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THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE EDUCATED CLASSES IN PROTESTANT GERMANY...
Neither the distinction between theology and religion, and public and pri¬
vate religion, nor the explicit call for individual religious belief were exclusive
to theological and philosophical discourses. Ihese concepts eventually entered
the common language of the educated classes, both in reference to Semler
and independently of him. In the second half of the eighteenth century they
had become an important part of the Enlightened discussion. Ihe idea that
everyone had his/her own private religion was, for instance, guite familiar to
the young Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832),** whose writings and letters
were strongly influenced by the ecclesiastical and theological issues both of
the Enlightenment and of the movement for spiritual renewal (“Erweckungs¬
bewegung”). He could read the arguments in Die einzige wahre Religion (1756),°
written by his uncle Johann Michael von Loén (1694-1776), or follow them in
Justus Möser’s (1720-1794) response to the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712-1778). "Ihe idea that everyone had his/her own religion was a recur¬
rent one in Goethe’s work. In Brief des Pastors (1773) he wrote: “for on closer
examination each of us has his own religion.””” And to Schiller, Goethe wrote
that Karl Leonhard Reinhold’s (1757-1823) comments concerning the dispute
on Fichte’s alleged atheism amounted to the old saying “that each of us cre¬
ates his own kind of God and that no one can or ought to deprive him of it.”**
Goethe had always claimed that his own religion, which had little to do with
a church, represented real religion and true piety. Like all supporters of the
Enlightenment, he was convinced of the authenticity and legitimacy of private
religion as opposed to theology and the religion of the Church. Looking back to
his youth, Goethe wrote in his autobiography: “I studied the different opinions
Friedrich Schleiermacher. Between Enlightenment and Romanticism, Cambridge — New York,
Cambridge University Press, 2005.
4 On this cf. THIELECKE, Helmut, Goethe und das Christentum, München - Zürich, Piper, 1982.;
cf. BOLLACHER, Martin art. Christentum, in WITTE, Bernd et al. (eds.), Goethe Handbuch, vol.
4/1, Stuttgart et al., Metzler, 1998, 165-175, and SCHINGSs, Hans-Jürgen art. Religion, Ibid., vol.
4/2, 892-898.
Cf. LoEn, Johann Michael von, Die einzige wahre Religion, allgemein in ihren Grund-Sätzen, ver¬
wirrt durch die Zänkereyen der Schriftgelehrten, Frankfurt, Fleischer, 1756, esp. the beginning
of the second part.
Cf. still WoLFF, Hans M., Mösers religiöse Anschauungen und die Aufklärung, Germanic Review,
16 (1941), 161-176, here 163.
GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang, Brief des Pastors zu*** an den neuen Pastor zu ***, in E. Trunz
(ed.), Goethes Sämtliche Werke, Hamburg, Christian Wegner, 1948, ff, (hereafter cited as Goethe
Werke, HA), Vol. 12, 228-239, here 234.
18 J. W. Goethe to F. Schiller, 31 July 1799; the text of the letter in German can be found in RASCH,
Wolfdietrich, Goethes “Iphigenie auf Tauris” als Drama der Autonomie, Miinchen, Beck,1979,
115. This English version is available in HERZFELD, Marianne von - MELVIL SYM, C. (trans.),
Letters from Goethe,, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Publications, 1957, 295.
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