[Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser No. 249, October 17, 1840] 
Bremen, September 

At last once again a topic which extends beyond tea-party gos- 
sip, which so excites the entire public of our Free State that every- 
one takes sides either for or against, and which gives food for 
thought even to the more serious-minded. The thunderstorm in 
the sky of our age has struck even in Bremen, the fight for a 
freer or narrower conception of Christianity has been kindled 
even here, in the capital of North-German fundamentalism; the 
voices which were recently raised in Hamburg, Kassel and Magde- 
burg have found an echo in Bremen.— Briefly, the course of 
events was as follows: Pastor F, W. Krummacher, the Pope of the 
Wuppertal Calvinists, the St. Michael of the doctrine of pre- 
destination, visited his parents here and gave two sermons for his 
father? in the Church of St. Ansgarius.> The first sermon dealt 
with his favourite spectacle, the Last Judgment, the second with an 
anathematising passage in the Epistle to the Galatians; both were 
written with the burning eloquence, the poetic, if not always well- 
chosen, splendour of imagery for which this richly talented pulpit 
speaker is famous; but both, particularly the last, flash with curses 
against those who think differently, as one might expect from such 
a harsh mystic. The pulpit became the presidential chair of a court 
of inquisition whence the eternal curse was hurled against 
all theological trends which the inquisitor did and did not know. 
Anyone who did not accept this crass mysticism as absolute Chris- 
tianity was delivered up to the devil. And with a sophistry which 

emerged as strangely naive, Krummacher always managed to shelter 
behind the apostle Paul. “It is not I who is cursing, nay! Children, 
reflect, it is the apostle Paul who condemns you!” — The worst of it 
was that the apostle wrote in Greek and scholars have not yet been 
able to agree on the precise meaning of certain of his expressions. 
Among these dubious words is the anathema used in this passage, to 
which Krummacher, without more ado, ascribed the most extreme 
meaning of a sentence of eternal damnation. Pastor Paniel, the 
chief representative of rationalism in this pulpit,* had the misfor- 
tune to interpret this word in its milder sense, and in general to 
oppose Krummacher’s way of thinking; he therefore preached 
controversial sermons. Whatever you may think of his views, his 
behaviour is irreproachable. Krummacher cannot deny that in 
composing his sermons he had in mind not only the rationalistic 
majority of the congregation, but Paniel in particular; he cannot 
deny that it is wrong for a guest preacher to try to prejudice a 
congregation against its appointed pastors; he must admit that a 
coarse wood needs a coarse wedge. What was the point of all the 
invective against Voltaire and Rousseau, whom even the worst 
rationalist in Bremen fears like the devil, or of all the curses 
against speculative theology, which, with two or three exceptions, 
his entire audience was as incapable of judging as he himself, what 
was the point of this except to disguise the very definite, even 
personal, tendenciousness of the sermons? — Paniel’s controversial 
sermons were certainly preached in the spirit of Paulus’ rational- 
ism and, in spite of the lauded care in their arrangement and their 
rhetorical pathos, they suffer from all its weaknesses. It is all 
vague and verbose; where the poetic impulse is set in motion, it is 
like the working of a spinning-machine, and the treatment of the 
text like a homoeopathic brew; Krummacher has more originality 
in three sentences than his opponent in three sermons.— An hour 
from Bremen lives a pietistic country pastor’ who is so superior to 
his peasants that he has begun to think himself a great theologian 
and linguist. He issued a tract against Paniel in which he brought 
into play the entire apparatus of a philological theologian of the 
last century. The scientific pretensions of the worthy country 
pastor were punctured most painfully in an anonymous paper. 
With as much spirit as learning the anonymous author,‘ believed 

sung, am 12., 19. und 26. Juli 1840 gehalten.— Ed. 

to be a deserving, learned inhabitant of our town who has several 
times been mentioned in my previous report,’ has demonstrated 
to the clever “God’s word from the country” all the absurdities 
which he had extracted with great trouble from long antiquated 
handbooks. Krummacher issued a Theologische Replik to Paniel’s 
controversial sermons, in which he made an unconcealed attack on 
his whole personality, and, moreover, in a manner which nullified 
the charge of slander brought against his adversary. Though the 
reply takes skilful advantage or the weaknesses of rationalism, 
particularly those of his adversary, Krummacher acts clumsily in 
trying to demolish Paniel’s interpretation. The most capable work 
written from the pietistic standpoint in this controversy was the 
pamphlet by Pastor Schlichthorst, who lives nearby, in which 
rationalism, and that of Pastor Paniel in particular, was quietly and 
dispassionately traced back to its basis, Kantian philosophy, and 
the question was posed: Why are you not honest enough to admit 
that the foundation of your faith is not the Bible but. its 
interpretation according to Kantian philosophy as expounded by 
Paulus? A new paper by Paniel> is expected to come from the 
press some time soon. Whatever it may prove to contain, he has 
stirred the old leaven, he has brought the Bremen people, who 
believed in everything but themselves, to their senses, and pietism, 
which till now has considered the fact that its adversaries were 
split among themselves into so many parties to be a gift from God, 
will now have to learn for once that we all stand united when it is 
a question of fighting obscurantism.