivating their religious life further. Even preaching fails in this regard, for it communicates insights only in infrequent and isolated fragments, and it usually employs the means, concepts, principles, and logic of naive edification in a most

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primitive a t t e m p t to m a n i p u l a t e the feelings. It does n o t include any religious " w o r l d v i e w " t h a t aspires t o s o m e t h i n g t h a t is w h o l e a n d p r o f o u n d and t h a t c o m p e t e s with a n d opposes o t h e r worldviews, w h a t e v e r t h e i r source - a w o r l d v i e w that m a r k s a comprehensive u n d e r s t a n d i n g of life and p u r p o s e a n d creates a specific m a n n e r of living, a n ordered, extensive, m a t u r e , a n d nurtured w o r l d of ideas a n d motives suitable for a d u l t s . C o n t e m p o r a r y sermons c a n n o t include such a worldview, because w e have n o c o n t i n u i n g education in religion a n d in religious a n d m o r a l issues. I a m n o t t a l k i n g here a b o u t a n y kind of "apologetics", the a r t of d e f e n d i n g Christian positions against o p p o s i n g ones, b u t a m a t u r e and developed Christian cultivation (Bildung) t h a t h a s g r o w n beyond naivete t o b e c o m e rich a n d well-rounded. In the sixteenth a n d seventeenth centuries this w a s a conscious ideal, a n d it w a s o f t e n attained, b u t we have neglected it to o u r detriment. T h i s is true generally, but it is even m o r e t r u e of Christian ethics. W h a t is there t o lead us into the richness of t h e m o r a l life, to give us even t h e m o s t s u m m a r y a n d simple k n o w l e d g e of its m a n y dimensions a n d possibilities in even the m o s t m o d e s t f o r m s a n d areas of life? We stop teaching w h e n we really o u g h t first to begin teaching in earnest. 3 2 T h e right time f o r the kind of continuing e d u c a t i o n that I envision is n o t immediately after g r a d u a t i o n f r o m school. " C o n t i n u i n g educat i o n in religion" f o r fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds w o u l d not g o very far. R a t h e r , w h a t I have in mind is a deepening a n d f u r t h e r cultivation of religion for adults w h o have already m a d e some progress in the school of life. T h e necessary f o r m s m u s t either be invented or a d a p t e d : lect u r e s a n d courses a n d also, perhaps, series of s e r m o n s on interconnected t h e m e s . A n d this m u s t n o t be d o n e b y accident or merely as o p p o r t u n i ties present themselves; it must be organized a n d c o n d u c t e d methodically. O n e could construct a complete system of religious higher e d u c a t i o n for a d u l t s f r o m adult e d u c a t i o n classes in theology (in a very general sense) d o w n to the simplest a n d most basic series of lectures offered repeatedly t o congregations, educational societies, free associations, or the general public. O n c e p u t in place, this system w o u l d a t t r a c t a g r o w i n g clientele 32 Furthermore, we still give our teaching the most unpractical of forms. We always treat Christian and contemporary ideals of life by straining and reinterpreting the "ten commandments". These commandments may be venerable, but they are not at all sufficient. As a result, we create from the very beginning confusion about whether this manner of living is possible. [Otto's note]

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of workers and farmers, because the subjects being treated are the most interesting subjects that can be found. What is more thrilling and fascinating than a course on the Holy Scriptures, the prophets, the gospels, and Acts, once they are stripped of their dogmatic trappings and presented in their historical originality? And what is more interesting than questions about worldviews once one senses the problems and range and once one replaces edifying assurances, the sedating logic of sermons, and the minuscule world of naive religiosity with serious, theoretical discussion, history, the summons to understand and judge for oneself, the lofty flight of speculation and thought, and more generally once one assumes that one is addressing people who have lost their naivete through schooling, newspapers, vocational training, and a general, broad cultivation? It is obvious that such an educated treatment of religion would have to be quite different from the instruction that has prevailed up until now in both higher and lower schools. Only in this way will the appropriate literature, which we already have in large quantities, become truly effective and find an audience. We must also dispense with an all too comfortable, impressionistic apologetics that plays on emotions and replace it with treatments that, while still popular, are also methodical and scholarly. (b) Along with a heightened "cultivation of religion" we need to heighten religious inwardness itself through specifically religious methods, a methodology of religious experience and piety. I know that the expression, "methodology of piety", will turn many people off. Protestants are still all too often prejudiced against anything that looks like an emotional Methodism. And in any case we find the notion of a methodical nurturing of feelings strange and repulsive. Exercitia 'exercises', spiritual training, "retreats", a spiritual director, devotions for their own sake, stages of contemplation and meditation, the artificial nurturing and gradation of prayer life - all this, and whatever else one might care to add, strikes us as "mysticism", "Catholicism", and "fanaticism". Asceticism, the pursuit of loneliness, life in a small and intimate community, an elevated ritual and devotional life seem monastic and medieval. And yet there would be nothing more "modern", more sound, and more necessary for modern, distracted, harried people. The life of the emotions generally, and of religious emotions specifically, requires methodical training and wise, planned practice. When its stimulation is left to chance, when its development is pursued amateurishly or is altogether neglected, it remains nothing more than a fragment, an isolated stirring, an image vague

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in form and divorced from conduct. Without a doubt, the first requirement is to form communities for specifically religious purposes. Only in the "church" is religious vigor and fervor enkindled and augmented. But in its original sense the "church" is not that vast generality of large groups united by external confessions, in which all belong to all and so, in a stricter sense, no one belongs to anyone. Instead, the "church" is at heart a brotherhood, that is, a small limited community in which one person knows the other and lives with the other in a genuine community of feeling and of striving, of exchange and of shared spiritual possessions, of mutual stimulation and elevation. Only when such small communities band together once again and flourish can we expect a heightening of religion and of its power to attract. This is responsible for the power of "sects", and precisely their power to attract followers. The less sophisticated (Differenzierte) seeks and needs such a home for communal life and association. To a great extent this accounts for the appeal of purely political and social organizations as well. Whether it will be possible to meet this need within the confines of the existing individual local congregations is questionable. It would be good if the congregations provided the point of departure. But in all likelihood other powerful impulses will eventually evoke other forms, such as societies formed to address special needs or to advance specific theological tendencies and orientations, groups gathered around a particular leader, and small circles of friends. The Catholic church developed all of these things long ago in its "third order", prayer-communities, and brotherhoods. The Protestant "community movement" 3 3 has developed them, too. And among liberal Protestants there have already been attempts in this direction. Such attempts include occasional assemblies of religious individuals and groups who share similar feelings. These assemblies, which are becoming ever more numerous, meet for several days at a time and provide an opportunity for participants to encourage one another through lectures, shared worship services, and friendly conversation. Then there are guest-bouses, where visitors stay for several weeks at a time and seek both physical and spiritual healing and strengthening, for example, Rev. Blumhard[t]'s Bad Boll, the "Christian World House" in Friedrichroda, and Dr. Miiller's Mainberg Castle. 34 As places for spiritual assembly and retreat, such 33 Begun in Germany in 1875 under the influence of both British Methodism and German Pietism. In supposed imitation of the earliest Christians, its members came together for edification and mutual service. 34 Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805-1880) became famous as a faith-healer;

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guest houses will doubtless become much more numerous in the near future as a result of the enormous shocks that emotional life has sustained in our time. They will surely have a direct effect on those who have lost their religious roots and homes. In time they should be generally present at baths and sanatoria and provide opportunities for "retreats" in a modern sense, that is, an occasional withdrawal from one's occupation and worldly affairs for a more intense devotional practice, reflection, and introspection. Without such edification religious life grows pale and breaks down, regardless of whether it is Catholic or Protestant. Only religion itself can win people back to religion. From this principle it follows that people can only be won back to religion when religious persons nurture a powerful, ardent religious experience and heritage, first of all among themselves. Such age-old methods as those just named help accomplish that purpose. We should not reject them just because they are no longer "contemporary". Once these methods are used, they will reveal themselves to be very modern. The tremendous, nervous busyness of our age, the overexcitement and overburdening of business and professional life, and now especially the mighty shock to the emotional life that every class and group has experienced directly seek such outlets. In Japan businessmen have for a long time sought out the monasteries of the contemplative school of Zen Buddhism in order to find in religious reflection a renewed freshness and vigor for practical life. Today we see how among us, too, various needs express themselves in the apocryphal stirrings of imitation Hinduism, neo-Buddhism, and theosophy. Christian contemplation could satisfy these needs much more purely, if only its methods were made available. 4. Must Christianity change the content and form of its proclamation if it is to win back those who have left and win new converts? The content of Christianity is eternal and as such eternally modern and "winning". That is even true of its strict otherworldliness (Überweltlichkeit und Jenseitigkeit). Taken purely psychologically, Christianity possesses powers to impress the heart and conscience that constantly erupt and, in 1 8 5 3 he established at Bad Boll in the vicinity of Göppingen, Baden-Württemberg, a place for the sick to congregate and be healed. In 1 9 1 9 "The Friends of Die christliche Welt" established a retreat house in Friedrichroda outside Gotha for members and those in sympathy with them. Johannes Müller ( 1 8 6 4 - 1 9 4 9 ) was a Protestant religious writer who advocated a "primal", "personal" lifestyle and in 1 9 0 3 founded at Schloß Mainberg a meeting place for religious seekers.

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if they take the right form, ultimately evict other, competing motives and ideals. Through these powers Christianity will continue to hold its own in its naive and traditional form and will continue to make new conquests among the naive. But to appeal to those who have lost their naivete - and today that includes great masses of our people - and to the educated classes, Christianity will ultimately have to alter its naive and traditional character and become thoroughly modern. Its idea of God, its experience of God, its notion of salvation as an absolving of the conscience and spiritual liberation, its moral ideals, its inwardness, and its emotional and volitional forces are today as young and as magnificent as they were on its very first day. They constitute the real essence of Christianity. They are capable of joining with every really modern value and every deeper ethical valuation and objective, and they will do so today as Christianity continues to grow, develop, and rise higher, just as they have done in every preceding period. Today, when philosophy and more general culture have turned away from materialism and skepticism to a renewed idealism (Geistigkeit) and a deeper grasp of existence, people are more open to these essential aspects of Christianity than they have been in the past twenty years or so. It is possible to say without exaggeration that in many respects "Christian-ism", unlike other "-isms", looks thoroughly "modern" today. But this content is covered over by the husks of ancient, naive views of the world and of history. Still today it is wrapped in myths and legends and a dogmatics permeated by mythology. Those members of the educated class of today who are alienated from religion will never again accept these wrappings. If Christianity wants to make new conquests among these people, it must become thoroughly modern and liberate the spirit from the accidental, historical forms in which it is bound. The "church" must not hesitate and wait and allow its form to be destroyed from the outside. Instead, it must lead the way. The master can shatter the form, with a wise hand at the right time.35

The church must itself introduce into its instruction the concepts of saga and legend and the ways they differ from history. It must show how even in a people's mythical creations a divine spirit and eternal ideas are foreshadowed and at work. In this way it must protect the persistent, edifying value of sacred traditions and indeed make clearly visible how 35 Friedrich von Schiller (1799 [19071), H· 342-343.

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they have been conditioned by their own temporal circumstances. It must acquire a feeling for the way contemporary science views the world and nature and instead of ignoring or obscuring the issue, it must show how the old faith and the new science can be conjoined. The church must itself do this, in calm confidence and conviction, especially when it teaches the younger generation. Then the shocks and crises that so many fear will be precluded. To be sure, we should not overvalue this business of criticizing and purifying instructional activity from the detritus of tradition as a way of winning back the educated classes. What should and can win these people back is not criticism and deconstruction (Abbau) but spiritual content. But this content must insist for its own sake upon its truth and justification in the face of a mature, modern knowledge of the world and of history. At the same time, a settling of accounts with modern knowledge and a concomitant rejection of naive and impossible traditions are the unavoidable precondition for establishing Christianity as a cultured religion (Bildungsreligion) and as a religion for educated classes that have left naivete behind. What this demands is the widest possible freedom in formulating and framing religious ideas and convictions. This freedom requires us to break decisively with what until now have been the goals and procedures of every Christian group. Previously Christian groups have sought the greatest possible uniformity, exclusivity, and agreement, at least in doctrine and usually in ritual and practice as well. In contrast, we must recognize that especially in religious matters it is wrong to seek universal agreement, that in religion it is valuable to pursue distinctiveness and plurality and to guarantee the rights of small groups and minorities. The fear of "splintering" is for the most part exaggerated. The Christian principle is one of fundamental unity. It has the power - and it will continue to demonstrate that power - to renew itself, overcome fragmentation, and remain a tie that binds many together, despite all diversity. We should trust its power to do so and allow it the room to establish itself among the plurality of its forms. Recall what I said above about the "forecourt" and the "holy of holies". The "church" cannot and ought no longer allow itself the luxury of proscribing or excluding certain theological "orientations" or pronounced individualism. Every ability, every gift, every serious desire to cooperate for the advancement of religion and Christianity, even in the vaguest or most general sense, must be welcome in the general Christian association. The only things

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required are a desire to apply oneself to the collective purpose and a purity of disposition and motive. The results will look drastic: diverse groups will form; the communities that now exist will split according to specific orientations and convictions; a variety of forms of preaching and ritual will exist side by side; and some people will abandon liturgies and confessional formulas. But we will also experience how quickly and easily not the feared chaos but an agreement in fundamentals, a coming together of the various groups, and voluntary adjustments return. Through a reciprocal give and take in complete freedom, we will experience how much more powerful the forces that build a community are than those that tear it apart. The sharp differences between "right" and "left" that occasionally still find partisans today are simply constructions. In a complete spectrum of minute transitions and gradations these "orientations" would lie right next to each other. It is possible to construct series according to completely different distinctions: for example, "high church" and "low church", an emphasis on ritual or an emphasis on preaching, individual and communal, pietistic and intellectualistic, active and contemplative, sect-type and church-type. These categorizations would parallel and intersect the distinction between right and left in various ways. In doing so, they would increase the diversity of forms, but they would also create elements in every variety of the mixture that would bind the extremes together and establish the unity of the whole by making the boundaries and transitions fluid. In all likelihood, this unity would also make possible external, constitutional unity, provided wisdom and the gift of kybernësis 'leadership' 36 were present. Over a century ago, Schleiermacher proposed such an ideal of church-building in his speeches On religion (Schleiermacher 1958). We hope that today the time is riper for his suggestions than it was then. For certainly only a church so conceived can ever win back and retain the broad classes who have become secularized. 5. The institutionalized ministry has and will continue to have the chief responsibility for all church work, including that of winning people back to the church. But it, too, must be modernized to meet the new challenges. We need completely new forms of the ecclesiastical office. "Preachers" will be required for tasks that frequently cannot be accomplished within the scope and in conjunction with the burdens of the parish ministry. "If the apostle Paul were to return today to preach, he would . . . found a 36 An allusion to 1 Corinthians 12.28.

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newspaper." T h a t is what Bishop Kettler 3 7 is supposed to have said once. It is certain that at present religious proclamation must work completely differently than it has in the past. It must use the press and writing, individual lectures, lecture-courses, and traveling lectures, and activities not limited to particular congregations or places. Preachers who write, travel, and lecture must supplement the work of parish pastors, and special gifts and tasks must give rise to an entirely new division of callings and work. The methods of the missionaries must be introduced into and become models for the churches at home. But a large proportion of these tasks will still be delegated to sedentary parish pastors, especially in the large cities. The quality of their accomplishments must improve considerably, if they are to do justice to the spiritual demands of an educated public. Both, 3 8 however, can be accomplished only if ministers are freed from the burdens of an excessive number o f "official duties" and from the mass production of sermons. Even a genius cannot produce many sermons of quality when he must produce sixty or more a year, to say nothing of the still greater number of additional speeches and activities. In this regard, a very simple scheme could help ease the burden considerably: pulpit and sermon exchanges. Very few average preachers can produce a hundred good sermons in a year, but very many of them can produce twenty. With these twenty they could preach one after another in different pulpits and thus provide several congregations with excellent service. And just as a speaker occasionally presents the same lecture to five or ten audiences, and just as a minister must occasionally preach the same Sunday sermon to three or four nearby villages, so it would be possible to undertake a more general pulpit exchange. That would result in a significant savings in energy, leisure for deeper and more fundamental reflection and preparation, and a great increase in the quality of sermons and the freshness and efficiency of the preacher. We should set preachers "in motion". That will at one and the same time ease their burdens and make them more efficient. And we should not hesitate to do this in the country as well as in cities. We have trains for many purposes; one of them should be "the kingdom of G o d " . In addition, men who possess a special talent for producing unusually good sermons must be free to be3 7 Presumably Wilhelm Emmanuel, Freiherr von Ketteler ( 1 8 1 1 - 1 8 7 7 ) , who became bishop of Mainz in 1 8 5 0 . In addition to playing a leading role in opposing the notion of papal infallibility in the 1 8 7 0 s , Ketteler was an intense advocate for social causes and the rights of labor. 3 8 The reference is unclear.

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come traveling or itinerant preachers, so that as many congregations as possible have the opportunity to hear the Word of God proclaimed in an outstanding manner several times a year. Here, too, it is worthwhile to distinguish preachers who preach impressive, popular, rousing sermons from those with a gift for deeply probing talks or for artful, lofty addresses. The kind of preacher to be employed should be determined by the circumstances and requirements of the classes, interests, and needs of the congregation. I would also like to make several other hints and suggestions for easing the burden and ennobling the office of ministry: the use of gifted and educated laypersons for preaching, lecturing, pastoral care, working with associations, and serving the sick and the poor; the training of a clerus minor in organized but somewhat free form; the establishment of ecclesiastical offices for women; the use of candidates for degrees to perform minor congregational services; and the collaboration of church elders in such matters as ministerial offices (e.g., baptisms, marriages, and funerals) and worship services besides those on Sunday mornings. All of these things would enhance the quality of church administration, but in doing that they would also help win back people who have left the church and allow religious impulses to permeate the entire life of our people. It is also especially necessary to reform theological education, which must become modern and much more diverse. Until now, theological education has emphasized historical and philological studies. Today it must focus on developing a religious worldview and ethics, familiarizing students with the modern life of the mind and the pressing issues of the recent past and present, engaging modern worldviews and intellectual trends in discussion, and imparting a knowledge of the recent and contemporary history of the church, the mind, and society. Given the ever growing quantity of material that a theological education must address, we must discriminate among different tasks and duties according to a person's talents and calling. As theology expands, it is becoming increasingly impossible for every student to study each area equally well. Simply for reasons of time, it will eventually become necessary for some students to be excused from studying, say, Hebrew, so that they can study other fields, and vice versa. On the basis of their preferences and abilities, students could pursue different programs adapted to the specific form of ministry that interests them and in which they want to work: city or country; mission work or parish ministry; theoretical, instructional,

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or literary activity or community work; religious social service; organizational activity; pastoral care and spiritual direction; or more general work. In each area we should create opportunities for students to begin working on their own as soon as possible and to collaborate in some practical task, however modest. After spending so many years in school, they must be allowed to do something practical early in their training. It is unnatural for people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two or twenty-four to spend all their time absorbing information, preparing for exams, and thinking only about theories. A small amount of early, practical activity during one's studies would be a refreshing and encouraging incentive. 6. What I have just said really implies a reform of our entire system of religious education. Nothing can be more important to winning people back to religion than modernizing instruction in religion and making it interesting and alive. This goal is too broad to treat here; it requires separate discussion. I will only touch upon several points that pertain most directly to our theme. Despite the progressive secularization of our schools, one indirect but very important means of making our educated classes sympathetic once again to religious questions and open to religious influences remains open to religious people. It is to be hoped that they will make decisive use of this means, especially since it does not require them to advocate religion but simply to serve well-recognized interests of intellectual cultivation. I have in mind the energetic demand that schools, no matter how "secular", take up questions of general worldview and not eliminate from their curricula and objectives the possibility of helping students develop a deeper and more intelligent outlook on the world. In this area our schools have simply committed an unforgivable sin, and they require absolute and fundamental reform. True, schools cannot, for reasons of state, promote and teach a specific worldview as "correct". But it is their duty to show more mature students how they can acquire a more mature outlook on the world. They must make students aware of the great, basic problems and the most necessary events of their history. In addition, they should provide students with at least an initial orientation and introduction to issues of epistemology. The appropriate way for German schools to do this would be to provide more advanced students with an introduction to Kant's critique of reason. Let them adopt or oppose Kantianism as they choose. N o one today can address philosophical questions and issues pertaining to a general outlook on the world without first climb-

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ing to the Kantian summit, no matter what way he may take from there. And whatever form it takes, such a "philosophical propaedeutic" also opens the door for religious questions. If our schools had provided a solid introduction to philosophy, we would have been spared the despicable spiritual bankruptcy that is now widespread among our educated people, namely, materialism and Haeckel's naive hylozoism. 39 No doubt an introduction to philosophy would also constrain the naive dogmatism promoted by the church. But it would create in broad segments of the population a more profound engagement with problems and a level of intellectual maturity that would permit a genuine debate on questions of worldview and enable idealistic and religious convictions to be grounded systematically and in principle. For this reason, returning philosophy to the curriculum and to general education is a precondition and essential instrument for addressing our present theme. 7. It is difficult to say whether congregational worship can really be of service in the task of winning people back to the church and whether for this reason it should be made "more attractive" and "more interesting". For religious people, worship is "interesting" to the extent that it fully meets religious needs and goals. Moreover, it is only in this way that worship life can legitimately, properly, and effectively win people back to the church. In this regard, much is possible, and we should demand that worship be enhanced, intensified, and renewed, and that the means of expressing religious feelings become more numerous and refined. (a) I have already spoken about the need to modernize and enhance preaching. But a reform of preaching may not be the most important task; it is certainly not the only task. It is at least as important to transform what are today congregational meetings heavy on instruction into genuine worship, with solemnity, devotion, the experience of the numen praesens [presence of the numinous], and a sacramental and sacrificial character. In other words, it is necessary for worship to make religion a living act. Only in that way will it become "interesting" and attractive. N o t only preaching but congregational participation, hymns, prayers, and the whole institution are in urgent need of modernization. Instead 39 Ernst (Heinrich Philipp August) Haeckel (1834-1919) was a leading advocate of Darwin's views in Germany best known for his dictum that at times ontogeny replicates phylogeny. He advocated a "monism" that rejected any dualism between matter and consciousness, including any materialism that derived consciousness from matter, and saw the world as constituted from a substance that on every level had traits of both matter and consciousness.

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of uniformity there should be diversity and a profusion of forms; instead of standardized prayers approved by the consistory there should be either a prayer that grows from one's own stillness and sterility, which are often frightening, or else prayers composed by the masters and virtuosi of religious feeling and its expression; instead of the service being always and everywhere the same, there should be the greatest possible adaptation to circumstance, time, place, and position. In addition, a wide variety of worship forms should be available, from great, general congregational celebrations in the fixed forms of strict liturgies to intimate, communal devotions in extemporaneous forms that address specific needs. In all things, however, there should be the greatest possible stimulus to and fostering of one's own ritual expressions, expressions that need not displace old, venerable traditions but that must always complete and permeate them in new and independent fashion. Feelings have a will to be productive, and their productions enhance feelings and keep them alive. That is especially true of hymns. Our fixed and unchanging hymnals endanger religion's life and its ability to recruit. We do not need to go to the other extreme and compose a new set of songs for each week, as the Salvation Army does for the War cry. But we must insure that our era, too, produces hymns and religious poems. That is difficult to do if there is no demand for new works and if those that are composed are not used. In times when hymn-writing flourished, hymnals were not established, semi-canonical codices, and it was easy to introduce a new hymn into congregational and liturgical usage. There must be a demand and a direct use for art, because artists work above all for the present. Poets do not compose on the remote possibility that, after fifty years, their work will be canonized. It is for this reason that a common hymnal for all of Germany is a dubious idea, although people often advocate such a hymnal. There are other ways to achieve the greatest possible good that can result from a common store of hymns. Creating a thoroughgoing uniformity would kill even what little we now have of diversity, the incentive and stimulus to change, and the joy and liveliness of contemporary creation. The same holds true for the composition of church music, for original creation in the area of ritual and ceremony, for the composition of meaningful prayers, and for innovation in the overall shape of the liturgy. None of these can be manufactured by official decree. They require religious and artistic intuition and inspiration and a talent for original creation and invention that stands on a par with poetic inspiration. Indeed, it would be both modern and appealing to the unchurched

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to grant freedom to creative talent and allow its fructifying streams to flow through our rather dry worship services. But if creative talent is to be productive, certain requirements must be met. Congregations must be willing to sing what comes not from an authorized hymnal but fresh from the heart and the pen. They must also be willing and eager to take up and use items that have not been part of the liturgy for the last three hundred years. Otherwise, one slowly but methodically banishes the spirit, content with whatever it leaves behind. Christians have often demanded the freedom to create their own forms and choose their own liturgy; they have done so in the interests of various theological orientations, and they have been justified in doing so. But my position is actually much more significant for all of religious life, however little it has been valued in the past. I repeat: if we want to revive religion and insure that it has the power to expand, we must create a compelling, lively, and enlivening worship life. That requires inspired originality and productive creativity. In order to stimulate creativity and set it free, we must take up and use what it produces and allow its producers to compete freely. Give them this, and we will hear the stirring of the spirit. We should not fear unlimited plurality and formlessness. Rather, competition itself provides the strongest principle of selection, and one that enhances quality while it restricts quantity. It preserves whatever proves valuable and rejects everything that does not. As in every instance of the "survival of the fittest",40 what results will have the highest quality and the greatest utility but at the same time display a relatively small number of types. (b) To modernize ritual means, among other things, to adapt it to temporal circumstances that can no longer be changed. Sunday is no longer simply "the Lord's day" but almost more importantly a day of relaxation and enjoyment. Let us make sure that it also remains "the Lord's day". It will be necessary to adjust the church's calendar and schedule to the many requirements of secular life and to the times that businessmen and professionals have free, for example, to adjust the days for festivals by establishing a set date for Easter and moving festivals from weekdays to Sundays. It is at least as canonical to conduct worship services for waiters on Friday evenings at midnight as it is to conduct high masses at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday for the convenience of the high nobility who "se lèvent'" late. It is also canonical to hold worship services in the open air at travel resorts and places for sport and recreation 4 0 English in original.

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for the benefit of travelers, Wandervogel,41 and those seeking relaxation and recreation. To hesitate in this regard is to exhibit prudishness, or rather, inflexibility and a lack of imagination. These vices erect barriers whenever the church becomes an established institution and no longer has a need to establish and restore itself through constant evangelism and resourcefulness. 8. The preceding point leads directly to two others. Granted, these two points deal with external matters, but they are still of the utmost significance for winning people back to the church. I have in mind the separation of church and state and the internal democratization of the church. Anyone who looks at the church from the inside and especially at the question of winning people back to the church must have desired both of these things for a long time. 42 Clearly, one result of a separation of church and state will be that a great number of people will permit their relationship to the church to become even more slack than it is now. Such separation will mean an end to national guarantees for Christianity as the common morality, to compulsory universal education in religion, to the many direct and indirect preferences granted those who support Christianity, and finally to the financial provision for religious undertakings and to the guarantee of their fiscal security. But it is also clearly a matter of indifference if all these losses occasion many to develop a looser relationship with the church, at least if the phrase "relationship with the church" means anything worthwhile. It is only possible to have a genuine revival within the church and win people over from the outside if the relationship between church and state is restructured. On the one hand, it is only through such means that the religious community can obtain complete freedom to act and to define itself on the basis of its own inner impulses, without regard for the secondary concerns of state supervisors and commissioners and their lawyers' instincts. Only then can the church define itself on the basis of its own innate originality and abilities and in accordance with its own needs and requirements. This is even more proper for Protestantism than for Catholicism, because the institutional character of Catholicism somewhat 41 German youth w h o took to hiking and camping as an escape from the constraints of city life. 4 2 N o t , apparently, Otto himself, however, for in 1913 he campaigned specifically against separation of church and state. See "7. Rudolf Otto, National Liberal candidate", above.

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resembles a state, and that makes it much more capable of relations with and alliances to the state. But Protestantism endangers its very soul when it is regulated and organized by the state. On the other hand, who can doubt that for those segments of the proletariat that are opposed to religion every entanglement of the church with the state creates a gate that is permanently shut? Who can doubt that today the compulsory religious education provided by the state no longer produces even a habitual Christianity? It is only effective among those who would in any case seek out and respect freely offered, noncompulsory instruction. If we were to eliminate the compulsion (and the dogmatism) and give religious instruction a lively form, it would retain the students it has today and also attract many who today reject religion. Indeed, there would be many, even among dissidents, who would not begrudge their children the opportunity at least to learn what the religion of the people was about, if instruction were not compulsory and tedious. A separation of church and state will contribute directly to the reinvigoration of religious instruction. It will remove for the instructors, too, the compulsory nature of religious education and permit a genuine freedom of choice. Religious instruction can only be living when instructors are free to teach what they choose. It is self-contradictory to teach a compulsory religion. There will be no shortage of voluntary students of religion, just as there is no shortage of students for the noncompulsory higher schools. And there would be even less of a shortage if one were to introduce for prospective teachers the system of special subjects that is in use for high school teachers and allow elementary school teachers to specialize in particular subjects according to their abilities and preferences. (This development would raise the status of elementary school teachers and make education for teachers more thorough by means of a chosen specialty.) But the moment that I first mentioned is much more important for the church in the separation of church and state: the church would assume responsibility for its own existence, and that in turn would awaken, sift, and enliven it, arouse all its energy, evoke talents and creativity, and make the church attractive. The protection and support that the state provides has the effect of making the church comfortable and lulling it to sleep. It makes the workings of the church look clumsy and out of date, naturally to its detriment. This is in sharp contrast to the activity of the great religious societies, such as missionary societies, and to the appealing industriousness of the sects. One should also not think that by guaranteeing the essential existence of the church, the state frees

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it to direct its attention and powers to other tasks, such as the task of propagation. Show me where this is being done! Do "established" churches have any greater powers of propagation or any greater appeal than others? No, a guaranteed existence easily becomes a complacent existence. But if one must stand on one's own two feet, that engages the will and spurs one on to achievements. It is understandable why those who have the interests of the state at heart, say, superintendents of the police, would oppose a separation of church and state. But it is harder to understand how people can believe that they must oppose that separation for the sake of religion, especially if they care at all about winning secular society back to the church. Closely connected with the separation of church and state is the democratization of the church and its constitution. Among other things, democratization implies the greatest possible independence for individual congregations and the greatest possible freedom to found separate groups. (In these respects the movement to democracy returns to its historical origins in ancient "Congregationalism".) Democratization also implies that every voting (kirchenmündig) member of the congregation is equal, that a congregation has the right to elect its own minister and church council, that synodical representatives are elected directly, that the officers and administrators of a church are not only elected by but also subject to the control of the entire church membership, and that the various groups and minorities in the church enjoy proportional representation. Conservatives have already emphasized how such apparently external matters could influence the inner life of the church. I have already acknowledged that certain dangers accompany such a system, especially when the church is making a transition to it. But these dangers do not at all mitigate the stimulus to lively, interested, collaborative, responsible, and creative church membership that this move would create. Democratization is absolutely required if we are to revive our church life. People often talk about the need to improve our church life. When the shocks of transition to democracy are over, we will see how in this sphere, too, quality increases when elections are held, when people select their own superiors, and when individual talents are valued. Energetic, vigorous, and promising efforts will emerge much more readily than previously and replace the mediocrity and chance that have prevailed until now. Churches organized democratically would be thoroughly modern. They would appeal to people of talent and ability, and they would be generally attractive, because personality, personal initia-

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tive, and - that most beautiful bloom of true democracy - personal leadership would prevail, not institutions and authorities. 43 We began our discussion of how to win unchurched classes back to the church with the superhuman and proceeded to the human, moving from the internal to the external. But the topics that I have discussed are all interrelated. Democratization and the freeing of the churches [from the state] are not so much things that we will do through our own volition as things that we will experience as a result of divine governance. Everything that I have mentioned will come into play jointly. And I am quite convinced that these developments will meet with success. The age of religion and the era of Christianity are not past; they have just begun. What was for a long time a fossilized morality and social heritage, preserved and guaranteed by authoritarian protection and secured by tradition, will necessarily shatter and break. But it will rise up again, regain its nobility, and recover what it has lost in the joy and strength of independence and responsibility. Above all, spiritual energy will reach the greatest heights and religion will enter its greatest age, when humanity first achieves a balance of power in political and social realms. Then spiritual energy will be free to permeate all of human life, from the external to the internal. The kingdom of God lies before us, not behind us.

43 This last point is so powerful that in all seriousness one could reintroduce into the most modern Protestantism an item usually recommended by those with more antiquarian leanings: the office of bishop. It would be more natural to place at the pinnacle of a modern, democratic, ecclesiastical community not a "consistory" or a "supreme governing board" but a bishop who, like the president of a republican state, would be chosen in a free and general election on the basis of merit, talent, and achievements. Such a bishop would have the right to initiate undertakings himself. He would not govern bureaucratically but guide personally, within the constraints of term elections and new elections. One possible model for this kind of leader is the office of bishop among Wesleyan Methodists. [Otto's note]

E. Ethical reflections

Otto had been invited to give the prestigious Gifford lectures for 1933, but he declined for reasons of health. Had he accepted, his theme would have been "Sittengesetz und Gotteswille" [Moral law and the will of God] (Boozer 1977: 373). In the last ten years of his life Otto gave intense attention to ethics. In doing so, he began to develop what critics like Walter Baetke and Friedrich Feigel had suggested was impossible: a full-blown ethics consistent with The idea of the holy. He also advanced a full reworking of Kantian positions. Otto's essays on ethics were printed together for the first time in 1981. The two that follow are only a sample. The first essay was chosen because it is relatively brief, because it is the first in a series of essays, and, most interestingly, because it illustrates, at least in translation, the tension between Otto's insistence on the primacy of experience in religion and the more recent insistence on the primacy of language and culture (see "Introduction", above; cp. Lindbeck 1984: 30-45). The second essay, the first of Otto's ethical writings to appear in book form (Otto 1940), is a significant, concise statement on a classical topic in European theology and philosophy. It was written from Otto's sickbed in the weeks before he died and thus contains his last published words (Otto 1940: 19-21). Together, the two essays provide a mature, theoretical statement of the position from which Otto would have surveyed his earlier political, social, and ecclesiatical activities.

19. On feeling guilty ( 1 9 3 1 ) This selection illustrates how Otto sought to develop an ethics through a subtle analysis of moral feelings. In a sense, it may be taken as an emotionalist analogue to ordinary-language philosophy: Otto thinks of himself as appealing not to the way we usually speak but to the way that he, and presumably his readers, ordinarily feel. In an extended note, however, Otto makes clear that in his vocabulary a "feeling" is not an

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"emotion" but an intuition or vague cognition, what we might call an apprehension that precedes full comprehension. Furthermore, by the end of the article, originally entitled "The feeling of guilt and its implications", Otto has begun to "demonstrate" that feelings of guilt have ontological as well as moral implications. Otto continued this line of reasoning in the next two issues of the Zeitschrift für Religionspsychologie (Otto 1931a, cp. 1981: 143-174). He began his article on "The feeling of responsibility" by identifying further implications of the feeling of guilt: responsibility, freedom, the objectivity of fundamental moral concepts, and perhaps most strikingly, the cognition of self. In discussing the last implication, Otto (1981: 147) construes, then revises, Descartes's famous cogito as follows: I know and can know nothing of my Being (Sein) without knowing in some way how I am ( Wie-Sein), that is, without knowing some manner in which I am, whether as thinking, feeling, acting, or in some other way. Nowhere, however, is Descartes's claim more powerful than in the recognition, "I am guilty." Peccavi ergo sum [I have sinned, therefore I am] is much more binding than cogito ergo sum [I think, therefore I am].

Perhaps, but the process of translation highlights what would seem to be a significant problem for Otto's approach. The emotional distinctions that Otto continually draws are clear in German but obscure in English. For example, in §10 his argument depends on extensions of the German word, schuldig 'guilty', that are not present in English. To what extent, then, is Otto's account of guilt an explication of a pre-rational, precognitive "feeling", and to what extent is it simply an extended excursus on the possibilities of the German moral vocabulary?1 Source: "Das Schuldgefühl und seine Implikationen", Zeitschrift für Religionspsychologie 4, no. 1 (1931): 1-19; reprinted in: Aufsätze zur Ethik, ed. Jack Stewart Boozer (Munich: C . H . Beck, 1981), 127-42.

1. The particular character of the feeling of guilt Nothing is so characteristic of the moral sphere as the feeling of guilt that arises after we do something wrong. It arises as an "act of valuation", to use a very slippery designation. That is, it arises as a characteristic act, comparable only to itself, of the self devaluing the self, and indeed, de1

One could also ask: to what extent are the implications that Otto draws from the experience of the feeling presuppositions for having it?

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valuing the self as an agent. It occurs in essence most purely and clearly, most surely and comprehensibly as long as we are still "naive", that is, as long as we do not conceal, shut off, and distort our immediate experience and comprehension of ourselves through reasoning and pampering, as long as we do not become apathetic to the authenticity and priority of our elementary experience of the self. It can be analyzed in terms of its components, but it cannot be "taught", even by such an analysis, for while its components can probably be named, each person must individually "understand" them and comprehend their validity. The feeling of guilt "implies" moments that are also present in the "polar" opposite of that feeling, the feeling of self-approval. Indeed, it implies moments that are in part present and, through careful observation, detectable in any voluntary act. But in the feeling of guilt one detects more certainly and more specifically than elsewhere what we also find in good action and in voluntary action generally and what we refer to when we speak of the will, the act, the person, the self (Ich), and the reality and unity of the self and the other. As a result, in its implications this feeling is important for the general knowledge and theory of human nature. At the same time, it has implications that pertain to itself alone. 2. The feeling of guilt is a complex that implies two simpler feelings. In terms of emotional content, the feeling of guilt is a complex of at least two moments, Scham 'shame' and Reue 'remorse'. As a complex it "implies" these simpler moments. In investigating these implications, we "explicate" what is initially given as complex. We elucidate it, for to elucidate is first of all to disentangle the components of an X and to recognize and understand them separately. We can call this process a clarification ( "Klären, " Aufklären, Klarmachen) of what was initially grasped unclearly. But we do not know an object clearly only when we grasp its individual components in their distinctness. Even something that is simple can be grasped more or less clearly in its peculiarity, to the extent that that is apparent. Through a methodical attention to and a sharpened Besinnung1 of our object, we can elucidate it and know yet more clearly what we already knew less clearly. 2

I have spoken about the method of Besinnung 'recollection', 'reflection on recalled experiences' in connection with Schleiermacher and with Fries's "anthropological method" (Otto 1929: vi). A portion of this passage follows:

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We always "explicate" in this double sense whenever we proceed from a cognition that is initially only "felt" 3 to one that is clarified. Initially, we sense (wissen gefühlsmäßig) what the feeling of guilt is, as does every

3

From the time when I first tried to formulate for myself clear ideas about the nature of the religious and of religion within Christianity, it has been clear to me that every investigation of religion must relinquish high flying speculation and take with Schleiermacher the path of self-recollection, that is, of a recollection of the religious experience itself, as we experience it in ourselves and even more as we encounter it in the models and types of religious experience. I was helped in this regard by what Fries calls the "anthropological method", which is actually a method of self-recollection. Long before we philosophize and theologize, life itself and experience and possessing are at work, and our moral and religious experience and recognition are active. The recollection of these things is, however, not simply a "psychology" but something that we could designate much more profoundly as "a study of the soul". [Otto's note] On the ambiguity of the word "feeling" (Gefühl [in quotes]): When I speak of a "felt" knowledge, I do not at all mean "feeling" in the sense that this word has generally had only since the time of [Johann Nikolaus] Tetens [1736/38-1807]. That is, I do not mean what in us is neither conception nor will but emotion, such as pleasure and displeasure. Instead, I mean feeling in its older sense, in which feeling was a form of knowledge or preliminary to knowledge, an initial cognition that has not yet been the subject of reflection. Feeling in this sense can be criticized as still unclarified, confused, and in need of improvement in comparison with cognition that is clarified and understood (verständig). But it can also be valued as the immediate, initial form of cognition, in contrast to rational cognition that is perhaps modified by reflection, falsified by impositions, laden with interpretations, distorted by classifications and relations, and emaciated and impoverished by rational categorization. Feeling in this sense has just as little to do with pleasure or displeasure or with emotions in general as any other form of cognition does, and the word "feeling" here does not refer to expressions like "feeling pain" or "feeling good" but is related instead to feeling in the sense of perceiving. To feel a thing, to touch it, is to perceive it through the sense of touch, by holding it. The sense of feeling or touch has a noticeable prerogative over against all our other senses, even over against the sense of sight, in supplying the objective and the real. Even in the case of seeing, if we see something well, we say we can grasp it clearly. What we are completely certain of is called "palpable, obvious", in German handgreiflich. In order to be absolutely certain about something, we would like to "grasp" it. On the other hand, we consider the sense of touch in and of itself only as preparatory or preliminary to fuller cognition, which is first supplied by the additional, "higher" sense of sight. This double movement - on the one hand, feeling supplies the reality of a thing, the certainty that it is; on the other hand, it only begins to supply us with a clear, distinct conception of what a thing

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person w h o is spiritually healthy and unspoiled. But collective reflection can clarify our thoughts about it. A person can come to a clearer understanding of it. W h a t the feeling of guilt is, then, cannot be taught, but it can be elucidated, and people can c o m e to a clearer understanding of it because, and to the extent that, they already cognize it in their feelings. 3. These t w o simpler feelings are " s h a m e " and " r e m o r s e " . They are related to one another yet distinct. It does not help elucidate these feelings to call either one a "feeling of displeasure". In feelings o f guilt two moments of feeling are bound and mixed together that we usually do not sharply separate and whose names we sometimes use interchangeably: "gnawing r e m o r s e " and "burning s h a m e " . We may admonish someone w h o transgresses by saying " y o u should regret what you have d o n e " or " s h a m e on y o u " , and we may at first consider these expressions to be synonymous. But shame and remorse differ just as much as they are related. They are similar in that they are feelings in the sense o f emotions, in the sense that pleasure and displeasure are feelings. Indeed, we call both o f them "feelings of displeasure", and rightly so, but we must avoid the danger that often comes from a careless use of the word "displeasure" (Unlust). To label a phenomenon as "displeasure" is not yet to grasp its essence. Pleasures and feelings of displeasure is - this double moment apparently returns when we speak of "feeling" in a transposed sense. Feeling in this sense can itself be "sentimental" or it can also be quite emotionless. The feeling of truth is an example. I can feel the truth of Fermat's theorem and unfortunately not be in a position to "analyze conceptually" my feeling of truth. This last circumstance, that I here have to do with an inexplicable feeling, can be very unpleasant for me, if, that is, I want to earn the hundred thousand marks that have been offered to anyone who can analyze my felt cognition and transform it into an abstract theory. But my felt cognition of Fermat's theorem is in itself neither warmer nor colder in an emotional sense than my knowledge of other mathematical truths. In itself, such "felt" knowledge is just as little a connaissance du coeur. Cognitions of the heart are cognitions of "values". They conform to theoretical cognitions, when through them a "meaning" is recognized in the object, a meaning that bears a positive or negative relation to ideas of "value". Better yet, together with such theoretical cognitions they form a unity of the true and full understanding of the object. They can, however, be either simply felt (in the first sense of feeling) or else rational, that is, acquired through reflection. [Otto's note]

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can be quite different from one another. Liking something ( Wohlgefallen über . . . ) is a pleasure in an essentially different sense from pleasure in the sense of something that happens simply within a person. Liking is not an isolated, free-floating condition of the soul that is "only subjective", but has, like will and wish and knowledge and observation, a relation to an object. Liking is always liking of something, and the same is true of disliking. 4. Feelings of dislike are distinguished (a) according to the objects about which they are aroused and whose knowledge they imply. Shame and remorse are directed to the same object, but under two completely different aspects. One can distinguish one liking from another according to the class to which the object of liking belongs. The same is true of disliking, and also of sorrow and pain at something. Thus, the pain of remorse can be distinguished from other pains as a pain at an action that violates a norm. This observation has certain implications. The pain of remorse implies, we can say, a knowledge that is initially only felt, namely, knowledge that one has committed an act that violates a norm. This implication becomes explicit when through thought and reflection I place this knowledge of my guilty deed in a clear and meaningful light. The same is true of the torment of shame, because shame is always essentially shame at something, dislike of something. We can feel shame at the same act about which we feel remorse. Nevertheless, those with refined feelings who reflect on the matter will concede that remorse about an act is distinctly different from simple shame at the same act, so much so, in fact, that one can only speak of a feeling of guilt strictly speaking when remorse is present. 4 How that is the case will become clear if we reflect carefully on what the pain of remorse and the torment of shame each implies. Both are directed at the same act, but each of them implies an essentially different aspect of that act's meaning. Shame is connected with what is ugly, remorse with what is evil. Shame is connected with a mistake {Fehler), remorse 4

One might think of the distinction between "shame-culture" and "guiltculture" that has been made off and on since E. R. Dodds (1951). According to Theodor Siegfried (Otto 1940: 26), remorse presupposes freedom, that is, the ability to have acted otherwise; shame tends to thoughts of necessity, embarrassment at who and what one is.

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with a transgression ( Verfehlung). Shame is connected with inferiority or negative value, remorse with a loss of dignity. Shame is connected with an inner fault and blemish; only remorse is at first connected with guilt. The most serious failure of every pure ethics of value, of every ethics which does not distinguish dignity (Würde) from value (Wert) and a loss of dignity from valuelessness, can be seen in the reproach that for it the feeling of guilt can only be shame, not remorse. 5 The significance of these implications should be apparent. They have further implications that we must still pursue. Perhaps they will imply that "determinism" must be false, for the simple reason that it cannot do justice to the essential difference between shame and remorse. And perhaps they will imply further that indeterminism - is even more false, because it cannot do justice to certain other implications that we must still come to know. I have mentioned these great questions here only in a preliminary fashion. I now return to the reflections that we have already begun. (b) Feelings of dislike distinguish themselves further through their specific emotional character. An example of this: annoyance and anger. The same is true with regard to shame and remorse. One pleasure (in the sense of liking something) is distinct from another according to its object, and the same is true of displeasure. We have just 5

Theodor Siegfried (Otto 1 9 4 0 : 2 2 - 2 3 ) comments on Otto's use of these terms: Among the most outstanding contributions made by the ethics of value is that it ultimately overcomes the reduction of the ethical goal to pleasure and utility. Thus, it goes beyond hedonism and utilitarianism. It does so because with the notion of that which is in itself valuable and worthy of esteem, it unfolds the multi-faceted and many-layered richness of the values that provide norms for action . . . . [But Otto goes further and] distinguishes value (Wert), dignity (Würde), and right (Recht). Value pertains to what has objective worth. To be sure, we consider "valuable in itself" and "possessing objective w o r t h " also to be moral qualities of persons. But persons are not simply "bearers" of such values. Instead, something else pertains to the subject who makes moral efforts, something that cannot be compared to any other value, not even to the value of the various virtues. That something is dignity, and it is the proper and irreducible value that characterizes a person who is making moral efforts. Persons acquire or lack dignity to the extent that they assent to or oppose what is objectively demanded. See further Jack S. Boozer's introduction to Otto's ethical writings (Otto 1 9 8 1 : 23).

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E. Ethical reflections

said as much. But besides differing according to the object of displeasure, one displeasure also differs very much from another qua displeasure, that is, in its own nature as displeasure. That is often overlooked or even disputed, but without justification and with unfortunate consequences for proper understanding. I want first of all to clarify this point by taking another class of feelings as my example. When I run into the sharp edge of a table, perhaps I become angry about that. Upon reflection, however, I will smile at my anger. I cannot be angry at the edge of the table, for it is not to blame for causing me pain. But the matter was, properly speaking, "annoying". I can be vexed or annoyed even when I cannot be angered. Anger and annoyance are two different displeasures. The difference between them is first of all a difference between the object of my annoyance or anger. One is angry at something that is to blame for causing one pain. One is annoyed at something that causes one pain but is not itself to blame. At the same time, however, we can distinguish these two emotions as emotions in and of themselves. Annoyance turns one yellow, anger makes one red (and rage makes one blue). But just as I cannot render the difference between yellow and red conceptually but can only experience it, similarly I can only experience the difference in the psychic qualities of annoyance and anger. The same is true of shame and remorse. I have hinted above at the different qualities of these emotions by speaking - in complete accord with our linguistic feeling - of the pain of remorse and the torment of shame. What I am ashamed of torments me; what I regret pains me. We speak of "bitter" remorse but of "burning" shame, and in doing so we hint tentatively at differences in the moment of displeasure itself. We feel distinctly enough that these purely imagistic designations really are appropriate to the differences in emotional quality that they indicate. We feel still more distinctly that the two distinct emotions, shame and remorse, correspond to objective differences in the two different aspects of meaning that pertain to the guilty act, that they are "proper" reactions of the heart to either blemish or guilt, that the quite specific torment "shame" corresponds to the unsightliness of an action, while the equally specific pain "remorse" corresponds to its badness. We "feel" this; we sense its truth.6 But at the same time we are in no position to analyze this feeling, that is, to explicate it conceptually. Therefore, we are content 6

Wir erkennen es durch ein Wahrheitsgefühl.

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with a "felt" cognition, and in doing so, we use the word "feeling" in the ancient sense according to which it designates not an emotion but a mode of cognition, indeed, a nonconceptual and preconceptual form of cognition that is, at the same time, completely unmediated. 5. The feeling of guilt and a clarified cognition of guilt In this last sense we can also distinguish the simple feeling of guilt from a clarified cognition of guilt. I often know that I feel guilty, without having clear concepts about it. To the extent that both the feeling and a clarified cognition of guilt contain the pain of remorse, they are marked or accompanied by feelings. But the feeling of guilt is naturally not this pain; it is its intellectual basis or core. Just as much as the clarified knowledge of guilt, it is a "consciousness", namely, a consciousness of guilt, only in a preconceptual, pretheoretical form, just as one possesses truth when one feels something is true, even though one possesses truth in a form that is not conceptual, propositional, theoretical, or systematic. 6. Both the feeling of guilt and the clarified cognition of guilt are "marked by feelings" (gefiilhsbetont) insofar as they are emotionally specific. Their emotional specificity, however, is itself a moment of their character as cognition. It is important to note this in opposition to hedonism. Conversely: when we designate the consciousness of guilt - whether it is only felt or whether it is conceptually clarified - as "marked by feelings" because of the pain of remorse and the torment of shame (and, as we will yet see, also on account of other moments), "feeling" means here the emotion of sorrowful dislike. We may call that "a displeasure", but we must then take care that with this term we do not obscure the actual meaning, indeed, we could say the logical meaning, of this sorrow. For this sorrow is not simply a peculiar, colorful accessory to the knowledge that we have committed an action that violates a norm; it is not simply an "emotional state" (Gemütszustand [in quotes]), an affection. It has, if we only consider it clearly enough, an essential meaning that is completely different from otherwise pure states of pleasure or displeasure. "With sorrow" I recognize that my action violates a norm. I recognize my guilt, and I recognize that I am guilty. That does not mean that according to some obscure law of the psyche a certain negative emotional state is conjoined to my knowledge of guilt. Rather, the "with sorrow" is instrumental: in and through my sorrow I recognize what I have done,

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E. Ethical reflections

and for the first time I recognize it " c o m p l e t e l y " and " d e e p l y " . In and through it I recognize the negative value ( Widerwert) of what I have done, or rather o f my conduct in general, or better yet, of my Being itself. T h e evil o f w h a t I have done is reflected in this sorrow, and the s o r r o w is itself a m o m e n t of an action of cognition, to be specific, o f the cognition of negative value. M y cognition is in this case an " e m o t i o n a l " cognition. T h a t does not simply mean that my cognition is accompanied in this case by an emotional parallel, or that the psychical process in which this cognition or conception arises creates, as a psychical cause, a feeling of pain. Instead, emotional cognition is cognition in which the emotional " e m p h a s i s " or " c o l o r " of the act belongs to it as an act of cognition and correlates with a side of the object itself, in this case, with its evil or rather its goodness. We will have to keep the " m e a n i n g " o f this sorrow at guilt in mind, for in other respects, too, it is o f the deepest importance in ethics, and because the most essential error of hedonism consists in neglecting this meaning of sorrow or rather o f joy. I repeat w h a t I have already said elsewhere: the fact that objects share similar traits does not prove that they have the same class of essence or meaning. Certainly, the sorrow o f remorse contains a moment that I can characterize and specifically designate as "displeasure", but that does not reveal to me its " m e a n i n g " and can occur in experiences that have a completely different meaning. Its meaning is that it is a moment o f my experience of myself as something contrary to value, that it is the manner in which my own negative value comes to my consciousness and cognition as an objective fact. 7 7. T h e feeling o f guilt is not simply a mixture o f shame and remorse but a unity in which shame and remorse appear at opposite poles. W h e n it is examined carefully, the feeling of guilt divides, we have said, into two factors that are, to be sure, " s i m i l a r " , but nonetheless clearly distinct in terms o f content, so that we can distinguish them by analysis. Such analysis is the first step we must take if we are to proceed from an initial understanding of the feeling o f guilt, one that is simply felt, t o an understanding that is clarified. But - and this is our next move - such an analysis is dangerous if we do not return from analysis to synthesis. I said 7

Later, in the distinction between two sorts of joy, the one recognizing and respecting, the other enjoying, we will encounter what has here been discussed from the other side. [Otto's note]

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above that in the feeling of guilt shame and remorse are "mixed". But if we consider the matter further, we realize h o w wrong this expression is. It commits the same mistake that is always made when one divides a living whole into "parts" and believes that one has understood and expounded the whole once one has realized that it is composed of these parts. Even a simple thing does not consist of its attributes but exists "in" its attributes as the ground of their necessary coexistence. Similarly, the feeling of guilt is not some accidental sum or mixture of t w o independent psychic moments which associate with one another and then proceed to "mix", perhaps because of some similarity. Rather, there blossoms in them two sides - shame and remorse - of a unitary, fundamental act from the depths of our soul (and it is conceivable that we might discover still more sides of it through deeper recollection of the affairs of the soul). 8 Already in a simple comparison of shame and remorse we realize that there is a significant difference between the t w o with regard to their gravity of meaning, their profundity, and their significance to the fundamental act of the soul itself. Remorse is in this regard somewhat superior to shame. The feeling of guilt can lack shame much more easily than it can lack remorse. Remorse erupts f r o m a much deeper and, as

8

Religious people know yet another, or better, a more proper "side" of the feeling of guilt. They know that the consciousness of guilt in remorse and shame is itself only a fragment broken off from a much greater, deeper, more obscure, and weightier whole: the feeling of sin and the pain of repentance. For such persons, the moral consciousness of guilt is only a projection of the consciousness of sin from a higher dimensionality onto the more limited realm of simple "reason", to be precise, of simple "practical reason". And they would claim that, just as certain plane figures can only be understood when they are reconceived as projections of stereometric images in a higher dimensionality, or just as the figures of a painting are only understood when they are seen with depth, so too one first acquires a full understanding of the feeling of guilt when one sees it within the greater whole of the feeling of sin. Indeed, the pure moralist betrays at times that he can only "feel" in a fragmented way the simply moral feeling of guilt, as our "practical reason" fences it off and reflects upon it, and the same is true of simply moral injunctions. He does this when expressions like "sin", "wickedness", "wretchedness", or "the sacrality of duty" fall apparently unintentionally from his lips - all of them expressions from the purely numinous sphere which, as a moralist, he has not the slightest right to use. Nevertheless, here I want to treat the consciousness of guilt only on the plane of "practical reason" and see how far we can come with it - and where we must abandon it. [Otto's note]

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we shall see, from a much more obscure depth of the soul than shame does. 8. It is grasped through the "anthropological" method of self-recollection. How can we master the feeling of guilt, in order to depict it? What method can we apply? In any case, we must apply a method of psychical introspection, for we encounter this feeling only in the soul. That means that the method must be "anthropological", in the sense of the anthropological method discovered by Jakob Friedrich Fries, because we encounter this feeling only in the human soul. We must disagree with Fries, however, when he says that such an "anthropological" consideration is nothing more than an empirical investigation. It may be correct (although this remains to be considered) that I can only clarify my thoughts about the essence and meaning of the feeling of guilt, and furthermore that I can only come to an understanding with others about it, if a certain minimum of guilt has been present in me and in the other as an empirical and empirically observed psychical occurrence. This then becomes the basis and starting point for all subsequent discussion. But that is no different from the situation with other mental (ideal) feelings and facts. What generosity or magnanimity is, what the feeling of duty, the feeling of self-sacrifice, or less admirably, villainy, coarseness, satanic wickedness, moral perversity, and many other similar things are, I do not know and describe and in many cases, thank God, I cannot know and describe - according to the little, vague, insufficient amount that has arisen in me and been present in my soul and as such been accessible to psychological observation. An ethicist can understand the most delicate moral stirrings of the soul. He can explicate them according to their "idea", free them from their accidental attributes and describe them according to their essence, and nevertheless perhaps possess or have possessed very little of them personally. Another can perhaps analyze the holy and yet be "far from holiness". A novelist can perhaps sketch or invent the complications of the worst moral failings, and do so in a manner that is "true to life", and yet be free from and indeed quite incapable of them personally. He can grasp the "idea" of value and negative value, elucidate it by copying it through recollection, penetrate its structure, explain its essential relations to other people, and do all this by "intuitively transcending" what he can derive from the empirical reality of reflexive "psychological" observation. In doing so, he proves that that knowledge is in fact possi-

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ble which Goethe so emphatically claimed for his own: a knowledge of humanity a priori. Anthropology (Menschenkunde) as knowledge of the soul (Seelenkunde [in quotes]), as distinct from mere psychology, does not result from simple "perception by the internal sense". 9. The cognition implicit in the feeling of guilt implies wider knowledge. We have said that dislike in the form of remorse and sorrow implies a cognition. N o w we say further: one cognition can imply another, and in such a way that we do not at first notice the implied cognition. In this sense it is unconscious, and occasionally so unconscious that we can deny that we have it altogether. (a) Examples of cognitions which imply cognitions; cognitions implicit in other cognitions are neither hypotheses nor logical conclusions. If I were to ask someone whether it is possible to add three and four, that person would laugh and say, "That's obvious." But it is not completely obvious. The person concerned does not notice that the cognition of the addability of two numbers implies another cognition without which the first cognition would be not only not obvious but also completely impossible: that the series of numbers extends beyond four or whatever other number you wish to choose. This fact is not "obvious" from the concept of four or three, but is a cognition in itself, which the person concerned possesses dimly. It is included in the insight that three and four can be added together, and it is responsible for our confidence that numbers can without exception be added together. One can see that three and four can be added together; it is not so easily seen that, say 753,963,214 and 65,439,872 can. Nevertheless, if one were asked whether these two numbers could be added together, one would give the same, confident answer. This confidence implies a specific cognition, even if that cognition is only dimly possessed, that it is always possible to continue beyond a given number in the series of numbers. In other words, this confidence implies a cognition of the mathematical law of the infinity of the series of numbers. The cognition implied in this way is not attained as a conclusion from the cognition that implies it. It does not follow logically from it. Still less is it a hypothetical assumption. It is something known. And as something known it is included in the cognition that implies it as what makes that cognition possible. At first it is only dimly possessed in a feeling of truth, but reflection can distinguish and clarify it.

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(b) Application of the examples from (a) to our considerations When after a long time I awake from a spiritual slumber and become aware that my conscience is accusing me, "What you have done is bad", perhaps I clearly cognize only the fact of my negative value. I may not notice that I also have implicitly, in feeling, a series of other cognitions without which my conscience would not be able to make any accusation, just as it is impossible for addenda to be addable without the fact that the series of numbers is infinite. Nevertheless, I have these cognitions, and upon further reflection they can become clear. They do not become clear as hypotheses that I construct during reflection in order to explain to myself the phenomenon of accusation, but as direct knowledge of my very essence. I now "experience" this essence in its own way. I experience it with emphasis on a specific moment, but in such a way that the experience of its other moments is implied. The experience that I have just been discussing is called in German Erleben, a peculiar word that is suited only to the German language. It is a kind of profound experience. Er-lebnis really means to acquire as a component and moment of one's own Leben 'life', that is, to acquire as a component and moment of what is immediate and as close as possible to ourselves, of what is certain first and above all. At the same time, Erlebnis is not acquired by the weak powers of our analytical understanding and our subsequent explication. It is not what is acquired by the superficial evidence of the senses or through the mediation of "conceptualization". It is what is certain and known in itself, to the extent that we are identical with it. To be sure, we are our very essence, and we live it, and to that extent the expression Selbsterlebte 'self-experienced' would be pleonastic. But most of the time we know very little about our own essence. Here too we must acquire in self-cognition what we possess in a dim, vague, and fragmentary feeling, in order really to possess it. "We must realize it", 9 as is said in English. What is called Selbsterlebnis in German is the experience in which we ourselves "realize" ourselves according to our very essence in unmediated form, in the very first utterance (Erstausspruch), and in the closest possible proximity. 10. To owe something, to deserve something, to be guilty of something, to become indebted, (b) Implications of the consciousness that one has become guilty 9

English in original.

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(a) In German the words Schuld 'guilt' and Schuldigsein 'to be guilty' have a variety of meanings. We distinguish the sentence "I owe something" (ich bin etwas schuldig) from the sentence "I deserve something" (ich bin einer Sache schuldig), such as death, punishment, judgment, or condemnation. The second is the case when I am guilty of something, for example, when I am guilty of harming my neighbor. But the first phrase, "I owe something", signifies a general obligation, for example, "I owe him three marks", and especially a moral obligation: "I owe it to my neighbor to be truthful." Were I to deny such an obligation (EtwasSchuldig-sein), then I would be guilty (an etwas schuld sein). I am guilty, however, when I am guilty of something that is the cause of my guilt, for example, when I am guilty of having deceived my neighbor. I will then eventually deserve punishment. And this means, with a recurrence of the difference, both "I deserve punishment; I receive the punishment that I deserve", and "I have an obligation to subject myself to punishment; I owe it". With this last sentence, the series of meanings of schuldig turns back on itself; that is, it returns to the first meaning that we identified, "I owe something". (b) If I know that I am guilty (schuldig), that knowledge implies at once that I know and understand all of the senses of schuldig that I have just mentioned. At the same time, however, it implies with inevitable certainty - and this is the most important of all the implications - the knowledge of the validity of these concepts, that is, that they are not fantasies or fictions but refer to matters that are true. It implies even more. As an act of the soul my knowledge of my guilt implies a knowledge and recognition of the evil deed, and thereby it implies all the ideas that are constitutive of the judgment that the deed is evil, and these are not only axiological but also ontological. To develop all of these implications one would have to compose a full half of an ethical system. Here I only need to develop the implications that relate specifically to the feeling of guilt. 11. Guilt as having become indebted (schuldig geworden (a) Its definition

sein)

When we say that someone's conscience carries a heavy burden of guilt, we do not think that that person feels obligated to accomplish a difficult task. That is, we do not take the word Schuld 'guilt' in the sense of an obligation to someone, such as a monetary debt or a moral obligation, al-

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reflections

though Schuld sometimes has that meaning. Instead, we mean something quite different: the present, continuing burden, conjoined with the sorrow of remorse, of my personal negative value, acquired through some moral failing. O f this burden it is indeed true that "guilt is the greatest evil". 1 0 The above-mentioned distinction between Mißfallen 'dislike' (as emotional condemnation) and Mißbehagen 'discomfort' (as feeling sorrowful) recurs in this sorrow: it is both, but it is both in so specific and deep a manner that the expressions "dislike" and "discomfort" strike us as too poor. It is not only in degree but also in quality that this sorrow does not fit under the rubric of dislike pure and simple. 11 (b) Its relation to owing something; "deserving punishment" as an implication of the consciousness of guilt itself On the other hand, being guilty (Schuldigsein) in the sense of bearing guilt has a specific relation to "owing something" (etwas schuldig sein). It does so in three ways. It implies: (i) the relation to what, before the deed, I was obliged to do or to abstain from (and with which, unfortunately, I did not comply); (ii) a newly arisen obligation, namely, the obligation to make reparation, if that is possible; and (iii) even further, as the conscience distinctly testifies, the obligation to be willing to undergo punishment, when such is imposed. This implication requires its own explication. The injured party has a right to punish, and if it were only a matter of rights, a right to exclude the guilty party from his community. Beyond that, however, a "higher claim" holds sway: guilt "deserves" punishment. That the injured party has a right to punish is straightaway confirmed by the ideal of forgiveness: I can and may relinquish claims that I have a right to make of others, and when I forgive, I relinquish my right to punish. Thus, it would not be possible to forgive, unless there were a prior right to punish. But the actual legitimation for the right of punishment is the immediate knowledge and assent, implicit in a guilty person's feeling of 1 0 The last line of Schiller's Die Braut von Messina

(Schiller 1 8 0 3 [1907]). The

full sentence runs: " D a s Leben ist der Güter höchstes

nicht; Der Übel

größtes

aber ist die Schuld" [Life is not the highest good, but guilt is the greatest evil]. 11 This style of argumentation - insisting that differences are differences of quality rather than of degree - is central to Otto's thinking; cp. The idea of

the holy.

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guilt, that he deserves punishment and the concomitant feeling that one is obliged to submit to punishment. (c) Willingness to be punished as a moment of moral atonement A willingness to be punished is a part of what we could name in morals an "atonement for guilt". It is a part, but an important part, of what I owe when I have become indebted. What I owe is to confess my guilt and then voluntarily to undergo punishment rather than trying to evade it. It is only in this way, and not through simple reparation, that a guilty person first "atones" for his guilt. This atonement, then, is not simply the fact of having been punished. That fact could also apply to a person who has simply been compelled to accept punishment, and in that case no atonement has been achieved. Atonement comes from disliking one's own negative value, through remorsefully disliking the effects of one's action, and through an inner, lasting, self-motivated willingness to be punished. It is this that first eradicates the negative value of guilt and absolves the guilty person. And it absolves even when punishment is not completely carried out, whether it remains incomplete for external reasons or because the guilty person has been forgiven and pardoned. Acknowledgment of guilt and a willingness to make atonement do not in some way "earn" a pardon. The guilty person does not acquire a claim to pardon as a reward for the "value" of being willing to undergo punishment. Punishment may be lessened, and perhaps in some cases a full pardon given, when the guilty party is willing to make atonement, but that does not mean that a pardon must be given. A recognition of this state of affairs on the part of the guilty party belongs to the willingness to make atonement that we require of that person. 12 N.B.: Whoever transgresses acts contemptibly. He "deserves" the other's disdain. In that case we say that he is worthy of disdain. "To be worthy" (Wert-sein) has here a sense that the various "ethics of value ( Wert)" tend to ignore. It is the opposite of value in the sense of άξιον or dignum but is still called "'wert". That does not mean that the person 1 2 Punishment is a form of injury (Übel), and to punish someone means to inflict an injury on that person. A detailed theory of punishment would have to demonstrate what forms of injury may be inflicted and in what degree and according to what criteria. But such a theory is a particular discipline that has branched off from a simple, general overview of ethics. [Otto's note]

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concerned has a claim, because it makes no sense to say that one has a claim to another person's disdain. It means much more that there is a claim on the person concerned, a "higher claim": that is, that that person be disdained, that it is proper for him to be disdained, and that he has no right to protest against it. (d) Addendum: Punishment in a wider and narrower sense To be disdained by another is an injury for the person concerned; for those with refined feelings it is perhaps the greatest injury of all in punishment. To that extent, disdain is a part of the punishment that a guilty person deserves. We say mit Verachtung straf en [punish with disdain]; for the reason mentioned, this expression is literal, not simply metaphorical. Only one must distinguish from punishment of this sort punishment in a narrower sense of the word, that is, punishment that can be "inflicted". One cannot sentence a person to be disdained, because to feel disdain is independent of the will. It arises, but it is not granted as a matter of volition. In a narrower sense punishment is only the injury that is inflicted on someone as a matter of volition. 12. The feeling of guilt as dislike of one's own negative value and of the bad act itself. Only the latter is remorse in a stricter sense. Attritio and contritio It can cause me pain that I have disgraced myself, and it can cause me pain that something has occurred by my agency that ought not to have occurred. The two sorts of pain differ from one another, but both are bound together in the feeling of guilt. We name this conjunction of feelings "remorse", but one can feel easily enough that the word and notion "remorse" fit the second moment more exactly and precisely. One might be tempted, then, to limit its use to the second moment and - with a little forcing - define it one-sidedly. As remorse narrowly defined, the feeling of guilt looks back; it is a sorrowful recanting. What I mean is, the sorrow of feeling guilty implies at the same time a wish to make what has happened not have happened, if that were possible. This retrospective, remorseful sorrow is, however, sorrow over the deed itself, to the extent that its content is disapproved of as bad, not perhaps to the extent that its consequences are unpleasant. In this regard, remorse is completely different from the fear of punishment, in other words, from the displeasure that I perhaps have at the injury of punishment which awaits me. To

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confuse remorse with this fear is the coarsest misunderstanding to which remorse is subject. It is a confusion of remorse as attritio with remorse as contritioP In a strict sense, attritio is not remorse at all, and still less repentance. Indeed, it was the confusion of these two concepts that quite rightly provoked the spiritual revolution that we call the Reformation. Naturally, displeasure at punishment also occurs when there is genuine remorse, but it yields to the remorseful willingness to be punished. Indeed, genuine remorse not only produces a readiness for recompense, atonement, and undergoing punishment; it also heightens our desire for them. A person who has remorse endures, indeed, seeks out punishment with joy. An interest can arise to undergo punishment for the sake of atonement, and an inner peace can follow the satisfaction of this interest. Without doubt, joyously undergoing punishment increases the ability of true remorse to atone for an offense. 13. The feeling of guilt implies a general moral certainty and a general certainty of reality. Bad acts, guilt, and remorse have a characteristic significance for ethics, insofar as they are the favorable situations, for fully realizing the objectivity of ethical ideas and of establishing their certainty. T o be sure, knowledge of this objectivity does not arise for the first time from these situations, and it does not make itself felt only in them. But moral injunctions, categorical imperatives, and ethical ideals can be perceived as objectivities more compellingly and indisputably in these situations than in any others. People may be morally indifferent for years; rational skepticism may drown out the immediate evidence of their consciences. In such cases, a feeling of great guilt can become a blessing, because in it they will experience very sharply the reality about which they had doubts. In guilt they experience the satyasya satyam [the realest of the real]. 1 4 Indeed, it can happen that in conjunction with the experience o f this most real a person can acquire once again a general conviction of reality that theoretical skepticism had perhaps shattered. It would be too much 13 In Christian dogmatics, contritio 'contrition' refers to a hatred of sin that results from the love of God, whom sin offends. Attritio 'attrition' refers to a hatred of sin that results from other motives, such as fear of punishment or hell. 14 Or "the very truth itself".

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to claim that every belief in reality is only qualified morally, but experience shows that with regard to the experience and certainty of reality the realm of duty, value, and dignity and that of guilt can have and in actual life have had a "primacy" for many. Perhaps experience also attests to profound connections between ontology and axiology that persist, even if we must reject any "primacy" of the one over the other. 14. The contrary to the feeling of guilt: approval Opposite the feeling of guilt on the negative side there stands on the positive side approval, which certainly can be accompanied by pleasure, indeed, by very intense pleasure: "A joyous doing of what is right", as Fichte says, or "Blessedness in one's action", as James calls it still more forcefully. 15 Most certainly there is happiness when one succeeds in doing what is right, happiness in the doing itself and happiness in recalling it. Of all happiness it is the purest, so that James distinguishes it from simple happiness and calls it "blessedness", for "blessedness" is distinguished from happiness not in degree but in inner quality. (a) Approval as consciousness of the value of one's own character, limited by a noble shame before oneself On close examination, we must clearly distinguish between this "being blessed in and upon one's action" and the happy or proud awareness of the value of one's own character. It is possible to be conscious of the value that the bearer and his essence possess. If there would be absolutely no consciousness of one's own personal value, even though that value were actually present, we would be dealing with an emotional illness that we ourselves would have to regard as an "objective negative value", which "should not be". When this consciousness of one's own value is pronounced in the emotions, it can develop into a noble pride, specifically, in situations in which such value as is actually present comes into question or when unworthy people or people of negative value claim to be of equal value. Without doubt this is one of the noblest stirrings of which the human heart is capable. A man of value should protect his claim to be respected and his right to expect people without value to hold themselves at a measured distance from him. But aside from such situations, whenever he takes delight in himself and yields to this delight 15 Cp. James 1.25.

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in admiring himself, there arises a form that is offensive and has negative value: the "Pharisee", the moral analogue to Narcissus. Indeed, we could say that just like the value of devotion or of high rank, inner moral value grows in inverse proportion to one's knowledge of it, or at least to one's intentional reflection on it. Such a disposition is very different from the virtue of simple "modesty". It is a refined form of shame, 16 which is not only shame before others but shame before oneself. It is seen clearly among people of eminent morality. And as precise analysis would easily note, it implies a feeling that one's own value was not acquired by oneself but was bestowed on and given to one. (b) Approval as joy at doing right It is quite different with regard to the deed and the doing and being blessed in and upon doing right. Just as a simple, morally neutral energy can already release a lofty, lasting, and strong feeling of happiness, so can doing what is right, only more so. It is not a joy at one's own uprightness but a joy at one's upright work and its effects, a joyful doing of what is right, a blessedness in the deed. It is joy at the act itself, at what has already been accomplished and what still remains to be done, not a joy in the agent. 15. Ontological implications of the cognition of guilt and of the cognition of values more generally (a) Judgments of value and ontological judgments Judgments of value are those in which a predicate of value is conferred upon the subject. Ontological judgments are those which say something about the objective reality of an object and its nature. We call existential judgments those ontological judgments in which objective reality in the form of existence is ascribed to the object, for example, human beings exist, free and unfree natures exist, this emotion or that will exists. We hesitate to attribute the same "existence" to relations of things with one another. We say instead, "there are" such relations, in German, sie bestehen. And we also say that "there are" objective values, es gibt sie. But in saying "there are" - es besteht and es gibt - we still express their objective reality. These statements are also ontological judgments. 16 This shame is completely different from the feeling of shame connected with remorse. Both shames are only linked by an analogy that does not constitute the essential meaning of either one. [Otto's note]

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(b) Do cognitions of value imply ontological cognitions? Ritschl claimed that all religious assertions are judgments of value. This assertion is certainly debatable. I must be able to make the existential judgment, "God exists"; otherwise, all assertions about him become matters of complete indifference. But we can accept Ritschl's assertion in the following form: all assertions about God, human beings, or the world first become religious when they are linked with assertions of value. It would also be possible for religious assertions of value to "imply" ontological assertions and for me first to come to ontological assertions by way of assertions of value. Can we claim that moral assertions of value imply ontological assertions, or perhaps better, that moral insights imply ontological insights? This important question is already being debated. I will try to give a detailed treatment of it in another essay.

20. The autonomy of values and theonomy (posthumous) The essay that follows was drafted in the weeks before Otto's death on March 6, 1937, and was published posthumously by Theodor Siegfried (Otto 1940; Siegfried 1938: 36). It attempts to negotiate once again the recurrent tension in Otto's thought between the rational-moral and the religious. Although the essay is written specifically to engage the Ethik (1926) of Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950), it also contains traces of Otto's response to dialectical, existentialist, or neo-orthodox theology, which insisted that the good is good simply because God willed it. In the end, Otto's effort to maintain both moral autonomy and theonomy simultaneously may be no more philosophically satisfactory than his notion of schematization as an account of the relation of the rational and the irrational in religion. Yet Otto would claim that both derived from the same primary, numinous experience. Source: Freiheit und Notwendigkeit, ein Gespräch mit Nicolai Hartmann über Autonomie und Theonomie der Werte. Ed. Theodor Siegfried. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1 9 4 0 . Reprinted in: Aufsätze zur Ethik, ed. Jack Stewart Boozer (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1 9 8 1 ) , 2 1 5 - 2 2 6 .

Nicolai Hartmann concludes his admirable Ethik (Hartmann 1926: 735746) with a series of antitheses between an autonomous ethics and re-

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ligion.17 These antitheses are probably the sharpest and most relentless comments ever made on the much discussed question of moral autonomy versus divine legislation. Hartmann himself sees the principal contrast as given in the "antinomy of freedom", because ethics requires absolute freedom, but religion denies all freedom. It seems to me that one could dispute this claim. In any case, one can discuss the problem of the autonomy of values versus the will of God separately, and this second problem demands separate consideration. It is striking that Hartmann continues to speak of the "antinomy between ethics and religion", despite his sharp antitheses against the infringement of religion on pure ethics. Now, if one simply holds that religious convictions are false, one does not mention or discuss any antinomies, nor does one present for consideration the details of the religious position, as Hartmann does with considerable finesse. Instead, one simply ignores them. And despite his sharp antagonism to religious theses real or imagined, Hartmann still utters them frequently enough, as when he allows the possibility of a proper philosophy of religion and attributes to it tasks that it, rather than a speculative ethics, has to accomplish. One is eager to learn what exactly Hartmann means here and whether ethical judgments are ultimate and autonomous or whether, despite the categorical boundaries that he inscribes, there is still in some way something "over and above". Hartmann's attacks and restrictions on the supposed infringement of "religion" upon ethics are far-reaching. (He essentially equates religion with the type of salvation found in Christianity and in fact with a predestinarían bondage of the will.) In what follows I can only address some of his points. Elsewhere I have discussed the general confusion over the fundamental religious idea that human beings are in themselves incapable of obtaining salvation. 18 At the same time, I addressed the confusion of specifically religious ideas with psychological considerations. Luther and many oth17 Eng. trans.: Hartmann 1 9 3 2 : 2 6 0 - 2 7 4 , chap. 2 1 , "Ethical and religious freed o m " . Hartmann develops five antitheses, or better, antinomies, in all. "The first three . . . refer to divergences as to contents; the last two . . . are concerned with the problem of freedom in that peculiar displacement, which it undergoes in the transition from ethics to religion" (Hartmann 1 9 3 2 : 2 6 2 ) . The first three antinomies concern ( 1 ) a this-worldly vs. an other-worldly orientation, (2) the human vs. the divine as the locus of ethical value, and (3) moral autonomy vs. theonomy. The last two antinomies concern (1) human freedom vs. divine providence and (2) moral guilt vs. sin and forgiveness. 18 See "Die christliche Idee der Verlorenheit" (Otto 1 9 3 2 : 2 5 - 3 6 ) . [Theodor

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ers who follow him advocate that grace alone works for salvation. He excludes religious "synergism" by exploring the psychological questions of the freedom or bondage of the will, of its determinateness or indeterminacy, and then teaching "the bondage of the will". It is this position that Hartmann has in mind. In order to find conclusive answers in these matters, we must start by recognizing that "salvation" comes only from God not because our will is feeble but because "salvation" does not essentially belong to the sphere of our volitional efforts. This should be discussed first of all in and of itself. In addition, without reflection and all too narrow-mindedly Hartmann considers the predestinarían standpoint to be self-evident. Another view is, however, at least possible, and it is just as religious: the view that God creates free beings who face the possibility of salvation or condemnation and who are responsible if they fail to attain salvation. Indeed, despite sharply formulated theses to the contrary, even the most stringent and partial predestinarían would not deny that sin has the character of guilt, which implies one's own responsibility. Correctly seen, the situation is probably this: there is here a completely genuine "antinomy", of the sort that Hartmann so richly employs, but it does not appear for the first time in the juxtaposition of religious and ethical attitudes; apparently it is found already within the religious sphere in and of itself. Those who espouse predestinarían views but preach repentance apply all their might to achieving a decision, conversion, and a transformation of the will; they place guilt and responsibility before their audiences. In practice they are indeterminists, even if they are determinists in theory. In any case, determinism is un-Christian if it is nothing more than the attitude of kismet found in Islam. Christian determinism is not fatalism. In truth a genuine religious attitude here contains an antinomy. Nowhere is responsibility, including responsibility for one's own actions, more presupposed and more in effect than in the Christian call to repentance and conversion. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! [My fault, my own most grievous fault!] No genuine religious attitude is present where this knowledge has not broken through strong and living. But culpa, a feeling of guilt, is not at all possible without what Hartmann sees as the criterion for the feeling of freedom, namely, the insight, exceedingly clear and continuously asserting itself despite all objections: "You should have and could have acted differently." At the Siegfried's note] Eng. trans.: "The Christian idea of 'lostness' " (Religious essays, 17-24).

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same time, the religious experience of grace draws us as such in the direction of predestinarianism. But it would immediately destroy the purity of the religious feeling itself if the price for grace were to be an obscuring of one's own, proper responsibility and experience of guilt. Instead, these two directions lead to a genuine antinomy. And about antinomies in general, Hartmann himself says: "Antinomies say nothing against the real coexistence of the antinomials, even when they present themselves as genuine antinomies, that is, as unresolvable. They only demonstrate the inability of thought to grasp the coexistence" (Hartmann 1926: 737; cp. 1932: 262). One could raise many objections to the antinomies that in Hartmann's view subsist between religion and ethics (Hartmann 1926: 737, 1932: 262). The first deals with attitudes to action or with this-worldly and other-worldly tendencies. On Hartmann's view religion has an entirely other-worldly orientation. Its real consequences are in the next world; the this-worldly has no genuine value whatsoever. From the start such a claim favors an ascetic, world-renouncing religiosity and ignores a thesis that is fundamental at least to Christianity: that God is the creator and the world is his work, and indeed his good work, and that this world is oriented to the next as a place of testing in the service of divinely commanded tasks that are purely this-worldly. The love of one's neighbors that was practiced by the good Samaritan was a purely "this-worldly" ethical act; Christ meant it as such and gave it as an example of such. But to practice the love of one's neighbors in its full this-worldliness, that is, in its full humanity, does not exclude that in loving one's neighbor, and more generally in acting according to an entire "this-worldly" ethics, one is following and doing God's will, in other words, that one is performing an act which has at the same time a higher aim. A "holy" demand to repent and convert that comes from above as a first and fundamental moment probably corresponds to a radical and thorough detachment from everything "this-worldly" and a "being turned" to an other-worldly goal that is perceptible only in feeling. But unless the monastic and ascetic type is prevalent, [this happens] 19 in a very specific way: after one's bond to the world is dissolved and the world as an idol that enchains us is overcome, the world is disclosed to the religious view as a divinely established system of values in and on which God himself is serving and active. 19 The brackets are Theodor Siegfried's.

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On the other side, Hartmann supposes that all ethics is "this-worldly": "from the point of view of moral effort, every form of transcendence is a deceptive appearance". But this is questionable. What about a subject who, morally engaged in this world, comes to the realization that everything, even the most deeply valued this-worldliness, is transient and has the nature of a test? Such a person will recognize that his judgment that all transcendence was a deceptive appearance was itself a deceptive appearance, and he will reflect on the connections between moral striving in this world and other-worldly goals, to which every higher religion somehow testifies. In Hartmann's view, the most difficult and important antinomy concerns moments given in "salvation, grace, and forgiveness", about which ethics knows nothing and ought to know nothing. The real center here is forgiveness and the longing for forgiveness, in other words, the "redeemability" of sin and guilt, which Hartmann sees as a fatal flaw. Here, it seems to me, an especially significant mistake becomes apparent that pervades Hartmann's entire account. "Redeemability", the longing for redemption - that is, for absolution and forgiveness, to be excused and freed from debt, for the remission of guilt and the freeing of the conscience from the pressure of guilt - lurks not only in religion but deep within ethics itself. Indeed, it is found where every ethics reaches its most profound point: where ethics treats the most profoundly ethical relations, those of person to person, and where it treats the claims that one person can validly make upon another, graduated and varying according to the intimacy of the community to which the persons belong, but also more generally in the most external and most weakly binding community, namely, in all social intercourse between persons. Wherever in these areas injustice takes place and ingratitude is expressed, external reparation is not sufficient. The conscience, and indeed above all a conscience that is meticulous in guiding behavior, longs and asks for the heartfelt forgiveness of the other completely for its own release and purification. This belongs directly and properly to the most characteristic ethical feelings, such as remorse and shame, and where it is lacking one is not at all in the realm of a genuine personal morality. A "value" can be injured or violated, but it cannot forgive. Any ethics that is a one-sided "ethics of value" has no room for forgiveness and as a result no room for the still higher and more intense ideas of absolution. That is true of Hartmann's thought. In his view it is ultimately as values

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that even acts of personal restraint are required. But an "injustice" cannot be inflicted upon a "value", but only on a person, and what makes it an injustice (Unrecht) is not that a value has been injured - that is also the case, but it is not pertinent here - but that a particular human being has had a right {Recht) violated. That violation can be "absolved" not by somehow repairing values but only through remorse, a personal willingness to make a confession, submission to the accusing and condemning judgment of the other, and the other's forgiveness. One could too quickly and almost formulaically construct an "antinomy" here, because the religious attitude introduces a new and higher insight that the profane cannot have: each offense, regardless of whether it is an offense against a value or a person, is at the same time a sin against God, the highest person. Persons can forgive one another; they can pardon guilt; they can reestablish a community that has been disturbed by some breach. Whether they are obligated to do so is another question. Perhaps they are not. Perhaps among human beings forgiveness is always only a freely given gift. But it is very much required of anyone who realizes that he has transgressed, that he conduct himself with remorse and with a concomitant longing for forgiveness. Among all the "antinomies" that Hartmann piles up to build his castle, the one that strikes me as the most genuine is the third, which he begins to discuss on page 73 8. 2 0 This antinomy has long been recognized and unresolved, and so far as I can see, human thought cannot in principle resolve it. This is the antinomy between the autonomy of values (what is good is good in and of itself) and theonomy (all moral laws are established by God). It is the antinomy between "moral law and the divine will", between an autonomous and authoritative ethics, or whatever other traditional terms you prefer. The thesis that ethical values are autonomous, that is, that they are valuable not for the sake of something else but purely in themselves and for their own sake, is (as I have shown) a necessary prerequisite for every ethics that deserves the name, . . . that no authority and no claim to power and no will stands behind them - because otherwise their intelligibility could not be absolute and a priori . . . but that there is something in themselves that manifests its irreducible nature in the feeling of value. (Hartmann 1926: 739; cp. 1932: 264-265)

20 Actually Hartmann (1926: 739, 1932: 264).

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The difficulty is that the validity of every demand of the conscience cannot be established by a will, but is always already given as necessary, legitimate, and untranscendable in natura rerum [in the nature of things]. True, that is the difficulty on the one side. What can we say? Does the self-validity of objective values remove God himself from the picture? To begin with, note that our theoreticians of value are first-rate phenomenologists; they respect what Goethe called Urphänomene 'elemental phenomena'. To such Urphänomene, however, belongs the feeling of the holy, which doubtlessly the theoreticians of value must consider a feeling of value.21 That cannot be doubted, at any rate not as an experienced occurrence. It is possible to say even more. In a remarkable display of impartiality theoreticians of value reject naturalistic prejudices and open themselves seriously to the often fragile and slight testimony of our feelings of value. These feelings are often obscure and, even according to their own theories, stand in sharp tensions, indeed, antinomies. Nevertheless, they recognize in these feelings a ground of scholarly knowledge. And since they do, they must also take seriously such age-old, general experiences of value such as that of the holy. What is given in these experiences? (a) In any case a broadening of the field of values and their claims far beyond the sphere of the purely ethical; (b) at the same time, a deepening of the demand and a heightening of its urgency far beyond that of every pure, "this-worldly" ethical value; (c) beyond that, an orientation of all of life's duties (Lebensdienst) toward values beyond itself. The feeling of the holy probably does not yet provide a general foundation for all values whatsoever in transcendent value and a transcendent bearer of value. It only subordinates all possible tasks to the highest, and places them in the service of what is explicitly other-worldly. Nevertheless, we are not far from a general foundation. As I have tried to show elsewhere, the feeling of the holy, and as a result the possibility for feeling sin, are actually illegitimate in pure ethical systems. 22 That they nevertheless intrude into such systems only proves that no deeper feeling for truth can avoid them. Hartmann often uses the word "sin" when he should only speak of a mistake or blunder or transgression. At first certain kinds and classes of judgment seem to the 21

22

Cf. Holm ( 1 9 7 1 ) , which argues that Otto made a fundamental error in The idea of the holy when he spoke of "the holy" as the religious a priori instead of as an elemental phenomenon. See the first four essays in Otto ( 1 9 2 9 ) . [Theodor Siegfried's note] Eng. trans.: Religious essays, 1 - 2 9 .

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inner witness (our religious conscience) more obviously to be "sins", until gradually the conscience becomes more refined and the sinful character extends to every moral transgression and thereby clearly subordinates the entire realm of values to the religious value of the holy, or rather to that of its opposite, the sinful, and makes a "teleology" clearly recognizable. It is the feeling of sin and not any Angst in the face of the world or any existential need that Christianity and its preaching address. The feeling of sin and the feeling of the holy that it dimly implies and presupposes (for otherwise it would not be possible) constitute the "religious a priori", especially in the case of Christianity. Wherever the Christian message becomes explicit, there comes into view the holy God of salvation, who judges sins and seeks and saves sinners. Whenever this happens, we are no longer given only a teleology of all values aligned to the holy (das Heilige). Instead, the Holy One (der Heilige) has become the fundus, the ground of possibility and primal source of every value, actual and possible, in the world and beyond the world - and indeed not just in the form of doctrine taught in lectures but in the actual experience of genuine and deep devotion. We must take this fact seriously, at least in a phenomenological sense. It may still be very difficult in theory to allow values that are grounded autonomously in natura rerum [in the nature of things] to have their ground over and above that in God. Nevertheless, phenomenology should take into account that this is not only a claim that is made but something to which the experience of devotion attests. It should guard against prematurely giving priority to one class of experience, namely, to its own narrow experience of value. That what is commanded rests upon its own autonomous value, in other words, that what one is required to do has its own "goodness" and sensibility, is part of the naive experience itself. This is illustrated by a saying from the prophet Amos: "It is said to you, o mortal, what is good and what the Lord requires of you . . . ." 2 3 It is also characteristic of the religious experience of value that it does not exclude the capacity for objective valuation that we call the conscience. Instead, it unites the conscience most intimately with respect for the will of God, so that the prophet considers the two to be synonymous. A commandment from God is not an order and certainly not the order of a despot who demands blind obedience. For the Christian, 2 3 Actually Micah 6.8: "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you . . . ?" [Jack Boozer's note]

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the will of God is not blind. Better yet, the Christian is not blind with regard to the will of God but discerning (einsichtig). And what God's will commands is itself intelligible (einsichtig) with regard to its validity. It does not wish to be accepted and obeyed as the judgment of a menacing, all-powerful being or of one who entices us with promises. When a divine commandment is observed properly, there is an inner, heartfelt assent to the commandment's validity, whether it is one of the ten commandments or Christ's commandment of love or, as can also happen, a specific call to act apart from any general rule, adapted to and only binding for the particular situation at hand. The insight that accompanies such obedience is the insight of "sensing" (gefühlsmäßiges Erfassen)·, it is an inner assent not so much by means of our understanding as by means of our feeling. It is the insight that God does not make demands on us as a despot, and he does not simply compel our assent through overwhelming might and the fear it evokes. Rather, when something is required by God, that is indisputably right. There are, then, two aspects that are strongly connected to this experience: first, the sense that God is not bound by a law which is outside and above him, say, human good will, and second, the sense that God's will is not "contingent", that here "freedom" lies beyond the ideas of necessitas and contingentia. The same is true of religious remorse and shame. They erupt powerfully and characteristically whenever a divine commandment is transgressed, but in no way are they the sorrowful awareness that one has transgressed the naked will of a despot and now awaits punishment. They are a knowledge of something profoundly valuable in itself that was required and whose infraction endows the sinner with a characteristic unworthiness. God's will is not simply something that a powerful being has willed but is in itself good and holy. Therefore, to resist it was not "existentially" dangerous but was in reality sin. It was an actual, objective, negative value, which burdened the agent and aroused remorse and shame. Nevertheless, there are values that are actually autonomous in themselves, which govern our conscience of themselves, ex natura rerum [from the nature of things]. To injure another's honor, to degenerate from a lack of self-discipline, to tell a lie instead of the truth - in themselves these things are bad or evil, and what is evil should not be, and it should not be for reasons that lie within itself. (The same is true of the "rights" that I still distinguish from simple values.) Are there gods besides God? Or has God created the world in. such a way that lies are evil and truth good, and not vice versa? What today looks to us as given tn rerum

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natura [in the nature of things] - does it depend upon God's creative will? Could God perhaps have created the world in such a way that love would be evil and hate good? Could what looks from our limited, human vantage point like natural regularities that no specific regulations can transcend, perhaps appear a parte Dei [from God's vantage point] as "contingent", so that the natural regularities that we encounter hold only a parte intellectus nostri [for our human understanding] and are an ordinatio 'ordination' of God, who is contingent, free, unlimited and undetermined? Is not precisely this demanded by God's greatness? What is more, is it not in fact made possible and favored by the most recent scholarly approaches? When the foundations of mathematics begin to be questioned [in regard to] 24 their absolute, internal necessity, when the principle of causality no longer holds firm, and when the highest principles of logic are perhaps only "customary ways of thinking", perhaps the situation of the absoluteness of so problematic a construct as "objective value" is still more uncertain and its basis in an all-powerful divine will and its ordinatio, what that will ordains, becomes ever more desirable and plausible than the chance occurrences that we meet in evolutionary and biological theories. Conversely, God would seem to be really God only if his action is completely contingent and he is therefore fully free. As I have tried to show elsewhere, we do encounter genuinely contingent action not only among the gods but also already among human beings. 25 But it would be a mistake to invoke this as perhaps a way to make possible the moral freedom that appears in our responsible activity, for contingent activity is thoroughly and fundamentally activity devoid of value. [It is inconceivable] 26 that a world possessed of values, in which values are valid, indeed with any sort of validity at all, could be created by a will that is itself devoid of value. If anything at all can arise from such a will, it must be completely devoid of meaning and value. Contingency [is], 26 however, excluded above all through the fundamental religious judgment that absolutely precedes all other words of God: "You shall be holy, for I am holy." 27 Elsewhere I have tried to indicate, first of all, that "holy" is in essence a designation from the axiological sphere, that it denotes what is absolutely the highest and at the 2 4 The brackets are Theodor Siegfried's. 2 5 See Otto (1931). [Theodor Siegfried's note] Reprinted in: Otto (1981), 143174. 2 6 The brackets are Theodor Siegfried's. 2 7 Cp. Leviticus 19.2.

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same time what is absolutely unique in terms of value or a surplus of value (Uberwert [in quotes]). I have also tried to indicate that as a value "holy" can be grasped with complete precision from our experience of value, and I have tried to point out the characteristic moments of our unique, submissive response in the face of the bearer of value that is associated with "holy" as a value (if one is permitted to distinguish at all in this sphere between value and the bearer of value and they are not rather identical). 28 There, however, we already found that, beyond the crown of rational terms, the bearer of the value of the holy remains completely irrational in the depths of its being and in regard to its relation to the world, which it conditions absolutely. Whoever would not recognize this last point does not have a genuine feeling of the holy or else is not in a position to give an account of it. This irrationality simply belongs to its essence, and as a result categories like contingence and necessity are from the beginning excluded from it. But whenever someone tries to think along such lines, the latter categories present themselves provisionally as a preferable manner of thinking, doubtless on the grounds of basic Christian principles, for a holy will is most certainly not one that wills simply from the obscure emptiness of complete indeterminacy and pure arbitrariness. It rests upon an essence, indeed, a holy essence, and the holiness of being organizes the will a priori not as contingent but as defined from the very start as a will to value. Instead of the image of an arbitrary will, erupting and making its choices purely arbitrarily, in fact, instead of the image of a despot, and a rather ill-tempered one at that, we encounter here the image of an immeasurable depth of value, resting on itself, which breaks forth from itself and becomes a creator at the impulse of a will to self-giving love as well as at the impulse creatively to construct meaning and value in a creature, and just as it becomes the creator, it also becomes the savior with respect to creatures that separate themselves from the goal. In creating, this depth of value produces a world pervaded with "values", which are rays or reflexes of the eternal, primal value and which in their autonomy are nothing but reflexes of theonomy itself, that is, the primal autonomy of the value which the creator bears in himself and which he allows to be evident in his creation. Just as the essentia of things (idealiter 'ideally') comes from God and imitates the primal divine essence in 28 These are the themes of Otto's major book, The idea of the holy. [Theodor Siegfried's note]

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infinite refractions and gradations in the narrow space of the creaturely and the worldly, so the reflex of the divine value also adheres to this creation from God, and indeed in infinite refractions and gradations and at a variety of distances and differences from the unrefracted. In this way the autonomy of the creature is absorbed into theonomy. It 29 corresponds, then, to use distinctions that pertain to the human psyche, to the essence of the creator as its expressio 'expression'. But at the same time, this is a will, since [it manifests itself] 30 not through emanatio 'emanation' in a natural sense but through demonstrating a will to revelation that is willing to allow "its own honor" to shine in the creaturely reflection, and likewise a will to grace with respect to its "children". God's value shines in the reflection because it has illumined it. But it also does so because God wills it to be so. And the illuminated value makes demands autonomously. Nevertheless, it is the unique, primal divine will that is making these demands in the illuminated will, and at the same time, God is willing that it should happen in this way. One serves God poorly with contingencies and with interruptions in the regularity of the world. In order to create a place for God, Clarke 3 1 once advocated the "incompleteness of the world", so that its immanent causes did not suffice to uphold its structure. A world which seemed capable of producing itself seemed to have no more need of God and to have no more place for him. But Leibniz properly countered that Clarke had separated natural law from the activity of God and ceded to natural law the larger role in the workings of the world. The case is similar when one believes that it is necessary to shatter the autonomy of world-immanent values in order to maintain a place for theonomy. In the first case we encounter the paradox that a world which comes from the hands of the creator must look as little as possible as if it did so. The more complete and self-sufficient it is, the more worthy it is of God. As the Marquis Posa said: " . . . modestly he wraps himself in his eternal laws. The free spirit sees these and says, 'The world is sufficient for itself', and no pious word of praise has praised him more than the blasphemy of that free spirit." 32 We can say nothing about the conditional relationship 29 Sie (third person singular), presumably "the autonomy of the creature". 30 The brackets are Theodor Siegfried's. 31 Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), English theologian, philosopher, and an associate of Isaac N e w t o n . In 1715-1716 he defended Newtonian physics in an exchange of letters with Leibniz. 32 Otto cites this passage from memory. Cp. Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos, Act

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E. Ethical

reflections

between the world and the creating Godhead. In the world we refer to laws or, more recently, to probabilities, and we cannot make God a partner in this, nor can we give an account of how, despite all laws, God rules the world, whether we invoke gaps to do so or not. Nevertheless, pious feeling subordinates the world, again in an experiential way, to the creating and ruling God. Our feelings of value point us to values in the world, and our conscience and sense of responsibility oblige us to obey the claims values make. Through them we hear the claim that God makes: a claim that we believe we hear as a claim of values as well as of the will. Here, too, we are not able to solve the riddle of the relation between the this-worldly and the other-worldly. But in the immediacy of naive experience we feel that there is no riddle here, and we think we see things that are self-evident when we clearly recognize in the conscience the language of worldly values and when, "instructed by the spirit", we detect the claim of God therein. We sketch an image such as the one above, the image of the self-emanation of the original, divine value into the creature, whose theonomy in and toward this creature "appears" as the autonomy of values. We know that this is also an image, but it is one that our sense of truth ( Wahrheitsgefiibl) does not find empty. Instead, it points in a direction in which the solution may lie, even if that is a point which lies at an infinite distance. Images and teachings that have been current for a long time among us point in the same direction, whether one consciously refers them to our point or disregards it. They do not elucidate the problem completely, but they permit us an intimation of its possible solution. It has often been remarked that the relation of God to his work is similar to that of an artist to his. It is not just that the artist has borne his creation in his spirit, that it has sprung from his spirit, and that he relates to it as pure "cause" to effect. Since the work of art has been produced by the artist, it is of his kind and of his nature, and reproduces and imprints that nature in itself. T h e genius, depth, value, and nobility of the creative spirit (Gemüt) shines again in the work of art, and its "values" are reflections of the values of the artist. We are led still deeper by the speculative doctrine of creation executed by the eternal Logos, who was in God and was God and who is at the same time the principle that gives the world and its contents being, meaning, and value. According to Augustine, the Logos is the eternal 3, scene 10. [Theodor Siegfried's note]

20. The autonomy

of values and theonomy

(posthumous)

287

thought that arises in God and rests in him, with which God himself thinks himself and knows himself according to the richness and fullness of his essence. The Logos is the very image of God. But to the extent that the Logos becomes the principle that creates the world, this divine self-thinking becomes the principle of the world and of the meaning and reality {Wesen) that it contains. Whatever meaning and reality and value is in (in und an) the world or is possible there derives from the living depths of the meaning and value of the Godhead itself, only at an infinite distance and without draining the divine fullness. All earthly essentiae 'essences' are analoga 'analogues' to one of the moments of God's Being, and whatever value rests in them is a spark emitted from the glory of God's value itself. In this way it is possible somewhat to reframe the old doctrine in more recent terms. In that case, the values whose demands and enticements we meet with in the world are not separate from the eternal meaning and value of God, and they do not compete with them. Instead, they are, so to speak, the extensions of God's meaning and value in the world. I write "so to speak", because we ought not expect to advance farther than an analogy or image or similitude. But such images are always sufficient for touching upon something that is given certainly enough in our deep feelings and bringing it a littler close to the surface. Properly understood, then, the "will" of God is only a human expression for that demanding moment which characterizes the eternal value and its reflection in the creature. But to the extent that God as creator wills this permeation of Being with "his honor", that is, with the reflected splendor of his own glory, insofar as this is his plan for the world, and insofar as he calls for obedience in response, the demands of value and the demands of the will unite into one.

A bibliography of Otto in English

Naturalism and religion. Trans. J. Arthur Thomson - Margaret London: Williams and Norgate, 1907. [1904] 1

R. Thomson.

The life and ministry of Jesus. Chicago: Open Court, 1908. [1902] "Parallelisms in the development of religion east and west". Transactions Asiatic society of Japan 40 (1912): 153-158.

of the

The idea of the holy. Trans. John W. Harvey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923; 2nd ed., 1950 [1917] "Professor Rudolf Otto on Zen Buddhism". Ed. Prajña. The eastern Buddhist no. 2 (July-August-September, 1924): 117-125. [1923] "A Religious League of Mankind". The world outlook

3,

(June 11, 1926), p. 44.

Christianity and the Indian religion of grace. Olaus Petri lectures (Uppsala), 1927. Madras: Christian Literature Society for India, 1928. India's religion of grace and Christianity compared and contrasted. Hugh Foster. New York: Macmillan, 1930. [1930]

Trans. Frank

"The common tasks of Protestantism and the method of their fulfillment". Journal of religion 10, no. 2 (1930): 187-199. (Reprinted, Religious essays.) [1923] "Faith and works". Trans. John W. Harvey. The Spectator 1930): 6-7. "The Indian doctrine of grace, and the Christian". International sions 19 (July 1930): 333-338.

144 (January 6, review of mis-

"Towards the reform of divine service". The Hibbert journal 29, no. 1 (October 1930): 1-8. (Reprinted, Religious essays.) "The Lord's supper and its celebration according to evangelical principles". Anglican theological review 13, no. 1 (January 1931): 1-15. (Reprinted, Religious essays.) "Darwinism and religion". Crozer quarterly Religious essays.) [1909]

(April 1931): 147-161. (Reprinted,

"An inter-religious league". The Hibbert journal 29, no. 4 (July 1931): 587-594. (Reprinted, Religious essays.) [1921]

1

The dates in brackets are the dates of publication of the German originals.

290

A bibliography

of Otto in English

The philosophy of religion based on Kant and Fries. Trans. Ε. B. Dicker. Foreword by W. Tudor Jones. London: Williams & Norgate, 1931. [1909] Religious essays: A supplement to 'The idea of the holy'. Trans. Brian Lunn. London: Oxford University Press, 1931. "The sensus numinis as the historical basis of religion". The Hibbert journal 30, no. 2 (January 1932), no. 3 (April 1932): 283-297, 415-430. [1910/1923/1932] Mysticism east and west: A comparative analysis of the nature of mysticism. Trans. Bertha L. Bracey - Richenda C. Payne. New York: Macmillan, 1932. [1926] "In the sphere of the holy". The Hibbert journal 31, no. 3 (April 1933): 413-416. [1932] The original Gttä: The song of the Supreme Exalted One. Trans. J. E. Turner. London: Allen and Unwin, 1939. [1933/1934/1935] The kingdom of God and the son of man: A study in the history of religion. Trans. Floyd V. Filson - Bertram Lee Wolff. Boston: Starr King Press, 1943. [1934] "Introduction", abridged, in: F. D. E. Schleiermacher, On religion: Speeches to its cultured despisers (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), vii-xx. [1899] "Buddhism and Christianity - Compared and contrasted". Ed. and trans. Philip C. Almond. Buddhist-Christian studies 4 (1984): 87-101.

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Boozer, Jack S. 1977 "Rudolf Otto (1869-1937). Theologe und Religionswissenschaftler", in: Ingebord Schnack (ed.), Marburger Gelehrte in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 362-382. Braun et al. 1918 "Antrag . . . zur zweiten Beratung des Gesetzentwurfs, betreffend die Wahlen zum Hause der Abgeordneten", no. 925, in: Sammlung der Drucksachen, Verhandlungen des Preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses. Berlin: Preußische Verlagsanstalt, 10: 6016. Buddeus, Joannes Franciscus 1723 Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae Leipzig: Thomas Fritsch.

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Calvin, John. 1960 Institutes of the Christian religion. Ed. John T. McNeill. Trans. Ford Lewis Batties et al. (2 vols.) Philadelphia: Westminster Press. Diesselhorst, Hermann 1941 Letter to Johanne Ottmer. Gliesmarode, June 5. University Library, Marburg, Hs. 797:589. Dodds, E. R. 1951 The Greeks and the irrational. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press. Diiding, Dieter 1972 Der Nationalsoziale Verein 1896-1903. Der gescheiterte Versuch einer parteipolitischen Synthese von Nationalismus, Sozialismus und Liberalismus. Munich &C Vienna: R. Oldenbourg. Eckhard, B. L. 1733 De reverentia adversus Deum. Doctoral dissertation. Leipzig.

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Gandhi, Mohandas Κ. 1928 Satyagraha in South Africa. Trans. Valji Govindji Desai. Madras: S. Ganesan. "Eine große Akademikerversammlung" 1910 Göttinger Tageblatt 22, no. 290 (December 11): 3. Hamann, Richard 1922 Deutsche Köpfe des Mittelalters. Auswahl nach Aufnahmen des Kunstgeschichtlichen Seminars. Marburg/Lahn: Verlag des Kunstgeschichtlichen Seminars. Hartmann, Nicolai 1926 Ethik. Berlin & Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter. 1932 Ethics. Vol. 3. Trans. Stanton Coit. London: G. Allen & Unwin. Heiler, Friedrich 1951 "Die Bedeutung Rudolf Ottos für die vergleichende Religionsgeschichte", in: Birger Forell - Heinrich Frick - Friedrich Heiler, 13-26. 1961a Erscheinungsformen und Wesen der Religion. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer.

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Holsten, Carl 1868 "Die Christusvision des Paulus und die Genesis des paulinischen Evangeliums", in: Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus: Altes und Neues. Rostock: Stiller (Hermann Schmidt). Hume, David 1739-1740 A treatise of human nature: Being an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects. London: John Noon. "Jahresversammlungen der Freunde der Christlichen Welt" 1927 An die Freunde 87 (August 8), cols. 999-1002. Koenigswald, Harald von 1962 Birger Forell: Leben und Wirken in den Jahren 1933-1958. Eckart-Verlag.

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Kommission 23 1918a "Zusammenstellung des Gesetzentwurfs, betreffend die Wahlen zum Hause der Abgeordneten . . . . Regierungsvorlage und endgültige Kommissionsbeschlüsse", no. 923, in: Sammlung der Drucksachen, Verhandlungen des Preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses. Berlin: Preußische Verlagsanstalt, 10: 5996-6005. 1918b "Zusammenstellung des Gesetzentwurfs, betreffend die Zusammensetzung des Herrenhauses . . . mit den endgültigen Beschlüssen der 23. Kommission", no. 924, in: Sammlung der Drucksachen, Verhandlungen des Preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses. Berlin: Preußische Verlagsanstalt, 10: 6006-6015. Konrad, Johanna 1922 "Das Prinzip der Anschauung in Zinzendorfs Religionsmethode", Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, n.s. 3: 203-228.

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Lohmann, Walter, et al. 1918a "Antrag . . . zur zweiten Beratung des Gesetzentwurfs, betreffend die Wahlen zum Hause der Abgeordneten", no. 928, in: Sammlung der Drucksachen, Verhandlungen des Preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses. Berlin: Preußische Verlagsanstalt, 10: 6017. 1918b "Antrag . . . zur zweiten Beratung des Gesetzentwurfs, betreffend die Wahlen zum Hause der Abgeordneten", no. 951, in: Sammlung der Drucksachen, Verhandlungen des Preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses. Berlin: Preußische Verlagsanstalt, 11. The Lutheran book of worship 1978 Minneapolis: Augsburg. The Lutheran hymnal 1941 St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House. Meier, Ernst (ed.) 1852 Deutsche Sagen, Sitten J. B. Metzler.

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Melchers, Bernd 1921 China, part 2: Die Lochan von Ling-Yän-Si, stischer Plastik. Hagen i.W.: Folkwang.

ein Hauptwerk

Stuttgart:

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Meyer, Arnold 1931 "Schnedermann, Georg", in: Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. (2nd edition.) Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 5, col. 215. "Eine öffentliche Versammlung der rechtsstehenden Parteien" 1913 Göttinger Zeitung 51, no. 16366 (sic) (May 7). Otto, Rudolf 1896 Letter to Johanne [Ottmer], Göttingen, July 20. University Library, Marburg, Hs. 797:564. 1908 "Erinnerungen an Hermann Schmidtf in Cannes 30. Januar 1908", Die christliche Welt 22, no. 32 (August 6), cols. 775-781. 1910a "Mythos und Religion in Wundts Völkerpsychologie, II", Theologische Rundschau 13: 293-305. 1910b "Jakob Friedrich Fries's philosophischer Roman Julius und Evagoras", Deutsche Literaturzeitung 31, no. 45 (November 5), cols. 2821-2828. 1911 "Zu dem erfreulichen Vorschlage", Die christliche Welt 25, no. 14 (April 6), cols. 331-332.

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"Bericht über die Reise des Professors der Theologie D. Dr. Rudolf Otto als Stipendiaten der Kahnschen Stiftung für Auslandsreisen deutscher Gelehrten", Göttingen, December 29. Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, I. HA, Rep. 76Vc, Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Volksbildung, Sekt. 1, Tit. 8, No. 9, Beih. 2 (M); unsigned and undated copy: Otto Archives, Religionskundliche Sammlung, Marburg, 379. 1913a "Die Lehrstiftung", An die Freunde 43 (January 14), col. 474. 1913b Letter to Richard Wilhelm. February? University Library, Marburg, Hs. 797:462. 1913c Letter to Richard Wilhelm. Braunschweig, March 6. University Library, Marburg, Hs. 797:411. 1914 Speech before the Prussian Legislature, 70th Meeting of the 22nd Legislature, Session 2 (May 2), in: Stenographische Berichte über die Verhandlungen des Preußischen Abgeordnetenhauses. Berlin: Preußische Verlagsanstalt, 5, cols. 5956-5960. 1917a "Reform des Wahlrechts jetzt!" Deutsche Politik 2, no. 21 (May 25): 669-672. 1917b "Jedenfalls so frühzeitig", Deutsche Politik 2, no. 30 (July 27): 355358. 1917c Vischnu-Näräyana. Texte zur indischen Gottesmystik. Jena: E. Diederich. 1918 "Wahlreform", Deutsche Stimmen 30, no. 19 (May 12): 314-323. 1921a "Religiöser Menschheitsbund", Deutsche Politik 6, no. 10 (March 5): 234-238. 1921b "Religious Union of Humanity". Otto Archives, Religionskundliche Sammlung, Marburg, 1278. Typed translation of: Otto 1921a. 1922a "Aus Rabindranath Thakkurs väterlicher Religion", Die christliche Welt 36, no. 1 (January 5), cols. 7-10, & no. 2 (January 12), cols. 2223. 1922b "Ein Werk zur religiösen Typen-Kunde", Die christliche Welt 36, nos. 48/49 (December 7), cols. 918-920. 1925 - Zur Erneuerung und Ausgestaltung des Gottesdienstes. Glessen: A. Töpelmann. 1926 West-östliche Mystik. Gotha: L. Klotz. 1928 "Bericht über eine Studienreise zu religionskundlichen Zwecken vom 18. Oktober bis 14. Mai 1927/28 nach Indien, Ägypten, Palästina, Kleinasien und Konstantinopel". Typed report to the Notgemeinschaft der deutschen Wissenschaft. Otto Archives, Religionskundliche Sammlung, Marburg, 378. 1928-1929 "Zum Verständnis von Rabindranath Tagore: Ein Stück altindischer Theologie", Die Hilfe 34 (1928): 537-539, & 35 (1929): 554-555. 1929 Aufsätze das Numinose betreffend, vol. 1: Das Ganz Andere. Gotha: L. Klotz.

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1931a

"Das Gefühl der Verantwortlichkeit", Zeitschrift für Religionspsychologie 4, no. 2: 49-57, 8c 3: 109-136. 1931b " 'Meine Religion' von Rabindranath Tagore", Westermanns Monatshefte 75: 345-350. 1931c Rabindranath Tagore's Bekenntnis. Tübingen: J . C . B . Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 1932 Sünde und Urschuld. Munich: C. H. Beck. 1940 Freiheit und Notwendigkeit. Ed. Theodor Siegfried. Tübingen: J . C . B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). 1981 Aufsätze zur Ethik. Ed. Jack Stewart Boozer. Munich: C. H. Beck. Otto, Rudolf - Gustav Mensching 1924 Chorgebete für Kirche, Schule und Haus. Gießen: Töpelmann. Pulgher, D. 1878 Les anciennes églises byzantines de Constantinople. 8c Wentzel.

Vienna: Lehmann

Rade, Martin 1911 "Hermann-Schmidt-Stiftung", An die Freunde 35 (February 11), cols. 382-383. 1914 "Lehrkandidaten-Stiftung", An die Freunde 48 (July 15), col. 556. Richter, J . W . O. (ed.) 1877 Deutscher Sagenschatz, part 1, vol. 2: Sagen der Wartburg, des nördlichen Thüringer Waldes sowie des Hörseiberges. Eisleben: O. Mahnert. Schelling, Friedrich Wühlern Joseph von 1803 Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums. Tübingen: J. G. Cotta. 1966 On university studies. Ed. Norberto Goterman. Trans. E. S. Morgan. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. Schiller, Friedrich von 1799 [1907] "Das Lied von der Glocke", in: Schillers Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe in fünfzehn Teilen. Ed. Arthur Kutscher. Berlin: Bong, 1: 190-201. 1803 [1907] Die Braut von Messina, in: Schillers Werke. Vollständige Ausgabe in fünfzehn Teilen. Ed. Arthur Kutscher. Berlin: Bong, 5: 243-330. Schinzer, Reinhard 1971 "Rudolf Otto - Entwurf einer Biographie", in: Benz (ed.), 1-29. Schleiermacher, Friedrich 1928 The Christian Faith. Trans. H. R. Mackintosh - J. S. Stewart. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1958 On religion: Speeches to its cultured despisers. Trans. John Oman. Intro. Rudolf Otto. New York: Harper 8c Row.

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14, no. 12 (March

21).

1938

"Theologie als Religionswissenschaft bei R. Otto", Zeitschrift Theologie und Kirche, n.s. 19, nos. 1 & 2: 16-45.

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New York: Columbia University Press.

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of the Evangelical

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Index

a priori 3, 29, 183, 281, 283-284 Abd al-Hafid, Moulay 74n 'Abdu'l-Rahman, Sidi 87 Abraham (biblical figure) 28 Abu, Mount 95, 195 Achalm 70 Acts (biblical book) 237 Adams, James Luther 3 Adige river 159 aesthetics, aestheticism 14, 73, 8 5 86, 171, 191 Aetna, Mount 93 Afghani, Jamâl-al-DIn al- 90η Africa, Africans 75, 144 - , North 50, 61-92, 100, 104 - , South 197, 199, 202 Afrikaaners 199 Agadir 82 agapë 199-200 Agimmur 79 Àgra 97 agriculture 120, 127 ahimsä 196, 199-200, 203-204 Ahlborn 221 Ahmadâbâd 195, 202 Ahriman 88 Air Force Union 106, 115 Akademischer Freibund 103, 163η al-Azhar (Cairo) 76 Albania 100 Alfeld 118 Algiers 86-88, 90 Aligarh College, India 115 Alkinoos 100 Allgemeiner Evangelisch-Protestantischer Missionsverein (East Asia Mission) 104 Alliance israélite 77 Alsace 224

America 73 - , North 142, 234n - , South 105 -, see also United States of America American Board of Foreign Missions 109η Amos (biblical book) 281 Amritsar 198 Amsterdam 78η Andalusians 74 anger 2 5 9 - 2 6 0 Angst 281 annoyance 2 5 9 - 2 6 0 Antes, Peter 21 anthropological method 255n, 264 anthropology - , cultural 36-38 -, (Menschenkunde) 265 apokatastasis 'restoration' 5 2 - 5 3 apoliticism 194-195 apologetics 2 3 6 - 2 3 7 approval, self- 255, 272-273 Arabic - , culture 74, 86-92, 105 - , language 59 - , script 76, 192 -, see also French-Arabic school system, Young Arabs Arabs 74-75, 87, 89, 91, 99 Aramaic 59 Aryan(s) 188, 196 architecture - , Chinese 189 - , Islamic 16, 186, 190-193 - , numinous 191 Argentina 105 arhat 188 Ar juna 2 0 4 - 2 0 5

300

Index

art, Chinese 187 asceticism 237, 111 Aspromonte mountains 93 äsrama 196, 202-203 Assyria 104 Aswan, Egypt 99 Athena 70 Athens, Athenian 133 Athos, Mount 67 Atlas mountains 82, 84, 88 'atnäh 80 atonement 269 attritio 2 7 0 - 2 7 1 Augsburg 52n Augustine, Aurelius 2 8 6 - 2 8 7 Australia 120 autonomy, moral 9, 2 7 4 - 2 7 5 Ave Maria 83 axiology and ontology 2 7 3 - 2 7 4 άξιον 269 Babylon 104 Bach, Johann Sebastian 157 Bad Boll 238 Baetke, Walter 29, 34-36, 253 Baghdad 78n Balaam 52 Balkans, the 77n Baltic Sea 159 Barkhausen, Friedrich Wilhelm 213 Barth, Karl; Barthianism 4, 7-11, 32-33, 38 Basel, University of 187n Basserman, Ernst 116, 125 Bauer, Hans 99 Baur, F. C. 56n Bavaria 101 beautiful, the 85 Bebel, August 116, 125 Beijing University 110 Bekennende Kirche 194η Beiair, Professor 88-92 Belgium 144, 159η Belorus 159η Benz, Ernst 4, 21, 61, 63

Berbers 74 Berlin 92n, 207, 211 - , -Dahlem 126n - , synod 225 - , University of 165 Bertholet, Alfred 114 Besinnung 'reflection on recalled experiences', 'recollection' 255n, 263-264 Besitzbürgertum 102n Betz, Heinrich 111 Bhagavadgttä 197, 203-205 bhakti 203 Bianchi, Ugo 22 Bible, 8 - 9 , 54, 56, 79-81, 150, 157, 160, 185, 237 - , inspiration of 79 - , New Testament 4, 55, 57-58, 70n, 199-200, 217 - , Old Testament 55-56, 57-58, 77-78, 2 1 7 - , studies 208 Bildung 'cultivation' 111, 163, 166-167, 174, 176-177, 237, 245 - , Christian 2 3 6 - 2 3 7 Bildungsbürgertum 102n biology 37, 283 bishop, office of 252n Bismarck, Otto von 132 Blachernae palace, Tekfur Sayari, Constantinople 67n blacherniotissa 67 Bias, San (Saint Blaise) 64, 6 7 - 6 9 - , Puerto de 69 Blida 88, 9 0 - 9 1 Blumhard, Johann Christoph 238 Böcklin, Arnold 101 bodhisattvas 188 Boeke, R. 21 Boer Wars 199 Bombay 92, 9 4 - 9 5 Bonn 18, 211, 213n Boozer, Jack S. 259n bourgeoisation 171, 229, 233

Index Bousset, Wilhelm 41η, 103, 1 2 5 127, 1 6 3 , 2 1 9 Boxer "Rebellion" 109n, 1 1 2 113n brahmacarya(m) 196, 199-201 Brandi, Karl 116, 124 Braunschweig 104 Bremen 30, 224 Breslau 2, 106n, 125, 127n, 130n Brück, Michael von 21 Brunner, Emil 7-12, 14, 32, 38 Buddeus, Johann Franz 181 Buddha, Buddhas 185, 187-189, 196, 199, 203 Buddhism, Buddhists, Buddhist 112, 144, 186-190 - , Chinese 144, 146 - , Japanese 82, 144, 146 - , Mahäyäna 32, 189-190 - , mythology 189 - , neo- 239 - , theology 189 - , Theraväda 32 - , Tibetan 71, 144 - , Zen 162, 185η, 186, 189, 239 Biilow, Bernhard, Fürst von 123 Bultmann, Rudolf 4 - 7 , 9 - 1 1 , 38, 197n Bund der Landwirte 116, 125 Byzantium, Byzantine 94, 191 Cairo 76 cakra 'spinning wheel' 196, 202 calligraphy, Islamic 191-192 Calvin, John 180 Cambridge University 109n Campbell, C.A. 3 Canary Islands 64 Candelaria, Our Lady of 63-69 Candlemas, see Mary, mother of Jesus, Purification of the Blessed Virgin Cannes 61, 215, 2 1 7 - 2 1 9 Cap Juby 74 capitalism 171-172, 230 castes (varttas) 203

301

cathedral 191 Catholicism, Catholic 51, 237-238, 239, 249 - , German 123n, 124 Cauda 93 cave-sanctuaries 69 Cecil, Lord William 109 Center Party 123-125, 127-128, 130n, 139 certainty, moral and ontological 271-272 Ceuta 84n Ceylon 92 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 52n China, Chinese 61, 104, 108-113, 119, 121, 144, 146, 188 - , script 192 Chorgebete 'choral prayers' 151,

160 Christ, see Jesus Christian Socialism, Socialists 128 Christian World House 238 Christianity - , as characteristic of the upper classes 230 - , essence of 231, 240 - , inner vs. public and national 231 - , liberal 2 1 3 - 2 1 9 - , modernized 231 Die christliche Welt 61, 206, 223, 228 Church - , and state, separation of 123, 126, 228, 2 4 9 - 2 5 1 - , democratization of 249, 2 5 1 252 - , revitalization of 249-252 Church Peace Union 142 Clarke, Samuel 285 Class(es) 133 - , absent (ideally) from universities 166, 168 - , burgherly 233; see also Bildungsbürgertum

302 -, -, -, -, -, -, -, -, -, -,

Index

educated 208, 240-241, 245 issues of 145-149 middle 121 must be eliminated 233 politics of 120 reconciliation of 136 struggle 230 suffrage based on 137 upper 121, 230, 233 working 120-121, 233; see also proletariat; workers Classicism 169 Clausnitz, Tobias 22In Cohen, Hermann 165 Cologne 223n Colombo 92 Colonial Society 104, 106 colonialism - , cultural 77-78, 82, 87-92, 102, 104-115, 119, 150, 174 - , - , economic benefits 105-106 - , - , political benefits 106-107 - , political 119 colonization, domestic 118, 121, 229 commandments, ten 236n communicatio idiomatum 71 community movement 238 Cone, James l l - 1 2 n Conference on Work and Religion (London 1919) 144 Confucianism 146 Congregationalism 22, 251 conquest, cultural 78; see also colonialism, cultural conservatives - , political 123n, 124-125, 127128 - , religious 251 Constantine 88 Constantinople 67n, 191 Constitution Day (Germany) 151, 160 contritio 270-271

cooperation, international 1 4 2 150, 150-151 Coptic Christians 99 Corfu 100-101 Corinthians, I (biblical book) 200 cosmopolitanism, rejected 147-148 creed - , Apostles' (Roman symbol) 2 1 9 220, 222, 2 2 5 - 2 2 7 - , musical setting of 206, 219-228 Crete 93 Cygnus (constellation) 93n Czçstochowa, Poland 67 Dalits 203-204 Daly, Mary 12n Darmstadt 147, 149, 223 Darwin, Charles; Darwinism 2, 52, 57, 248 David (king of Israel and Judah) 154 Davos 97 Day of Atonement 81 Delhi 97, 193 democracy, democratic impulse 133-135 dèmos 133 Denmark 144 Descartes, Rene 254 determinism 259 Deutsche Glaubensbewegung 194n Deutsch-evangelischer Frauenbund 208, 213η Deutsche Volkspartei 116η Deutschlandlied ("Deutschland, Deutschland über alles") 159160 Deutsch-Nationale Volkspartei 116n Dey of Algiers 87 dharma 2 0 4 - 2 0 5 Dhyàna, dhyäna 186, 189; see also Buddhism, Zen dialogue, interreligious 11, 39 Dierks, Margarete 50 Diesselhorst, Hermann 50n

Index dignity (Würde) 259 dignutn 269 Dilthey, Wilhelm 19, 2 2 - 2 3 Dionysius, the Areopagite, Pseudo19n discomfort 268 disdain 270 dislike 258-259, 261, 268-270 displeasure 257-262, 270 Dodds, E. R. 258n Doshisha University, Japan 109 dread, numinous 182-183; see also tremendum Dromann, Christian Theodor 223 Dumézil, Georges 40 δύναμις, δυνάμεις 198, 201 Dürer, Albrecht 88 East Asia Mission, see Allgemeiner Evangelisch-Protestantischer Missionsverein Easter 248 Eckels, Gerhard Ε. Α. H. 125 Eckels, Hermann 125n Eckhard, B. L. 185n Economic Union 128 ecumenical movement (in Christianity) 143 Edomites 154 education, spiritual 218; see also religion(s), education Edward VII (English monarch) 105 Egypt 90, 92, 99, 154 Einsiedeln, Switzerland 67 Eisenach 70n, 214, 220 élan vital 172 election(s) - , ecclesiastical 234-235, 251 - , reform, Prussia 102, 118, 121— 122, 126, 128-141 Elephanta Island 92, 9 4 - 9 5 Eliade, Mircea 12, 2 4 - 2 5 , 38-40 Elijah (prophet) 101 Elsas, Christoph 21 emotions 27, 3 6 - 3 7 - , and cognition 262

303

- , religious 237 empiricism 171, 173 empty, the 16, 190-193 England, English 22-25, 55, 86, 144, 199, 201-203, 234n - , agriculture 120 - , colonial attitudes 107 - , culture and influence 78, 104, 106-107, 119 - , educational institutions overseas 109-110 - , German congregations in 2 2 7 - , Jewish mission 77 - , nobility and royalty 105 - , parliamentary reform (1832) 140 - , proletariat 139 Enlightenment 39, 175 epistemology 14, 35, 245 Erfurt 102-103 Erichsburg, Predigerseminar at 61 Erlangen, - , city 22, 101 - , University of 52, 53-54, 5 5 - 5 7 , 59n, 60, 216 Erlebnis 266 Ernst, Carl 35 Esperanto 147, 150 Espinosa, Alonso de 66, 68 Essaouira, see Mogador Esther (biblical book) 80 ethics 253, 2 7 4 - 2 8 7 - , of value 259n, 269, 278 - , speculative 275 Europe 201, 234n Evangelischer Diakonieverein 114n Evangelisch-Sozialer Kongreß 102 Evans-Pritschard, E. E. 37 evolution 15, 283 - , of religion 15 existentialism, existential 4, 2 8 1 282 - , judgments 273

304

Index

experience(s) 6, 25, 30, 36-38, 171, 252, 286 - , aesthetic 73 - , and expression 17, 2 2 - 2 5 , 36 - , irrational 18, 186 - , moral 256n - , mystical 35 - , numinous 2, 7-8, 13, 21, 26, 3 2 - 3 3 , 38, 61-63, 81, 100, 179, 185, 190, 274 - , - , and liberalism 229 - , of God 31 - , of grace 277 - , of the holy 16-17, 22, 29, 33 - , of the most real 271 - , of the self 255, 262 - , of value 281, 284 - , religious 1, 5, 10, 14-15, 17, 21, 23-25, 29, 3 1 - 3 3 , 62n, 73, 175, 178, 231, 239, 256n, 281282 - , - , methodology of 237 - , transcendental 199 Ezra 79 Fallersleben, August Heinrich Hoffmann von 159n fascism 4 0 Fatehpur Sikri 97n Fatherland-Sunday, see Constitution Day, Germany feeling(s) 10, 14, 29, 36, 38, 42, 68, 101, 170, 236, 247, 254, 256-257, 261, 282 - , aesthetic 180 - , analogous, associated 23, 29 - , and cognition 27-28, 256-257, 261, 265-266 - , clarification of 2 5 5 - 2 5 7 , 262, 265 - , distinct from emotion 253-254, 256-257n, 261 - , for life, humanity, the world 171 - , for the infinite 2, 12 - , implications of - , - , axiological 267

- , - , moral 254 - , - , ontological 254, 267, 2 7 3 274 - , moral 180, 199, 253, 263n - , methodical nurturing of 237 - , musical 221 - , numinous 28, 34, 38, 185, 190 - , of collective responsibility 147 - , of German nationality 167 - , of loyalty to the monarchy 132, 140 - , of numinous relatedness of everything 191 - , of sin 281 - o f the holy 2 8 0 - 2 8 1 , 2 8 4 - , of the sublime 181 - , of truth (Wahrheitsgefühl) 2, 260, 265, 286 - , of value 280, 286 - , religious 5 - 6 , 10, 28, 180-181, 185, 199, 229, 238 - , - , means of expressing 246 - , as sensus 182 Feigel, Friedrich 29-30, 253 Fermât, Pierre de 257η Fès 74, 76, 78, 87 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 126, 165, 167, 169, 173, 177, 272 Finland 144 Fischer, Otto 187 Flacius, Matthias Illyricus 53n Flemming, Karl 5 On Fl[e]ury, S. 192 Fliedner, Theodor 207n Forell, Birger 92, 93, 97, 195 forgiveness 268-269, 275n, 2 7 8 279 "Formula of concord" (1577) 53n France, French 117, 159η - , colonial educational systems 104 - , colonists 89 - , culture and influence 77-78, 84, 86-91, 105-107, 114 - , military and political influence 74n

Index Franciscan, Franciscans 81 Frank, Franz H. R. 54, 56, 59, 216 Frankfurt 223η Frauenverein für Bildung des weiblichen Geschlechts im Morgenlande 210n Frazer, J. G. 37 Free Conservatives 116, 118n, 128 free inquiry (libre examen) 175 Freiberg, Otto 59 Freiburg 165 Freisinnige 125 - , Vereinigung 103 French-Arabic school system 88-92 Freud, Sigmund 14 Frick, Heinrich 16-17, 2 1 - 2 2 , 31, 33, 147, 149 Fricke, Carl 116 Friedrichroda 238 Friends of Die christliche Welt 206, 214-215, 220, 226-227, 239n Fries, Jakob Friedrich; Friesian 2, 11, 18, 23, 25-27, 29, 39, 62n, 63, 85n, 163n, 172, 184, 2 5 5 256n, 264 -, see also Neo-Friesianism Führer (leader[s]) 195-196, 198, 205 Gabriel (angel) 79 Gandhi, Mohandas 162, 194-205 Ganges 97 Gavdhos, see Cauda Geertz, Clifford 37-38 Gehrich, Julie (Otto) and Otto 100 Geldner, Karl Friedrich 95 George, Stefan 31 German-Chinese Society (proposed) 112 "German Christian" movement 194n German Cultural Union (proposed) 115 German Democratic Party 128 German-Hannoverian Party 116, 125n

305

German-Japanese Society (proposed) 111 "German peace", the 135-136 Germany - , colonial attitudes 108 - , contemporary development of 135 - , culture and influence 106-115 - , educational institutions overseas 110-115 - , postwar 228 - , surplus population 106 Geyser, Joseph 2 7 - 2 9 , 34 Gibraltar 84-86 Giessen 16, 224 Gifford lectures 253 Gladigow, Burkhardt 21 global conscience 148-150 Gloël, J. E. 56, 58 Goda vari river 98 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 165n, 265, 280 Goldammer, Kurt 16, 20-23, 2 5 26, 33 Göppingen, Baden-Württemberg 239η gospel(s) 10, 221, 2 3 7 Gotha 239η "Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild" (cantata) 157 Göttingen - , city 22, 115-116, 211, 213, 219 - , electoral district 115, 117η, 124, 129 - , University of 2, 54-56, 57-61, 78η, 103, 116η, 126η, 163, 176η, 187η, 216, 219, 223η, 226η Graces, the 67 Grand Canary Island 69 Graz, Austria 165 Great Bear (constellation) 93 Greece 100-101, 144 Greifswalde-Grimmen 125 Greschat, Hans-Jürgen 21

306

Index

Guanches 64-65, 67-70 guilt 253-274, 275η, 276, 278 Giiimar 64 Gujarat 196 Gusta ν-Adolf-Verein 210η Gustav Adolf Women's Society 209, 210η Gutierrez, Gustavo l l - 1 2 n Gwalior 98 Gymnasium Andreanum, Hildesheim 52, 60 Habitus 17 Hacho, Mount 84η Hackenberg, Albert 126-127 Hackmann, Heinrich 22, 62, 78, 100 Hadad 154 hadith 77 Haeckel, Ernst Η. P. A. 2, 246 Hagia Sophia (church/mosque) 191 Hamann, Richard 187 Hamburg, Evangelical Lutheran Church of 227 Hanafïyah rituals 92 Hannover - , city 125, 223, 228n - , Evangelical Lutheran Church of 60, 220, 227 - , kingdom 116n, 125n, 206 Hannoversche Pastoralkorrespondenz 2 2 0 , 2 2 2 - 2 2 3 , 225 Hardenberg, Karl August von 122, 140 Hardwär 97 Harijans, see Dalits Häring, Theodor von 58-59, 61, 216-217 Harnack, Adolf von 219 Hartmann, Nicolai 274-279 Harvard University 110 Harvey, John W. 1, 40, 194η Hauck, Albert 54n, 59 Hauer, Jakob Wilhelm 194n Haym, Rudolf 140 Hebrew 78

hedonism 259η, 261 Heidegger, Martin 4, 40 Heiler, Friedrich 16, 18, 19n, 23, 25, 31, 62-63, 92, 142 Heine, Karl 117, 124, 125n, 127128 Heitmiiller, Wilhelm 41n Hercules, Pillars of 84 Herder, Johann Gottfried von 169 Hermann-Schmidt-Stiftung, see Lehr-Stiftung Hermelink, Heinrich 164 hermeneutics, hermeneutical 12, 17-19, 23, 38 Herrmann, Wilhelm 162, 165, 175 Herrnhut 180 Hesse 224 Heydebrand und der Lasa, Ernst von 127 Hildesheim 51, 60, 118n Himalayas 96 Hinduism, Hindus 144, 162, 195, 239 history 240 Hitler, Adolf 194n Hoffmann 56 Hofmann, J. C. Κ. 56n Hohenzollern 125n Holm, S0ren 29 Holsten, Carl 56 Holtzmann, Heinrich Julius 57 holy, the holy 5, 8-10, 14, 16, 18-20, 23, 26, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 61, 63, 190, 277, 280-281, 283-284 - , fundamentally axiological 25, 283-284 -, see also numen, Trisagion Holy Spirit 79, 84, 220-221 Homer 31 Hong Kong 110 Hörsei 70n Hottenbach 126n House of Lords, Prussia 141 humanitas 'humanity' 169

Index Hume, David 180 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 163, 165, 169, 172, 176 Husserl, Edmund 19 Hutter, Manfred 21 hylozoism 246 hymn 247 Hypatia 52 Ickler, Gustav 117 idealism 5, 9, 113-114, 171, 173, 240, 246 - , moral and religious 231 ideograms 186 Igls 83n images, sacred 67-69, 71 impulses - , numinous 180-181 - , religious 180, 244 indeterminism 259 India, Indians 3, 61, 92, 94-98, 104, 109, 115, 121, 139, 144, 146, 185, 188, 194-205 - , independence movement 194 - , social unrest 112-113 Indochina 144 industrialization 171-172 infinite, the 23 injury 269n, 270 Innsbruck 83, 165 Inselberg 70n instinct - , religious 134 - , toward self-preservation 138 interesting, the 85 introspection 264 intuition - , artistic 178, 2 4 7 - , as source of comprehension 2, 27-28, 33, 39, 169-170, 171, 177, 192, 264 - , feeling as 254 - , religious 3, 5, 26, 183-184, 2 4 7 Iran 77n irrational, the 5 - 7 , 9-10, 19, 23, 28, 134, 192-193, 274, 284

307

irreligion 2, 229-230 Isaiah (biblical book) 61, 80-81 Ise 193 Isis 99 Islam 86-92, 143, 146, 162, 186, 190-193, 203, 276 "Island of the dead" (painting) 101 isolationism 135 Italy, Italian 22, 89, 93, 117, 144, 159n Jabal Albion 84 Jabal Musa 84 Jabal Tärik, see Gibraltar Jains, jainism 95, 195-196, 1 9 9 -

200 Jallianwala Bägh 199n Jama Masjid, Delhi 193 James (biblical book) 272 James, William 35 Japan, Japanese 61, 104, 108, 110-111, 142, 144, 146, 186n, 188, 193, 239 - , social unrest 112-113 Jerusalem 81, 92, 98, 152, 193 Jesus 6n, 7-9, 11, 16, 64, 67n, 94, 147, 180n, 2 2 0 - 2 2 1 , 277, 282 - , virgin birth of 219 Jiaozhou 110 Jinan 110-111 Jingzhou 110 John, Griffith 109n John the Baptist 71 Joshua 52n Judaism, Jews, Jewish 51, 57, 8 0 83, 144 - , Ashkenazi 79 - , Moroccan 61, 7 4 - 7 5 - , schools 77-78 - , Sephardic 79 Jung, C. G. 25 Kablr 203 Kahler, S. Α. 164 Kaiserswerth 207η Kamchatka 69

308

Index

Kant, Immanuel; Kantianism 2, 17, 26, 29, 62, 183, 245-246, 253 Kardorff, Siegfried von 116, 125, 127 Katz, Steven 3 5 - 3 6 Kazan, Russia 67 kenosis 'emptying' 57 Ketteier, Baron Clemens von 112— 113n Kett[e]ler, Wilhelm Emmanuel, Freiherr von 243 kindergartens 114 kingdom of God 55 Kings (biblical book) 154 Kingsley, Charles 52 Kippenberg, H. G. 21 Kirchlich-soziale Konferenz 213n kismet 276 Klimkeit, Hans-Joachim 21 Knoke, Karl 59 Koblenz 4 (electoral district) 126η Köhler, August 53n Kolde, Theodor von 54n, 59 Königsberg 165 Kraatz, Margot 51 Kraatz, Martin 51 Kremlin, the 81 Krsna 97-98, 197 KüfT (Arabic script) 192 Kultusministerium, see Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs Kiing, Hans 21 Kunstdruckerei Künstlerbund, Karlsruhe 227 Küssner, Karl 142 Kyoto 109 La Laguna, Tenerife 64 Lagarde, Paul Anton de 59-60, 78 Lahore 109 Lahusen, Friedrich 225 Lancashire 139 Landtag, Prussia 41, 103, 115141, 194 Lange, Friedrich Albert 165 Lanser Klippen 83

Lanternari, Vittorio 22 Lanzarote 73 Laporte, Walther W. K. F. 1 2 6 127 Lavigerie, Charles-MartialAllemand 86 League of Nations 102, 142-143, 145-146, 148-149 Leeuw, Gerardus van der 19n, 20n, 21, 31, 33 left - , political parties of the 133-135, 137, 139 - , theological orientation 219, 226, 242 legend 240 Legislature, Prussia, see Landtag, Prussia Lehr-Stiftung 2 1 4 - 2 1 9 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 285 Leipzig 104 leisure, necessary for religion 233 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 173 Levant, the 105, 114 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 3 7 - 3 8 liberalism, liberals 1, 33n, 1021 0 3 , 1 2 3 n , 124-126, 163 - , and religion 122-123, 229 - , cultural 140n - , economic 229 - , "Manchester liberalism" 122 - , national 118-124 Liegnitz (Legnica, Poland) 206 Ling-Yan monastery 187-188 Lithuania 159n Lixian Seminar 113 logic 283 Logos 2 8 6 - 2 8 7 Lo-han 187-189 Lohmann, Walter 130-131, 1 3 6 137 London 144 Long, Charles H. 25 Lourdes, Notre Dame de 69 Löwenberg 125

Index Lüders, August 118η Ludwig II, Count of Thuringia 70η Lüneburg 126η Luther, Martin 9, 52-53n, 61, 63n, 70n, 71, 157, 220-221, 226, 275 Lutheran churches 224 Lyra (constellation) 93 Macquarrie, John 3 Madras 144 madrasah 76-78, 87, 90 Maghrib el-Aqsa 74n magical, the 189-190, 198 Mahäbhärata 197 mahätma(n) 194-195, 201, 205 Mahävlra 199 Mahdi 90 Mainberg Castle 238, 239n Mainz 243n Malinowski, Bronislaw 3 6 - 3 8 Malta 9 3 Man, Paul de 40 Manchuria 144 Marburg - , city 92, 147, 162, 205 - , neo-Kantianism 165 - , theology 165, 175 - , University of (Philipps-Universität) 2, 4, 16, 18, 61, 63η, 92, 95η, 149, 160η, 162, 164-165, 176, 179, 197η Marett, R. R. 37 Marrakech 82 Marxism 21 materialism 5, 230, 240, 246 - , historical 148 mathematics 283 Mary, mother of Jesus 6 4 - 6 9 , 71, 81, 101 - , Assumption of the Virgin (feast) 64, 101 - , Purification of the Virgin (feast) 64, 67n Mecca 96, 191, 193 medieval, vs. modern 2 3 7

309

Meensen 223 Melanchthon, Philip 52-53n Meland, Bernard 3, 11, 14 Melchers, Bernd 187, 189 Mendelssohn, Arnold 223 Mensching, Gustav 16, 18-23, 25, 33 Messina, Straits of 93 Methodism, Methodists 22, 237, 238n, 252n Meuse river 159 Micah (biblical book) 281n Middle East 77n Midian 154 mihräb 191, 193 Milky Way 93 Minden-Ravensbergschen 161 Minister/Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs 104, 211 ministry - , office of 207, 209, 214-215, 218, 234, 2 4 2 - 2 4 5 - , social 215, 2 1 7 - 2 1 8 Mission Society 209, 21 On missions, missionaries (Christian) - , home 2 2 8 - 2 5 2 - , overseas 195, 203, 208 Mitidja plain 88 modern, modernity 133, 135, 2 2 9 231, 237, 239-240, 244, 2 4 6 248, 251, 252n - , and tradition 62, 87, 91-92, 241 - , knowledge 241 Mogador 61, 63, 73-83, 92 monasteries, monastic - , Buddhist 190, 239 - , life and ritual 237, 2 7 7 Monatschrift für Gottesdienst und kirchliche Kunst 223, 226n Mongolia 144 monism 230, 235 Moors 74 Moravian Brethren 179

310

Index

Morgenländischer Frauenverein, see Frauenverein für Bildung des weiblichen Geschlechts im Morgenlande Morocco 16, 61-62, 74-83, 87, 90 morphology, biological 17 Moscow 67 mosque(s) 76, 91, 190-193 "Mother Superior" (proposed) 209 Müller, Johannes 238, 239n Muller, Paula 213 music 191-193 Muslims 96, 99, 109, 144, 190, 195 Mysore 92 mysterium, mystery, mysterious 2, 5 - 1 5 , 19n, 20, 23, 2 5 - 2 6 , 30, 62n, 81, 92, 94, 133-134, 181, 184, 191-192, 197, 231 mysticism, mystics, mystical 3, 9, 17, 31-32, 35, 180, 191, 197, 199-200, 237 myth, mythology, mythological frame of reference 5, 24, 240 - , Buddhist 189 - , Indian 94 Naples 100 Narcissus 273 Näsik 98 National Assembly, Prussia 41 National Liberal Party, National Liberals 103, 115-116, 1 2 4 125, 126-129, 130n, 131-132, 135-137, 140-141; see also liberalism, national National socialism, see socialism, national nationalism, nationalists 147, 150151, 154, 155, 157-158, 167168, 179, 2 0 3 - 2 0 4 Nationalsozialer Verein 102 Natorp, Paul 165 Naumann, Friedrich 102-103, 135η Nausikaa 100

Navy League 106, 115 Nazism, Nazis, Nazi period 29n, 92n, 194n Nelson, Leonard 2, 103, 163 Neman river 159 Neo-Friesianism 17, 62, 103, 125n, 163 Netherlands 21, 159n New England 106 Newton, Isaac 285n Nicholas, Saint 69 Niijima, Joseph 109n Nile 99 nirvana 185, 188-189 nobility 248; see also class(es) Norway 144 Nuer 37 numen, the numinous 3, 5 - 1 1 , 13, 15, 19n, 20-21, 30-32, 62, 63n, 69-71, 83, 162, 181, 184, 189-191, 193, 198, 246, 263n Nürnberg 2 1 4 - 2 1 5 Oberdieck, (Heinrich) Karl (August) 223 Odysseus, Odyssey 100 Oechsle[r], Johann Elias 59 ontology and axiology 2 7 3 - 2 7 4 Origen 53n Orion (constellation) 93 Ormuzd 89 Orphic writings 186n Ottmer, Johanne 50, 99 Ottmer, Margarete 50, 94 Otto, Caroline Reupke (Otto's mother) 51, 60 Otto, (Friedrich) Wilhelm (Otto's father) 51, 60 Otto, Rudolf - , and English 22 - , as teacher of women 213 - , as translator 2 6 - 2 7 - , critics of 2 6 - 3 8 - , education 5 1 - 6 1 - , hosts foreign students 104 - , military service 52-53, 60

Index - , trip to Asia (1927-1928) 50, 9 2 99, 194-195 - , trip to North Africa and Asia (1911-1912) 50, 61-92, 1 0 4 115, 119, 162, 214 Otto, Walter F. 31 Oxford Movement 109 pacifism 149 Paderborn 161 Palazzo Reale, Corfu 101 Palestine 92 Pan-Islämic Movement 90 Paran 154 Parchim-Ludwigsluft 125 Paris 77n, 105 Parliament, religious and ethical (proposed) 147 Parsi(s) 95, 195 Paul (apostle) 35n, 93, 200, 242 pax Christi 187 Peace Conference of the World's Religions 92 Peine 51, 60, 100 Pentecost 84 pharaoh 154 Pharisee 273 phenomenology 13-14, 17-18, 19n, 25-26, 2 8 0 - 2 8 1 Phidias 70 Philae 99 Philip, Landgrave of Hesse 162 Philippism 52 pidgin English and German 107 Pietism 9, 162, 179-181, 217, 238n pleasure 257-259, 162, 272 plebs 133 police state 230 Polish representatives, in Prussian Landtag 132-133 politics - , cultural 122-123, 127, 140n - , of fact 132, 163 - , of ideal 150, 163 - , of principle 130, 138n

311

- , power 119, 138n, 139, 150, 163 Porsch, Felix 130 Port Said 93 Posen 6 (electoral district) 116n postmodernism 39 poverty 233 power, powerful, the 21, 190 practical, the 85 pragmatism 174, 177-178 predestination 16, 2 7 5 - 2 7 7 Predigerseminar 219 Presentation of the Lord (feast) 67n Preußische Jahrbücher 140η pride 272 "primitives" 72 Progressive(s) 125-127 - , People's Party 125 proletariat 229-230, 233-234, 250; see also class(es), working; workers promesa 63, 67 prophets, prophetic 31, 185, 237 Protestant(s) 2, 237, 239, 249, 252n - , liberal 238 Proudfoot, Wayne 35-36 Prussia 116n, 118, 122, 125n, 133, 135, 137, 140-141, 166 - , constitutional government in 140 - , electoral system 128-141 - , High Consistory 213, 225 - , university system 165 - , worship services 219 Psalms 151, 160 psyche, psychology, psychological, psychologism 35, 37, 265 - , fact 138 - , laws 134 - , reality of 131 pulpit exchanges 243-244 Pune 95 punishment 2 6 8 - 2 7 1

312

Index

qarnê parä 80 Qingdao 104, 110, 113 qiblah 193 Quellen der Religionsgeschichte 104, 128 quiet, the 190 Qur'än 75-77, 88, 191-192 Rabus, Leonhard 54n race 145-146 Rachmaninoff, Sergei 101η Radcliff-Brown, A. R. 37 Rade, Martin 61, 206 radicalism, radicals 121-123, 140, 218 Raganäth temple 97 Radhä 98 Räma 98, 197 Rämanäma 197 Rämänanda 203 Rämaraksa 197 Rämäyana 197 Rambach, Johann J. 222n Ranke, Leopold von 172 reaction (political), reactionary forces 123-124 realism, realists - , empirical 171-172, 175, 178 - , political, Realpolitik 163, 166, 178 reason, practical 263n Red Sea 93 Reeder, John 29 reform - , liturgical 3 - , social 2 3 2 - 2 3 3 , 235 Reform Commission, British India 97 Reformation 116n, 162, 221, 271 Reichstag 116n, 117n, 122, 127n, 128, 132 religion(s), religious - , agree on ethical concerns 144, 148, 150, 195 - , and government, see Church and state, separation of

- , and science 35, 206 - , and the moral-rational 10, 14, 274 - , antinomy within (determinism vs. free will) 2 7 6 - 2 7 7 - , arouse conscience and sense of responsibility 146 - , comparison, comparative study of 16, 19 - , competition with 230 - , cultured (Bildungsreligion) 241 - , defense of 5 - , distinct from aesthetics 73 - , education 2 3 5 - 2 3 7 - , - , compulsory 2 4 9 - 2 5 0 - , - , reform of 2 4 5 - 2 4 6 , 249-250 - , essence and manifestations of 17, 33 - , exclusivity 241 - , explanation of 35 - , heritage, German Christian 235, 239 - , history of, teaching 229 - , humanistic science of 15-25, 31, 33-34, 36, 39 - , impact of colonialism on 91-92, 113-114 - , inclusivity and diversity 2 4 1 242,247 - , irreducibility of 15-16, 33, 35 - , more influential in non-Christian countries 143, 146 - , opposition to 230 - , parallels among 17 - , phenomenology of 13, 16, 20n, 21, 181 - , philosophy as preparation for 246 - , philosophy of 275 - , rational and irrational in 2, 16, 24, 274 - , religious vs. political orientations 195-196, 201 - , rise of "great" 134 - , secularized, in universities 169170, 175

Index -, sensus numinis as fundamental element of 183 - , social science of 15 - , study of 112 -, sui generis 2, 15, 18, 28, 31, 35 - , talent, sensitivity, or disposition for 16, 18, 20n, 184, 232 - , teaching of 114 - , theory of 181 - , typology of 11, 187, 190 Religionsgeschichtliche Schule 78η, 100 Religionskundliche Sammlung, Marburg 92 Religiöser Menschheitsbund 12η, 16, 40η, 92, 102, 142-150, 163, 186, 194, 206-207, 228 remorse 255, 257-263, 268-271, 273η, 2 7 8 - 2 7 9 , 282 - , more important than shame 258 Renaissance 116n Renan, Ernest 56 repentance 263n research 173-174, 177-178 responsibility 276 Reuter, Hermann 59 Reutlingen, Baden-Württemberg 70η revelation, general and special 185 Richard, Timothy 109n right (direction) - , political parties of the 115-116, 123, 125, 127 - , theological orientation 219, 2 2 5 - 2 2 7 , 242 right (Recht) 259n Ritsehl, Albrecht 12n, 54n, 55n, 274 Riviera, French 217 Romans (biblical book) 155, 160 Romanticism 9, 39, 169 Rome 68, 133 Rowlatt Act 198 Royal Academy of Foresty, Hannover-Münden 116n

313

Rudolph, Kurt 21 Rumania, Rumanians 105 Russia, Russians 105, 144 sacred, the, see holy, the Sacred books of the east 104, 128 sädhu 196, 198, 201, 204 Safi 83 saga 240 Sahel Hills 87-88 Saint John's College, Shanghai 110 Saint Peter's (Rome) 81 salselet 78-80 Salvation Army 22, 55, 234, 247 samsara 185 santi 187 satyägraha 196-197, 199, 200, 203-204 satyam 197-199, 204, 271 Saxony 224-225 scepticism 240 Scheler, M a x 22-23, 26 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von 11, 165-166, 169 schemata, schematization 10, 17, 23, 29, 190, 193, 274 Scheria 100 Schiller, Friedrich von 240n, 268n, 285n Schilling, Werner 27n Schinzer, Reinhard 50 Schirmer, Michael 84n Schlegel, August Wilhelm von 165n Schlegel, Friedrich von 165η Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E. 2 3, 7, 12, 35, 55η, 56η, 63, 85η, 165, 170, 175, 181-182, 1 8 4 185, 215, 242, 255η Schleiermacher-Stiftung, see LehrStiftung Schmidt, Hermann 215, 217-218 Schnedermann, Georg 57 Schöberlein, Ludwig Friedrich 223 scholar (wissenschaftlicher Mensch), as ideal 167-168, 176

314

Index

scholarship, pure or disinterested (frei) 163, 167-171, 174-175 schools - , elementary 166-167 - , professional, technical, and vocational 166 Schultz, Hermann 55, 58-59, 61 Schuster, Hermann 228 science, scientific frame of reference 5, 229, 241 - , and religion 35, 206 Scottish university, Calcutta 109 sculpture - , Indian 94-95 - , Japanese 94 sects 234, 238, 250 secular, secularization 11, 2 2 9 230, 231, 235, 242, 245 Seeberg, Reinhold 5 6 - 5 9 Seelhorst, Konrad von 124, 126 Selenica, (Hermann) Emil 54n self-realization 266 sensus numinis 5, 18, 28, 181-185 -, see also experience, numinous settlement movement 234 Seiwert, Hubert 21 Shâfi'ïyah rituals 92 shame 255, 2 5 7 - 2 6 3 , 272-273, 278, 282 Shandong 110, 187 Shanghai 110 Shinto 82, 144, 193 Siberia 61, 144 siddhi(s) 196 Sidi Mogdur 82 Sidon 93 Siegfried, Theodor 179, 25 8n, 259n, 274, 275-276n, 278n, 283n, 286n Siegmund-Schultze, Friedrich 149n silence 3, 5, 16 Simla 96-97 sin 5, 263n, 275n, 276, 278, 2 8 0 282 Singh, Sundar (sädhu) 97

Sita 98 Siva 92, 94-95 Smart, Ninian 32-33 Smend, Julius 223-224 Smend, Rudolf 55-58, 61 Smith, Jonathan Ζ. 30n Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 34n Social Democracy, Social Democrats 115-116, 123, 125, 127, 129, 138 - , as church leaders 234 socialism, socialists l l n , 124, 131— 132 - , economic 229 - , national 135n Socorro, Tenerife 64, 70 Soden, Hermann Freiherr von 225 Söderblom, Nathan 15n, 143 Sonnemann, Emil 50n sôp päsüq 80 Sophocles 14n sounds, numinous 16 Sous, the 74, 82 Spain, Spanish 61, 74, 84-85 - , culture and influence 78 Spartivento, Cape 93 specialization, academic 173 Spiegel, Friedrich 59 spirit and letter 63 Spitta, Friedrich 225 Sprottau-Sagan 125 Stederdorf 100 Steffens, Henrich 165 Stein, (Heinrich Friedrich) Karl vom 120, 122n, 140 Stephani, Hermann 160 stirring(s), religious, spiritual 34, 234, 264 Stöcker, Adolf 102 Stöckmann, Wilhelm 126 Strassbourg 223, 225n Streng, Frederick 32-33 Stromboli 93 Stuttgart 187n Subhatu 97

Index subjectivism 54 sublime, the 85-86, 181, 190 Sudan, the 37, 74 Suez Canal 93, 95 Süfism, Süfí 90 südras 203 "survival of the fittest" 248 sütras 189 Suzuki, D. T. 186 svadesï 196, 201 svaräj 196, 201 Sweden 144 symbol(s), symbolization 10, 23, 25 synagogue 16, 61, 63, 80-81 Tagore, Rabindranath 162, 194, 203, 205 Täj Mahal 97 Talmud 75, 79, 80 Tangier 74 Tannhäuser 70n tariffs 120-121, 126 taxation 118 Taylor, Frederick W. 202 Taylor, R. Ε. 222n temple(s) - , Chinese 188-189 - , Japanese 188, 193 - , Jerusalem 193 Tenerife 63-73, 83 Tetens, Johann Nikolaus 256η theologia negativa 188 Theologisches Stift, Göttingen 61 theology, theologians 21 - , Catholic 12 - , critical 217 - , dialectical, existentialist, neoorthodox 7, 11, 32, 274 - , education in 208, 2 1 0 - 2 1 2 - , - , reform of 2 4 4 - 2 4 5 - , German 9 - , liberal 6 - 7 , 219 - , liberation 11 - , modern 2 1 4 - 2 1 6 , 218

315

- , practical 215, 234 - , Protestant 3-12, 16 theonomy 274, 2 7 9 - 2 8 7 theopantism 17 theosophy 239 Thimme, Karl 100, 103 Thimme, Wilhelm 50n, 103, 228 Thuringia 224-225 Tibet 144 Tillich, Paul 9-13, 2 2 - 2 3 , 38 Titius, Arthur 125n, 126n, 2 0 7 Titius, Emma Brandstaedter 1 2 6 127, 207 Tlemcen 88 Torah 75, 81 Tracy, David 12-14 tremendum 2, 5-11, 13-15, 19n, 23, 25-26, 186n; see also dread, numinous Trier (ship) 93 trisagion ("Holy, holy, holy . . . ") 61-62, 80-81 Troeltsch, Ernst 3, 179-180 trust, kinds of 138-139 Tschackert, Paul 59 Tübingen school 56n Tulsldäs 197 Tunis 16 Turkey, Turks 105, 115 Türmerjahrbuch 227 ubiquitas 71 ultramontanism 124 uncanny, the 13-14, 19n, 65, 68 United States of America, 144 - , Anglican churches in 151 - , colonial attitudes 107 - , Congregationalists in 152n - , culture and influence 105-107, 119 - , educational institutions overseas 109-110 - , Protestant churches in 151 universities, German 162-179 - , contributions to society 167-168

316

Index

- , emphasis on empirical research 170-174 - , founding ideal of 166-170 - , no recognition of station or class 166, 168 - , secularized religion 169-170, 175 untouchables, see Dalits Urphänomene 'elemental phenomena' 17, 29, 280

utilitarian 149, 167, 177, 259n Utopians, utopianism 1 3 8 - 1 3 9 ,

163, 166, 168, 194

Vaisnava, Vaisnavism 196-197 valué(s) 259, 269, 277, 280, 2 8 3 284, 2 8 6 - 2 8 7 - , autonomy of 274, 2 7 9 - 2 8 7 - , cannot forgive 278 - , judgments 273-274 - , negative ( Widerwert) 262, 266, 268-270, 272-273, 282 - , of God 287 - , of one's own character 272 - , religious 281 - , will to 284 Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht 223 Vedänta 32 Veda(s) 31 Versailles, Peace of 142 Versöhnungsbund 149n Vienna 92, 165 vïrya 188 Visnu 98, 196 Vorständeverband der evangelischen Jungfrauenvereine 209η Vrindävan 97 Wach, Joachim 15, 20n, 22-26, 33, 40 Wadia, Β. P. (?) 144 Wagner, Richard 70n War cry 247 Warsaw 79 Wartburg, the 70, 163η Weber, Max 22

Weifang 110 Weifen (Guelphs) 125, 128 Wellhausen, Julius 55n; 176 Wesley, John; Wesleyanism 55 wholly this 31 wholly other 4 - 6 , 8-9, 21, 23, 3 0 33 Wiesbaden 130n Wieseler, Friedrich 59 Wiesinger, J. Τ. Α. 55η, 58-59 Wilhelm II, König und Kaiser 127n, 129, 131 Wilhelm, Richard 104, 113 Wilhelmshagen 149 Winkworth, Catherine 84n, 2 2 I n women - , and politics 126-127 - , as teachers 114-115 - , church offices for 206-213, 244 - , continuing education for 210 - , directing hostels for foreign students 108 - , education of 114 - , excluded from synagogue 81 - , gender issues 145-146 - , higher class 210 - , parish sisters 207, 212 workers 118, 121, 131, 144, 158 - , professors as 172 -, see also class(es), working; proletariat World Congress of Faiths 142 World Court 142 World Missions Conference 92 World War I 116n, 129, 142, 150, 194, 198, 206 World War II 40 World's Parliament of Religion, Chicago, 1893 144 worldview(s) 2, 5, 111-113, 2 3 6 237, 244-245 worship, congregational 150-161, 246-249 Wundt, Wilhelm 15, 62 Wünsch, Georg 29

Index Württemberg 227 Yahweh 193 Yandell, Keith 32 Yoga 71 Yom Kippur, see Day of Atonement Young Arabs 90

317

Young Men's Buddhist Association 92 Young Men's Christian Association

108 Young Women's Association 209 zazen 186 Zen, see Buddhism, Zen Zimmer, Friedrich 114 Zinzendorf, Nikolaus Ludwig, Graf von 179-185