Transatlantic Textbooks: Karl Hagenbach, Shared Interests, and German Academic Theology in...

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Transatlantic Textbooks: Karl Hagenbach, SharedInterests, and German Academic Theology inNineteenth-Century America

Zachary Purvis

Church History / Volume 83 / Issue 03 / September 2014, pp 650 - 683DOI: 10.1017/S0009640714000596, Published online: 31 July 2014

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009640714000596

How to cite this article:Zachary Purvis (2014). Transatlantic Textbooks: Karl Hagenbach, Shared Interests,and German Academic Theology in Nineteenth-Century America. Church History,83, pp 650-683 doi:10.1017/S0009640714000596

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Transatlantic Textbooks: Karl Hagenbach,Shared Interests, and German AcademicTheology in Nineteenth-Century America

ZACHARY PURVIS

The rise of German academic institutions in the nineteenth century considerably alteredthe landscape of American higher education. American students of theology looked toGermany to develop their discipline, where they found model textbooks that gavedirectives in learning and piety, transforming academic and theological practice.With sensitivity to the history of the book and the history of the rich cultural trafficacross the Atlantic, this article focuses on the reception in English translation of theimportant and widely read Swiss-German church historian Karl Rudolf Hagenbach,whose textbooks enjoyed a considerable audience in the United States by crossingideological boundaries and unseating obdurate assumptions. By examining thisreception in the United States and Britain and investigating those “transatlanticpersonalities” who played pivotal roles in bringing his ideas from the “Old World” tothe “New,” this article demonstrates Hagenbach’s lasting influence on the changingfields of history, church history, and academic theology in America. An “Atlantic”perspective on these themes offers new insights for our understanding of religion inthe modern academy, the movement and translation of theological ideas in an age ofsteamship travel, and the surfacing of commonalities among ostensibly mismatched,if not outright conflicting, Protestant religious cultures.

IN his novel account of the rise of the modern research university and thecultivation of “academic charisma,” William Clark scrutinized the centralcomponents of academic material culture and their changes through

the centuries. Attention to “little tools of knowledge,” from professorialrecommendation letters to changing titles of traditional academic degrees, he

For comments, criticism, and other support in writing this article, the author would like to thankChristian Kaufmann and Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann, Martin Wallraff, Johannes Zachhuber,and Church History’s anonymous readers. For access to archival collections, I am especiallygrateful to the Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt; Handschriftenabteilung, Universitätsbibliothek Basel; theHoughton Library, Harvard University; the American University Archives; the Burke LibraryArchives, Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University; and Lancaster TheologicalSeminary Library. Research support for this article was provided by a Fulbright grant, a Swissfederal scholar grant, and a Henman award from Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford.

Zachary Purvis is a Doctoral Candidate in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at theUniversity of Oxford.

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Church History 83:3 (September 2014), 650–683.© American Society of Church History, 2014doi:10.1017/S0009640714000596

argued, widens the picture of the history of scholarly life.1 Among these,textbooks inhabit a fundamental place in shaping and reflecting the practicesof students and disciplines.2 To modify D. F. McKenzie’s phrase, “thesociology of textbooks” cuts a wide interdisciplinary swath.3 Germantextbooks, along with corresponding research methods and the universities inwhich they developed, exerted considerable influence in the modernizationand refashioning of American higher education in the late nineteenth century,as is well attested. The “German model” of higher education and themethods of critical scholarship (Wissenschaft) attracted the attention ofscholars and educational administrators across the American landscape.4

German translations of all stripes (textbooks and other genres) helped pavethe way, in Carl Diehl’s words, for “the great migration of Americanstudents to German universities throughout the nineteenth century.”5

1William Clark, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2006), 4. Cf. Peter Becker and William Clark, eds., Little Tools ofKnowledge: Historical Essays in Academic and Bureaucratic Practices (Ann Arbor: Universityof Michigan Press, 2001). On the historical study of material culture more generally, see, forexample, “AHR Conversation: Historians and the Study of Material Culture,” AmericanHistorical Review 114, no. 5 (December 2009): 1355–1404.

2Cf. Edward Shils, The Constitution of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982),225. For a classic example of the formative cultural and intellectual role of an academiccommunity, see Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German AcademicCommunity, 1890–1930 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969).

3D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1999). On textbooks as objects of study, see, for example, Emidio Campi, Simone DeAngelis, Anja-Silvia Goeing, and Anthony Grafton, eds., Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks inEarly Modern Europe (Geneva: Droz, 2008).

4See, for example, Walter Rüegg, ed., A History of the University in Europe, vol. 3: Universitiesin the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (1800–1945) (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2004); R. C. Schwinges, ed., Humboldt International. Der Export des deutschenUniversitätsmodells im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Basel: Schwabe, 2001); Rüdiger vom Bruch,“A Slow Farewell to Humboldt? Stages in the Development of German Universities, 1810–1945,” in Michael G. Ash, ed., German Universities: Past and Future (Providence, R.I.:Berghahn Books, 1997), 3–27; Sylvia Paletschek, “The Invention of Humboldt and the Impactof National Socialism: The German University Idea in the First Half of the Twentieth Century,”in Margit Szöllösi-Janze, ed., Science in the Third Reich (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 37–58; DanielFallon, “German Influences on American Education,” in The German-American Encounter:Conflict and Cooperation between Two Cultures, 1800–2000, ed. Frank Trommler and ElliotShore (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), 77–87; James Turner and Paul Bernard, “ThePrussian Road to the University? German Models and the University of Michigan, 1837–c.1895,” Rackham Reports (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988–89), 6–52; LaurenceVeysey, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1965); and Richard Hofstadter and Wilson Smith, eds., American Higher Education: ADocumentary History, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961). On Wissenschaftand German theology, see, for example, Johannes Zachhuber, “Wissenschaft,” in The OxfordHandbook of Theology and Modern European Thought, ed. Nicholas Adams, George Pattison,and Graham Ward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 479–98.

5Carl Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship, 1770–1870 (New Haven, Conn.: YaleUniversity Press, 1978), 1.

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Famously, two of America’s most prominent nineteenth-century historians,George Bancroft and John Lothrop Motley, following George Ticknor andEdward Everett, traveled to Germany for doctoral work.6 Inspired by thesepath-breaking early voyages, later American historians looked to Germanyfor a model befitting their profession. Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886)dominated the horizons of these history-book writers, functioning, in PeterNovick’s felicitous idiom, as the “mythic hero of empirical science incarnate.”7

But it was not only historians drawn to Ranke who looked to Germany—home of “that majestic phrase, wissenschaftliche Objectivität,” as Edward A.Ross styled it in 1936—to guide their system of disciplinary norms.8 Lesswell known but similarly formative, young students of theology, inparticular, peered across the Atlantic—not only to Europe but to theGerman-speaking regions specifically—in search for texts to stimulate thedevelopment of their discipline. “What has England to offer in comparisonwith the host of learned theologians who now fill the German chairs ofinstruction?” asked the American theologian and biblical critic EdwardRobinson, who studied at the universities of Berlin, Göttingen, and Halleand married the German daughter of one of Halle’s philosophy professors.9

From Berlin, Bancroft told Harvard College’s president, J. T. Kirkland, “Ihonour Schleiermacher above all the German scholars.”10 “There we saw thegiants, the sons of Anak, and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, andso we were in their sight,” exclaimed another American theologian, withbiblical allusions, of his impressions of German academic theology around1835.11 Time and again, American students who ventured to Germany

6For an overview of their studies abroad, see William Long, Literary Pioneers: Early AmericanExplorers of European Culture (New York: Russell & Russell, 1963), 3–158. For a look at relatedtraveler accounts, see Rhea Foster Dulles, Americans Abroad: Two Centuries of European Travel(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964).

7Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American HistoricalProfession (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 21–31. Ranke was elected the firsthonorary member of the American Historical Association, recognized for his role as a father ofmodern historical scholarship and hailed for supposedly being an “unphilosophical empiricist.”

8Edward A. Ross, Seventy Years of It (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1936), 38. For anintriguing case of the translation of “Old World” European practices to the “New World,” seeAnthony Grafton, “The Republic of Letters in the American Colonies: Francis Daniel PastoriusMakes a Notebook,” American Historical Review 117, no. 1 (February 2012): 1–39.

9Edward Robinson, “Theological Education in Germany,” Biblical Repository 1, Part 1 (January1831): 1–51; Part 2 (April 1831): 199–226; Part 3 (July 1831): 409–51; Part 4 (October 1831): 613–37. The quotation is from Part 3, 435. Cf. Henry B. Smith and Roswell D. Hitchcock, The Life,Writings and Character of Edward Robinson (New York: A. D. F. Randolph, 1863), 48–53; andThomas Albert Howard, “German Academic Theology in America: The Case of EdwardRobinson and Philip Schaff,” History of Universities 18, no. 1 (January 2003): 102–123.

10George Bancroft to President Kirkland, November 5, 1820, in The Life and Letters of GeorgeBancroft, ed. M. A. DeWolfe Howe, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 90.

11See the translator’s preface to W. M. L. de Wette, Theodore; or, the Skeptic’s Conversion, trans.James F. Clark, vol. 1 (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, and Co., 1841), vii.

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returned home impressed with the “depth” (Tiefe) and “spirit” (Geist) of thetheology encountered. Challenging stereotypes and some secularizationtheorists, the student abroad was also sometimes surprised at the piety of thelearned temporary Doktorvater, even if the professor held widely divergentreligious convictions.12 In 1886, Lord Acton wrote, “every branch ofknowledge has felt its [that is, Germany’s] influence.”13 The Unitarianminister L. P. Jacks even quipped that the period extending to World War Iwas “the age of German footnotes.”14

Over 9,000 American students studied in the German states in the nineteenthcentury.15 German university theology left an indelible footprint in theintellectual, institutional, and religious terrain of nineteenth-centuryAmerican society. According to Diehl, between 1810 and 1870, 15.9% of allAmerican students were enrolled in German faculties of theology, the largestpercentage enrollment of the traditional three “higher faculties” of theology,law, and medicine.16 As George Marsden noted, by the end of the century,“it would be rare to find either a university leader or a major scholar whohad not spent some years studying in Germany.”17

12Two conservative Princetonians bookending the nineteenth century offer a case in point. SeeCharles Hodge’s (1797–1878) comments on his stay in Berlin from 1826 to 1828 in Hodge,Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner, 1872–1873), 2:440n1; and J.Gresham Machen’s (1881–1937) letter from Marburg to his mother in 1905, in which hediscussed his interactions with the liberal German theologian Wilhelm Hermann (1846–1922), inNed B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir (Grand Rapids, Mich.:Eerdmans, 1956), 106–107. Cf. Andrew Z. Hansen, “Nineteenth-Century TransatlanticProtestantism: Charles Hodge and the Prussian Erweckungsbewegung,” Pietismus und Neuzeit37 (2011): 191–210; and D. G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis ofConservative Protestantism in Modern America (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1994).

13Lord Acton, “German Schools of History,” English Historical Review 1 (January 1886): 7–42.14Lawrence Pearsall Jacks, “ATheological Holiday—And After,” Hibbert Journal 14 (October

1915): 1–5.15Jurgen Herbst, The German Historical School in American Scholarship: A Study in the

Transfer of Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1965), 1–2.16Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship, 155.17George M. Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to

Established Nonbelief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 104; cf. D. G. Hart, TheUniversity Gets Religion: Religious Studies in American Higher Education (Baltimore, Md.:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); George M. Marsden and Bradley J. Longfield, eds., TheSecularization of the Academy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); and James Turner,Religion Enters the Academy: The Origins of the Scholarly Study of Religion in America(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011). On the general image of German faculties oftheology, especially those within Prussian universities, in Britain and the United States near theend of the nineteenth century, see Thomas Albert Howard, Protestant Theology and the Makingof the Modern German University (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 348–378. Cf.Annette G. Aubert, The German Roots of Nineteenth-Century American Theology (New York:Oxford University Press, 2013); and Roland Bainton, “Yale and German Theology in the Middleof the Nineteenth Century,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 66, no. 3 (1954–1955): 294–302.


These transatlantic moves highlighted the perceived differences in the realmof theological instruction between the Old World and the New—and,subsequently, within the latter’s own different and competing religiousgroups—among which textbooks occupied a central, and historiographicallyneglected, position.18 In the field of church history, “lack of appropriatetextbooks,” observed Elizabeth Clark, posed “an ongoing problem for theAmerican professors” at places like Princeton Theological Seminary,Harvard Divinity School, Union Theological Seminary, and Yale, amongother institutions spread across the United States. Owing to such deficienciesas well as the “great migration” abroad, German textbooks in Englishtranslation gained a wide audience, though they could hardly satisfy theneeds and opinions of all. Summing up, Clark said, the “professors deemedno [German] textbook fully adequate for American Protestant students’ use.Some texts by German authors were lacking in evangelical piety; almost allwere too long for beginning students.”19 Length, learning, and piety allplayed determinative roles as three of the varied selection criteria forGerman texts. Scholars of religion abroad, for their part, often dismissed thework of their American peers.20

Giving voice to the problem, the church historian Philip Schaff (1819–1893)declared, “German ideas cannot take root in English, Scotch, or American soilunless they are freely reproduced in the English language and adapted to the

18In his seminal essay, Henry May raised the question of the difficult “relation between ideas andinstitutions” in the history of American Protestantism and the “long effort to institutionalizesuccessive religious impulses.” May’s gains, as well as those of Sydney Ahlstrom, have receivednew emphases in recent years, but the insights offered by textbooks in this sphere remainunderutilized. See Henry F. May, “The Recovery of American Religious History,” AmericanHistorical Review 70, no. 1 (1964): 79–92; and Sydney Ahlstrom, A Religious History of theAmerican People, 2nd ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004). In a related vein,Nathan Hatch has expertly examined antebellum American religion in Nathan O. Hatch, TheDemocratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989).

19Elizabeth A. Clark, Founding the Fathers: Early Church History and Protestant Professors inNineteenth-Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 75, 83. Theterm “evangelical,” as used here, denotes the chief characteristics of mainstream AmericanProtestantism in the nineteenth century, at least until the 1920s when fundamentalists andmodernists came to blows, and so differs from more recent usages describing certain segmentsof the American religious population. See, for example, the accounts from the mid- and latenineteenth century, in, respectively, Robert Baird, Religion in America; Or, An Account of theOrigin, Progress, Relation to the State, and Present Condition of the Evangelical Churches inthe United States, with Notices of the Unevangelical Denominations (New York: Harper &Brothers, 1844); and H. K. Carroll, The Religious Forces of the United States (New York: TheChristian Literature Co., 1893). Cf. George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and AmericanCulture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1980).

20See William R. Hutchison, “Innocence Abroad: The ‘American Religion’ in Europe,” ChurchHistory 51 (March 1982): 71–84.

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practical wants of a free Church in a free state.”21 Schaff himself was a vitalcultural intermediary in the transatlantic religious milieu of the age, whoroutinely described himself as a “bridge maker”—Swiss by birth, German byeducation, American by adoption.22 On the other side of the Atlantic, alengthy work on recent emigration from Germany to America, Ideen überdie Auswanderung nach Amerika (1827), reckoned, “we advise against theemigration of German booksellers to America, for a well educated class thatwould read or study German publications is just not to be found there.”Most Germans living in the United States “are by far so averse to theGerman language that they do not want to read let alone study it. Everyonewho can and wants to read reaches for English books.”23

Along these lines of transatlantic history and the history of the book, thisarticle examines the reception in English translation of another Swiss-German church historian, Karl Rudolf Hagenbach (1801–1874), among adiverse group of nineteenth-century American figures.24 Though virtuallyforgotten today, Hagenbach’s numerous textbooks, based on his lecturesand carefully positioned for student use, enjoyed a decidedly favorableand approving welcome. I concentrate on the reception of his History ofDoctrines, History of the Church, and Theological Encyclopedia andMethodology, through a series of curious channels, placing that receptionwithin the context of similar currents in American-German theologicalrelations. These volumes, I shall argue, satisfied the longing for German

21Philip Schaff, Theological Propaedeutic: A General Introduction to the Study of Theology,Exegetical, Historical, Systematic, and Practical, including Encyclopaedia, Methodology, andBibliography; A Manual for Students (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893), 402.

22Philip Schaff, “Autobiographical Reminiscences,” in Philip Schaff: Historian and Ambassadorof the Universal Church: Selected Writings, ed. Klaus Penzel (Macon, Ga.: Mercer UniversityPress, 1991), 15; “Congratulatory Address from the Theological Faculty of the University ofBerlin,” in Philip Schaff, 343; and David S. Schaff, The Life of Philip Schaff (New York:Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897), 1. For more on Schaff as a “transatlantic” figure, see ThomasAlbert Howard, God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide (New York:Oxford University Press, 2011), 136–158.

23Ernst Ludwig Brauns, Ideen über die Auswanderung nach Amerika (Göttingen: Vandenhoeckund Ruprecht, 1827), 729–730. On the German book trade in the United States, see John Hruschka,How Books Came to America: The Rise of the American Book Trade (University Park:Pennsylvania State University, 2012), 37–48, 70–83, 95–109. For a look at the presence of theGerman-American press, see Elliot Shore, Ken Fones-Wolf, and James P. Danky, eds., TheGerman-American Radical Press: The Shaping of a Left Political Culture, 1850–1940 (Urbana:University of Illinois Press, 1992).

24On the nature of Atlantic history in general, see Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept andContours (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2005). On its application to the study ofthe history of religion, see the collection of essays in Hartmut Lehmann, ed., TransatlantischeReligionsgeschichte 18. bis. 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006). For a recent survey ofthe various adoptions of the field of the history of the book under different guises, see David D.Hall, “What Was the History of the Book? A Response,” Modern Intellectual History 4, no. 3(2007): 537–544.


scholarship (Wissenschaft), “learned piety,” and adaptability for use in seminarsand survey courses for an unusually broad range of theologians and churchhistorians, capturing the imagination of an academic community stillestablishing its disciplinary customs and throwing, in fits and starts,“preparatory labors into the shade.”25 As viable and particularly popularoptions in the search for suitable theological textbooks, Hagenbach’s worksbecame important resources that helped shape the conventions and practicesof the disciplines of church history, the history of doctrine, and the methodsof the academic study of theology in America.

That Hagenbach’s reception involved a rather heterogeneous lot dispersedacross confessional and ecclesiastical lines, embracing conservative and liberalPresbyterians and Lutherans, Methodists, Unitarians, and Transcendentalistsalike, sheds light on a number of important aspects of modern intellectualand religious history. By crossing ideological boundaries and unseatingotherwise fixed antitheses, this shared response suggests a state of juste-milieu liberal-conservative academic practice in American Protestanteducation in the second half of the nineteenth century. Revising older viewsof the nineteenth century in Europe as the age of secularization, OlafBlaschke and others have referred to the period as a “second confessionalage” on account of lingering confessional prejudices and persisting Jewish,Catholic, and Protestant “milieus.”26 An “Atlantic” perspective on thesethemes—often treated only in the context of a particular nation-state—offersnew insights for our understanding of religion in the newly-foundedmodern academy, the movement and translation of theological ideas in anage of steamship travel, and, significantly, the surfacing of commonalitiesamong ostensibly mismatched, if not outright conflicting, Protestantreligious cultures during the era that Mark A. Noll has called “a newChristian Pluralism.”27 To develop this interpretation, I explore some of the

25Philip Schaff to A. C. McGiffert, December 18, 1889, in A. C. McGiffert Jr., “The Making of anAmerican Scholar: Biography in Letters,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 24, no. 1 (Fall 1986):40. The American Society of Church History (ASCH) was founded, largely by Schaff, in 1888; incomparison, the American Historical Association (AHA) was founded in 1884. Of theology’sother major learned societies and professional bodies, the American Academy of Religion (AAR)originated in 1909 as the Association of Biblical Instructors in American Colleges and SecondarySchools, and the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis (SBL), in 1880.

26Olaf Blaschke, “Das 19. Jahrhundert: Ein Zweites Konfessionelles Zeitalter?” Geschichte undGesellschaft 26 (2000): 38–75. Cf. Anthony Steinhoff, “Ein zweites konfessionelles Zeitalter?Nachdenken über die Religion im langen 19. Jahrhundert,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 30(2004): 549–570; Helmut Walser Smith, ed., Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in Germany,1800–1914 (Oxford: Berg, 2001); and Margaret Lavinia Anderson, “The Limits ofSecularization: On the Problem of Catholic Revival in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” TheHistorical Journal 38 (September 1995): 647–690.

27Mark A. Noll, The Old Religion in a New World: The History of American Christianity (GrandRapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002), 113–135. On “shared” or unifying themes within this diverse,pluralistic realm in nineteenth-century America, see E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America:

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perceptions and images of Hagenbach’s works arising in the American andEnglish religious press, recover and examine in detail those primarilyresponsible for bringing his textbooks into English, and, finally, comment onthe importance and lasting significance of this selection of his English corpus.28

I. GERMAN AND AMERICAN CHURCH HISTORY:AN INSIDER AND OUTSIDER

A native of Basel, Switzerland, Hagenbach studied in Bonn and Berlin withsome of the leading German theologians of the day, including FriedrichLücke (1791–1855), J. K. L. Gieseler (1792–1854), August Neander (1789–1850), and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), before returning to hishometown in 1823. Almost immediately, he began to teach the churchhistory course for the Basel Pädagogium, a newly established educationalinstitution distinct to Basel that served as a two- or three-year post-Gymnasium preparatory college for the University of Basel, and as a“finishing school” for the sons of Basel’s businessmen who would not beattending university but rather take up the family business—students similarto Thomas Buddenbrook in Thomas Mann’s famous novel. While there hebegan to craft his pedagogical skills, which continually manifestedthemselves in his publications.29 That same year, he received a call to jointhe biblical scholar and theologian W. M. L. de Wette (1780–1849) onBasel’s theological faculty. In 1824, he became außerordentlicher Professor,and in 1829, ordentlicher Professor of Church History. Together, the pairacted to transform Switzerland’s oldest university, founded by the humanistpope Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pius II) in 1460, into a leading center of

Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven, Conn.: YaleUniversity Press, 2003), 5.

28The role of Methodists in his reception is striking when considered in light of recentinvestigations of German theological scholarship in America. Cf. Clark, Founding the Fathers,6, 356n16, with Winthrop Hudson, “The Methodist Age in America,” Methodist History 12(1974): 3–15; Dee E. Andrews, The Methodists and Revolutionary America, 1760–1800: TheShaping of an Evangelical Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000); and ToddWebb, Transatlantic Methodists: British Wesleyanism and the Formation of an EvangelicalCulture in Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UniversityPress, 2013). See also John F. Hurst, “Hagenbach on the Later History of the Church,”Methodist Review 46 (April 1864): 195–215. I focus here more on the ways in whichHagenbach’s American audience received and responded to selections from his works, than onthe contents and details of the works themselves.

29The emphasis on pedagogy is clear from the extant student notes for Hagenbach’s courses onchurch history (Kirchengeschichte) at the Pädagogium, which date from the winter semester of1823; as well as by comparison with the notes from his predecessor Daniel Krauss. See thenotes in Basel Universitätsbibliothek, Handschriften, Frey-Gryn Mscr VIII 1.


rigorous, critical theological scholarship (Wissenschaft). He remained thereuntil his death in 1874, teaching for more than five decades and producingnumerous revised editions of his textbooks in order to keep pace with newliterature and other advancements in each respective field.30

Yet, at least for American theological students heading for Europe, the largerGerman universities—Halle (founded in 1694), Göttingen (1737), Berlin(1810), and Bonn (1818), chiefly—overshadowed Basel as sought-afterdestinations throughout the nineteenth century.31 Edward Robinson’s entryon Basel in his survey, “A Concise View of the Universities, and of the Stateof Theological Education, in Germany,” described the Swiss-German outpostin typical terms, mentioning, in the span of a single paragraph, its oncedominant Hebrew scholars of the early modern era, the names of de Wetteand Hagenbach, and some rare book collections housed in the libraries.32

Hagenbach possessed a unique identity as both an insider and outsider to theGerman system and its theological trends, in a sense mirroring the geographicalposition and disposition of Basel itself: located on the crossroads of threecountries (das Dreiländereck); a member of the Old Swiss Confederation since1501 but regarded by its inhabitants until late in the nineteenth century as a nearautonomous city-republic operating within the Confederation; many citizenseven spoke of “going to Switzerland” when departing for one of the otherSwiss cantons.33 As a Swiss church historian and prominent member of Basel’sReformed church, he held a deep interest in the peculiar cultural makeup of hisVaterstadt. Basel’s well-known thinkers in the revolutionary century,34 from

30See Andreas Staehelin, Geschichte der Universität Basel 1818–1835 (Basel: Helbing &Lichtenhahn, 1959), 27–41; and Thomas Albert Howard, Religion and the Rise of Historicism:W. M. L. de Wette, Jacob Burckhardt, and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth-CenturyHistorical Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 110–136.

31In 1835, for instance, student enrollment at the University of Basel totaled only forty students,while Berlin counted some 2,000 students. Figures are from Albert Teichmann, Die UniversitätBasel in den fünfzig Jahren seit ihrer Reorganisation im Jahre 1835 (Basel: L. Reinhardt, 1886),62–63; and Konrad H. Jarausch, Students, Society and Politics in Imperial Germany (Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), 30. Cf. Konrad H. Jarausch, “American Students inGermany, 1815–1914: The Structures of German and U.S. Matriculants at GöttingenUniversity,” in German Influences on Education in the United States to 1917, ed. Henry Geitz,Jürgen Heideking, and Jurgen Herbst (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 195–211.The German universities and their general place in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germanyreceive a superb treatment in Charles E. McClelland, State, Society, and University in Germany1700–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

32Edward Robinson, “A Concise View of the Universities, and of the State of TheologicalEducation, in Germany,” in The Students’ Cabinet Library of Useful Tracts, vol. 1 (Edinburgh:Thomas Clark, 1835), 200–201.

33Thomas A. Brady Jr., Turning Swiss: Cities and Empire, 1450–1550 (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1985), 57–72; Lionel Gossman, Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study inUnseasonable Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 6.

34OnBasel’s place in the “age of revolutions” from theHelvetic Republic (1798–1803) onward, see,for example, R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and

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philologist J. J. Bachofen and historian Jacob Burckhardt to theologian FranzOverbeck and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, among others, famouslycultivated an attitude of independence, aloofness, even occasionally derision,toward Berlin, Prussia, and the perceived German intellectual establishment.They comprised a notable “oppositional current.”35 The origins of this collective“dissenting” tradition, traceable to Basel’s long established conservative andpietist communities, made its vestigial appearance in Hagenbach’s thought, too,even if he had a considerably greater sympathy and fondness for so-called“German” ideas. It would be a mistake to assign him wholesale to either sphere.As awriter of church history, Hagenbach stepped into a crowded field.An 1888

librarian’s guide to the Sage Library of New Jersey’s New Brunswick Seminarynoted that ecclesiastical history students preferred to read J. L. von Mosheim,Neander, Hagenbach, and Schaff.36 Clark singled out Mosheim’s EcclesiasticalHistory, Karl von Hase’s History of the Christian Church, Gieseler’s Text-bookof Church History, and Neander’s numerous Histories as four primary offeringsin the church history curriculums at the divinity schools of Harvard and Yaleand the seminaries of Princeton and Union.37 In late eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century American Protestantism, Göttingen’s Johann Lorenz vonMosheim (1693–1755) unquestionably loomed large. Pennsylvania witnessedthe creation of the von Mosheim Society in 1789, a literary circle and finalplank of a comprehensive educational initiative devoted to “the perpetuation ofGerman language and culture.” Though based in Philadelphia, the Societycounted members up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Its founder, the German-American Lutheran Justus Christian Henry Helmuth, originally from Helmstedt,Germany—the town where Mosheim taught before moving to Göttingen—hadlong admired Mosheim as the unequalled Protestant historian of the eighteenthcentury for his sweeping textbook Institutionum historiae ecclesiasticae(1755).38 For Helmuth, Mosheim appealed to both pietist and confessionalsensibilities—an “orthodox but learned writer possessed of an elegant prosestyle in both German and Latin.”39 Interested English readers soon reaped the

America, 1760–1800, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964), 1:395–423; andEdgar Bonjour, Hilary Seton Offler, and George Richard Potter, A Short History of Switzerland(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 211–256. Cf. Marc H. Lerner, “The Helvetic Republic: AnAmbivalent Reception of French Revolutionary Liberty,” French History 18 (2004): 50–75.

35Gossman, Basel in the Age of Burckhardt, 439.36John C. Van Dyke, Notes on the Sage Library of the Theological Seminary at New Brunswick

(New Brunswick: n.p., 1888), 10.37Clark, Founding the Fathers, 75–83.38Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, Institutionum historiae ecclesiasticae antiquae et recentioris

libri IV (Helmstedt: Weygand, 1755).39A. G. Roeber, “The von Mosheim Society and the Preservation of German Education and

Culture in the New Republic, 1789–1813,” in German Influences on Education, 157–176; A. G.


benefits of Mosheim’s labors in the form of multiple English translationsappearing in abundance shortly after his death.40

Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History thus became a standard work in the lecturehalls of Princeton Seminary, Union Seminary, and Yale University, even ifnumerous professors, from Samuel Miller of Princeton, to George Fisher ofYale, to Schaff of Mercersburg and Union, sometimes viewed it withambivalent eyes. Their criticisms of the work ranged from the dogmatic—“acoldblooded low Arminian,” muttered the Calvinist Miller, who used it simplyas a default choice—to the dull—“clear, though mechanical and monotonous… freedom from passion, almost bordering on cool indifferentism,” judgedSchaff. The fact that the work was by then over one-hundred years old, andeven then the product of many earlier attempts and revisions by Mosheim,cast a blight upon it.41 Gieseler, Hase, and Neander, as main alternatives, allreceived a similar mixed response, Clark noted, even if for different reasons.42

II. OF “GERMAN-FEARERS” AND “GERMANY’S CHOICEST GIFT”:AMERICAN AND BRITISH REVIEWS

The first of Hagenbach’s textbooks to appear in English was hisDogmengeschichte (History of Doctrines), translated by the German Carl W.

Roeber, “Citizens or Subjects? German-Lutherans and the Federal Constitution in Pennsylvania,1789–1800,” Amerikastudien / America Studies 34 (1989): 49–68.

40See, for example, the frequently reprinted, Mosheim, An Ecclesiastical History, Ancient andModern, from the Birth of Christ to the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century: In which the Rise,Progress, and Variations of Church Power are Considered in their Connexion with the State ofLearning and Philosophy and the Political History of Europe during that Period. By the LateLearned John Lawrence Mosheim, trans. Archibald Maclaine, 5 vols. (Dublin, n.p., 1767–68);Charles Trelawney Collines, ed., A Summary of Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History, Ancient andModern, . . . to which is Added, A Continuation of the Particular History of the Church, fromthe Middle of the Eighteenth Century to the Year MDCCCXIX, 2 vols. (London: T. Cadell,1822); or Mosheim, An Ecclesiastical History, trans. J. Murdock, rev. ed. J. S. Seaton, 11th ed.(London: W. Tegg, 1880).

41Clark, Founding the Fathers, 76–77; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church: From theBirth of Christ to the Reign of Constantine, A. D. 1–311 (New York: Charles Scribner, 1859), 22.

42John C. L. Gieseler, A Text-book of Church History, ed. Henry B. Smith, trans. SamuelDavidson and John Winstanely Hull, rev. American ed., 5 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers,1857–1880); Charles Hase, A History of the Christian Church, trans. from the 7th German ed.by Charles E. Blumenthal and Conway P. Wing (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1856); AugustNeander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, trans. Joseph Torrey, 11th rev.American ed., 5 vols. (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1872). For the original German editions,see Johann C. L. Gieseler, Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte, 6 vols. (Bonn: Marcus, 1844–1857); Karl von Hase, Kirchengeschichte. Lehrbuch für academische Vorlesungen (Leipzig:Weidmann’sche Buchhandlung, 1834); and August Neander, Allgemeine Geschichte derchristlichen Religion und Kirche, 6 vols. in 11 parts (Hamburg: F. Perthes, 1825–1852).

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Buch in 1846.43 In terms of method and organization, the History of Doctrinesdivided the history of the Christian church into a series of relatively discreteperiods, such as the “Apostolic Age to the Death of Origen, or from the Year80 to the Year 254.” Under each period, it presented a “general history ofthought,” highlighting the main figures, events, and ideas, followed by a“special history of doctrine.”44 This “special history” resembled to somedegree a traditional work of systematic theology—or a kind of dogmatics inthe past tense, one might say—by discussing various theological loci insuccession, from issues of prolegomena to eschatology, in terms of thedominant trends and thinkers of the timeframe under consideration. In thisrespect, the structure of the book mirrored similar patterns in widespread useacross Germany.45

Reflecting Hagenbach’s conciliatory nature, Buch took pains to emphasizethe work’s utility for theological education by restating part of the originalauthor’s preface. “Respecting my theological views, I do not think itnecessary to enter into any lengthened remarks,” Hagenbach had declared,“inasmuch as they will be clear from the work itself to such an extent as isallowable in a writing of a professedly historical character, in which thesubjective opinions of the writer should neither be prominently broughtforward at the expense of truth, nor wholly kept back at the expense ofliberty.” Charting what was generally seen as an appropriately “objective”course with limited dogmatic opinion tendered on historical topics, thework’s orientation, “compendiousness,” and “clearness,” Buch noted,marshaling testimony from others, all lent it well to the English-speaking

43K. R. Hagenbach, Compendium of the History of Doctrines, trans. Carl W. Buch, 2 vols.(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1846–1847). Cf. the record of the Buch-Hagenbach correspondence inthe Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt (hereafter StaBS), PA 838a D 56. Buch (1819–1857) was inresidence at the time with the Irish professor, Congregationalist, and former Presbyterian SamuelDavidson (1806–1898), then teaching at Manchester’s Lancashire Independent College, whoencouraged him to bring Hagenbach’s Dogmengeschichte into English.

44The “general” and “special” histories of the first period, the “Age of Apologetics,” are treated inHagenbach, Compendium of the History of Doctrines, 1:31–61, and 62–223, respectively.

45For more on the patterns used for representing the history of doctrine, see, for example, JamesE. Bradley and Richard A. Muller, Church History: An Introduction to Research, Reference Works,and Method (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), 27–32. That analysis bears a closeresemblance to Philip Schaff’s remarks on the method and organization of Hagenbach’sDogmengeschichte, advanced just shy of 150 years earlier. See Schaff, “What is ChurchHistory? A Vindication of the Idea of Historical Development,” The Princeton Review 19(January 1847): 91–113, especially 100–101. Martin Wallraff has rehearsed some of the earlyhistory of Dogmengeschichte as a distinct line of inquiry in Wallraff, “Evangelium und Dogma.Zu den Anfängen der Gattung Dogmengeschichte (bis 1850),” in Biblische Theologie undhistorisches Denken. Wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Studien. Aus Anlass der 50. Wiederkehr derBasler Promotion von Rudolf Smend, ed. Martin Kessler and Martin Wallraff (Basel: Schwabe,2008), 256–278.


student.46 In theoretical terms, one discerns a restrained “dialectical” formof objectivity at work: the interaction of the knowing subject (Hagenbach)with the object of study (the specific themes and loci in the history ofdoctrines).47 Without wearing its theory on its sleeves, as it were,Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines, like other publications in the genre, stillrested on this kind of subdued dialectical objectivity for much of its analysis.48

Assessing Buch’s edition, the British Quarterly Review, a periodical incompetition with the Whig Edinburgh Review and Tory Quarterly Reviewintent on fostering a “critical spirit” among open-minded nonconformists andother Victorians, deemed it the vanguard of the genre.49 “A history of thedoctrines of Christianity has long been a desideratum in English, our divineshaving usually discussed dogmatic theology, not in its historic phases, but itsscriptural aspect. It is, however, of considerable importance that thetheologian should study the doctrines of the Bible in the light of history.”The reviewer contended that “history of doctrines” as a subject belongedproperly under the auspices of ecclesiastical history, but “the Germans, . . .with their characteristic subdivisions of study, have exalted it into a distinctdepartment of investigation. Hence they have been able to prosecute it withgreater diligence and minuteness.” Though the Marburg theologian WilhelmMünscher (1766–1814) had furnished one of the more prolix treatments ofthe field with his series Handbuch der christlichen Dogmengeschichte, thereviewer ventured, “the best compendium is that of Hagenbach.” In the finalanalysis, it concluded, “Professor Hagenbach,” though a moderate historicist,

46Carl Buch, “Translator’s Preface,” in Hagenbach, Compendium of the History of Doctrines, 1:v–vi. Cf. K. R. Hagenbach, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Weidmann’scheBuchhandlung, 1840–1841), 1:iii–xii.

47I borrow this notion of “dialectical objectivity” from Allan Megill. In Megill’s view, dialecticalobjectivity differs from other types of objectivity in that it “involves a positive view of subjectivity.The defining feature of dialectical objectivity is the claim that subjectivity is indispensable to theconstituting of objects.” See Allan Megill, “Objectivity for Historians,” Historical Knowledge,Historical Error: A Contemporary Guide to Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,2007), 107–124. Cf. Megill, “Four Senses of Objectivity,” in Rethinking Objectivity, ed. AllanMegill (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1994), 1–20. In comparison to the otherexamples of this view suggested in Megill’s typology, Hagenbach’s work is conspicuouslymoderate.

48This theoretical underpinning would come to fuller expression in K. R. Hagenbach, “NeandersVerdienste um die Kirchengeschichte: Eine akademische Gedächtnißrede gehalten am 4. November1850,” Theologische Studien und Kritiken 24 (1851): 543–594. See also the English-languageversion of the essay, produced by Henry B. Smith, in Hagenbach, “Neander’s Service as aChurch Historian, translated by Prof. H. B. Smith,” Bibliotheca Sacra 8 (October 1851): 822–857.

49The anonymous essay appeared under the section, “Criticisms on Books,” Review ofCompendium of the History of Doctrines, vol. 1, by K. R. Hagenbach, trans. Carl W. Buch,British Quarterly Review 5, no. 9 (February 1847): 283–284 (hereafter “Criticism of Books”).On the character of the periodical, see R. V. Osbourn, “The British Quarterly Review,” TheReview of English Studies 1 (April 1950): 147–152.

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“is evangelical in sentiment, and therefore no German-fearing Christian needbe alarmed.”50

On its own, the conclusion that the text was “safe for German-fearers”is certainly striking. But it appears all the more so when set against thebackdrop of the rest of the Review, if not broader undercurrents of anti-German attitudes in religion. In the section immediately preceding the bookreviews, the journal carried a scathing article-length indictment of DavidFriedrich Strauss’s Life of Jesus, recently published in English by GeorgeEliot (Marian Evans), decrying it as a jumble of “unfair” and “preposterous”theories, supported with “glaring inconsistencies and parologisms,”“complacent assumptions,” and “torturous reasoning.” The net result was“such a fantastic system of speculation as that of Hegel,” equal incomparison “to nothing else than some ice-palace, vast, glittering, andstrangely compacted, but cold, unsubstantial, baseless, and useless.”51

Harangues and other negative reviews of Strauss’s Life of Jesus abounded, ofcourse, but the Review protested that it was symptomatic of the deficienciesseemingly inherent to German Protestant theology at large, not just tohistorical-critical investigations of the early Christian church or the biblicalbooks themselves. “‘Learned Germany’ has been indulging itself in writinginfidelity for the last half-century without altogether suspecting it,” theReview sardonically broadcast. “Dr. Strauß has done them [the theologians of“Learned Germany”] the benefit of showing them to themselves.”52 Tocall Hagenbach level-headed and commend him to “German-fearers”consequently amounted to a highly meaningful verdict of approbation.One example brings out this supposed contrast arising in the Review.

Hagenbach’s brief treatment of Strauss’s thesis and the entangled questionsof modern Christology took place in the last section in the History of

50Criticism of Books,” 283–284. Cf. Hurst, “Hagenbach on the Later History of the Church,”212–215.

51“The Life of Jesus, critically examined. By Dr. David Friedrich Strauss,” British QuarterlyReview 5, no. 9 (February 1847): 206–264, here 251, 252, 257, 258, 261. Cf. David FriedrichStrauss, The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, trans. George Eliot, 3 vols. (London: ChapmanBros., 1846); originally published in German as Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, kritische bearbeitet, 2vols. (Tübingen: C. F. Osiander, 1835–1836).

52“The Life of Jesus,” 209, 263–264. For other accounts of Strauss in the eyes of hiscontemporaries, see, for example, Horton Harris, David Friedrich Strauss and his Theology(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973); John Edward Toews, Hegelianism: The Pathtoward Dialectical Humanism, 1805–1841 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980),255–287; Jean-Marie Paul, D. F. Strauss (1801–1874) et son époque (Paris: Soc. Les bellesLettres, 1982); Marilyn Chapin Massey, Christ Unmasked: The Meaning of the “Life of Jesus”in German Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983); George S.Williamson, The Longing for Myth in Germany: Religion and Aesthetic Culture fromRomanticism to Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 151–179; and ErikLinstrum, “Strauss’s Life of Jesus: Publication and the Politics of the German Public Sphere,”Journal of the History of Ideas 71, no. 4 (October 2010): 593–616.


Doctrines, ranging from 1720 to the time of Hagenbach’s writing of the book,and described as “An Age of Criticism, of Speculation, and of Antithesisbetween Faith and Knowledge, Philosophy and Christianity, Reason andRevelation.”53 After a few comments about the impact of the Enlightenmentupon Christology, he noted that “adherents of speculative philosophy . . .exposed themselves to the danger of renouncing the historical appearance ofChrist, or of converting his history into mere myth.” Synthesizing multipletrajectories, he continued: “the advocates of modern theology consider ittheir task to show, that the divine and the human natures of Christ (the idealand the historical), are most intimately connected with each other. Thoughthey differ from each other in reference to particular points, as well asregarding the modes of argumentation which they use, they all agree inadmitting that the received ecclesiastical terms of person and nature are nolonger sufficient to express the relation in which the two natures of Christstand to each other.” Only with “more profound philosophical and historicalinvestigations” might theologians convince contemporary skeptical audiences“of the idea of a God-man, who is separated from sinful men by hissinlessness, and . . . prove, with highest degree of historical evidence, itsrealization in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.”54 Sustained references to andinteractions with disputed views from the likes of J. G. Herder, ImmanuelKant, F. W. J. Schelling, Julius Wegscheider, Schleiermacher, and Strauss,among others, occurred almost entirely in endnotes.55 In this way, theHistory of Doctrines diverted some attention from what was a contestedtopic, streamlining the presentation for students seeking a broad overviewmore than an elaborate treatise. Adhering to the craft of history, asHagenbach concisely put it in the author’s preface, directed this choice.“The author’s opinions do not appear with much prominence,” theReview confirmed, “inasmuch as there was no reason for their specialmanifestation.”56 While this approach found favor among Strauss’s manycritics, it was more a function of the method and organization of the Historyof Doctrines and the status of the work as a judicious survey textbook ratherthan a polemical piece.

In 1850, a contributor to The Princeton Review affirmed with admirationthat Hagenbach had long been recognized as “a writer of comprehensiveviews and unusual sprightliness. This, rather than what the Germans love tocall depth, is at the bottom of his popularity.” “Yet,” the column insisted, “he

53Hagenbach, Compendium of the History of Doctrines, 2:431–438.54Hagenbach, Compendium of the History of Doctrines, 2:432.55See, for example, Hagenbach, Compendium of the History of Doctrines, 2:434n8, 436n9, and

438n10.56“Criticism of Books,” 284.

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is a German.”57 Fellow Swiss-German Schaff, then teaching in Mercersburg,Pennsylvania, also remarked on Hagenbach’s Swiss-German background,insisting that though Hagenbach spent all but a few years of his life in hisnative Basel, he was sufficiently “German by education” to merit the timeand careful study of English-speaking readers—in either the Old World orthe New—desiring to learn about the leading lights of German academictheology after Schleiermacher. Hagenbach’s “style is remarkably clear,simple, easy, and fluent,” observed Schaff. “His tone and judgment is liberal,mild, amiable and well calculated to attract outsiders, and such as areprejudiced against more decided forms of orthodoxy . . . . He is also quite arespectable poet and a gentleman of fine taste and general culture.”58 Finally,he said, Hagenbach’s textbooks (Lehrbücher), “by their simple, clearvivacity, and freedom from technical pedantry, commend themselves even toEnglish taste.”59

Expressing widespread sentiments, the Bibliotheca Sacra commendedHagenbach’s works to its readers, noting agreeably that he “is one of thoseGermans who combine some English traits with their national personality.His mode of thinking is lucid, and his style simple and transparent. His text-book [the History of Doctrines] is by far the best of any for English andAmerican readers.” In canvassing “the whole field” of theology, “it iscomprehensive and accurate. With respect to particular subjects, especiallythe difficult ones, it is as profound as it is possible for a manual to be.”60

Reviews from The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review likewiseapplauded Hagenbach’s “conciseness,” stating that in the domain of churchhistory and history of doctrine, “perhaps no one has met with such generalacceptance as Hagenbach,” whose textbooks “prove a valuable accession tothe libraries of ministers and theological students.” In the wider panorama ofGerman academic theology in the United States, ventured one reviewer, it“is rare that translations of German books are satisfactory . . . [but] in thisvolume, the public have a guaranty of such as is not often enjoyed.”61

On the opposite end of the spectrum, leading theological liberalsand Transcendentalists, such as the Unitarian Theodore Parker, endorsed

57Review of Die Kirchengeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, aus dem Standpunkte desevangelischen Protestantismus betrachtet, in einer Reihe Vorlesungen, by K. R. Hagenbach, ThePrinceton Review 22, no. 3 (July 1850): 347.

58Philip Schaff, Germany; Its Universities, Theology, and Religion (Philadelphia: Lindsay andBlakiston, 1857), 403.

59Philip Schaff, History of the Apostolic Church, with a General Introduction to Church History(New York: Charles Scribner, 1853), 107; Schaff, “The Evangelical Catholic Period of OrganicDevelopment in German Protestant Historiography,” in Philip Schaff, 50n41.

60“Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines,” Bibliotheca Sacra and Biblical Repository 18, no. 72(October 1861): 890–891.

61“Short Notices,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 33, no. 2 (April 1861): 381.


Hagenbach’s works. Though he thought the genre lacking in English books,Parker called Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines “the best” of its kind.62 TheMethodist Review delivered a similar appraisal when it observed, “of all therecent publications of the German theological press, we know of none moreeloquent in style or choice of material.”63

Introducing an abridged translation of Hagenbach’s lectures on eighteenth-and nineteenth-century theology in Europe, the next work to appear inEnglish after the History of Doctrines, the German-American Lutheran J. H.W. Stuckenberg and the Connecticut Congregationalist William LeonhardGage heaped sterling plaudits on the academic texts penned by the Baselprofessor:

Prof. Hagenbach . . . is so well known to the theologians of Great Britain andAmerica, through his widely circulated History of Doctrines, that the editorsof this volume do not need to speak at any length of his learning, his candour,his piety, his soundness in doctrine, his thoroughness, and his graceful style.In Germany he is even more widely known than abroad. Though a professorin a Swiss University, his lectures are delivered in the German language . . . .All his works have passed through repeated editions, and in introducing thisone, we are but putting the reader of English in possession of a volume whichhas long been a standard in Switzerland and Germany. The first book whichProf. Tholuck of Halle puts into the hand of a young man who wishes tobecome acquainted with the history, present condition, and future hopes ofthe cause of Christ in its relation to philosophy, scholarship, and poetry ofGermany is this work of Hagenbach . . . . With these introductoryremarks, we commit this volume to the readers of Great Britain and theUnited States, confident that it is one of the choicest gifts which Germanyhas yet bestowed upon the world, and trusting that the favour which hasbeen shown to it in the country of its birth may be continued in thecountries of its adoption.64

When a revised version of the History of the Church in the Eighteenth andNineteenth Centuries went to print in 1869, the authoritative quarterly TheNew Englander, under the editorial guidance of Yale’s George Park Fisher(1827–1909)—eventual President of the American Historical Association in

62Theodore Parker to Ellen Grover, November 1, 1853, in The Life and Correspondence ofTheodore Parker, ed. John Weiss, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1864), 1:342. Seealso Siegfried B. Puknat, “De Wette in New England,” Proceedings of the AmericanPhilosophical Society 102 (1958): 376–95.

63Hurst, “Hagenbach on the Later History of the Church,” 215.64Wm. Leonhard Gage and J. H. W. Stuckenberg, “Introduction,” in K. R. Hagenbach, German

Rationalism, in its Rise, Progress, and Decline, in Relation to Theologians, Scholars, Poets,Philosophers, and the People: A Contribution to the Church History of the Eighteenth andNineteenth Centuries, ed. and trans. Wm. Leonhard Gage and J. H. W. Stuckenberg (Edinburgh:T&T Clark, 1865), i, xix.

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1898, who had studied abroad at Halle in the 1850s—pronounced that it was“the best account . . . of the progress of theology, literature, and culture inGermany for the last century and a half.” Of his cardinal strengths,“Hagenbach is evangelical without being narrow,” a wellspring ofknowledge, who “writes . . . without the stiffness and pedantry which areoften characteristic of German treatises of this nature.”65 For his part,Hagenbach said in 1863, “I had never expected to flatter myself with thethought that my works would attain so much honor (Ehre) abroad, [even]without my help, such as has already occurred in so many differentdirections.”66

Such accolades echoed the familiar refrain, on seemingly all sides, of theimportant combination of brevity, liveliness, and rigor in textbooks. Thelengths and ends to which the primary “transatlantic actors” went to bringthese works from Hagenbach, of Germany’s “choicest gifts”—as well asother tomes by other German authors, to be sure—into English, testifies totheir appeal.

III. SMITH, SHEDD, AND “FURNISHING A RUBRIC”

At some point in the middle of the nineteenth century, August Tholuck (1799–1877) is reputed to have asked: “and what is this Maine, which produces menlike these?” He had in mind Henry Boynton Smith (1815–1877), the prominentNew School Presbyterian, who spent a generous span of overworked years of illhealth engaged with Hagenbach’s books.67 Born in 1815 in Portland, Maine,Smith was raised a Unitarian. In 1830, he entered Bowdoin College. Duringthe winter of his senior year, the multifarious revival movement swelling upnear the end of the Second Great Awakening made its way to Bowdoin, andSmith credited the newfound “special religious interest” for inciting hisconversion to a more traditional “Trinitarian and Evangelical” position.68

65Review of History of the Church in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, by K. R.Hagenbach, The New Englander 29 (January 1870): 146–47.

66K. R. Hagenbach to William Leonhard Gage, March 29, 1863, Autograph File H, HoughtonLibrary, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

67Elizabeth L. Smith, ed.,Henry Boynton Smith: His Life andWork (New York: A. C. Armstrong,1880), 1. Cf. Tholuck’s rhetorical question with the words of the German theologian and academicIsaak Dorner, describing Smith’s international standing: “I have esteemed him [Smith] as one of thefirst, if not the first, American theologians of our time” (Isaak A. Dorner to Charles A. Briggs,March 30, 1877, in Friedrich Wilhelm Graf and Johannes Wischmeyer, eds., “‘Verständigungder Protestanten diesseits und jenseits der Ocean.’—Die Korrespondenz zwischen Isaak AugustDorner und Charles A. Briggs (1866–1884),” Journal for the History of Modern Theology /Zeitschrift für neuere Theologiegeschichte 15, no. 1 [July 2008]: 90–91). See also William K. B.Stoever, “Henry Boynton Smith and the German Theology of History,” Union SeminaryQuarterly Review 24 (Fall 1968): 69–89.

68E. L. Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, 13–15.


From there he began to pursue theological studies, first at Andover TheologicalSeminary in Massachusetts—founded in 1807 in response to the rise ofUnitarianism at Harvard College, an arrangement clearly stipulated in theinstitution’s original statutes—and then, briefly, at Bangor Seminary inMaine.69 He would go on to become the first full-time professor of churchhistory at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, where he also taughtsystematic theology for nearly twenty years.

Toward the end of 1837, Smith sailed across the intervening ocean for Paris,intent on furthering his theological training abroad. In the spring of 1838, hemoved east, leaving France for Germany, attracted by the presence of the“Awakening” (Erweckungsbewegung) theologian Tholuck in Halle.70 Herichly chronicled his activities at Halle to a friend in a letter from November24, 1838:

Shall I tell you how I live here? Take today as a specimen. Got up at seven,committed my verses, read a Psalm in Hebrew from eight to nine, heard alecture on Psychology by Prof. Erdmann (one of the best lecturers inphilosophy in Germany); nine to ten in Schleiermacher’s Glaubenslehre;ten to eleven, heard Tholuck on Christian Morals; eleven to twelve,walked with a student; twelve to one, read some in Schelling; one to two,heard Tholuck on Theological Encyclopedia; two to three, dinner; three tofour, read Goethe’s Torquato Tasso, with the young Englishman (Creak),who boards here; four to five, heard Ulrici on Religionsphilosophie; fiveto six, a delightful walk with Prof. Tholuck; six to half-past seven, concertof sacred music of Bach, Handel (from the Messiah), etc.; half-past sevento eight, went to see a student; eight to nine, tea; nine to ten, read Faustwith Madame Ulrici, who explained all the hard places, and told me thewords I didn’t know—she is a capital lexicon;—and now I am writing, toyou.71

At year’s end, Smith ventured from the “delightful” company in Halle toWittenberg, and later, to Berlin. There he established close connections withBaron von Kottwitz; August Twesten, Schleiermacher’s successor indogmatics; the “brave as a lion” E. W. Hengstenberg, who, Smith said,“more than any other man . . . is like one of the prophets of the OldTestament”; and “the excellent, learned Neander, the father of a new era in

69On Andover’s early character, see the statutes printed in The Constitution and AssociateStatutes of the Theological Seminary in Andover (Andover, Mass.: Flagg and Gould, 1817).

70Lewis French Stearns, Henry Boynton Smith (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892), 54, 56. On the“Awakening” (Erweckungsbewegung), see, for example, Nicholas Hope, German andScandinavian Protestantism 1700–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); and David Ellis,“Piety, Politics, and Paradox: The Protestant Awakening in Brandenburg and Pomerania, 1816–1848,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2002).

71Smith to a friend, November 24, 1838, in E. L. Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, 59.

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church history.”72 He heard the pioneering jurist Savigny speak on legalscience (Rechtswissenschaft), attended Ranke’s history lectures, met fordiscussion with Edward Robinson, then also studying in Berlin, and dinedrepeatedly with a cousin of Tholuck’s wife—Marie von Tucher, the widowof Hegel.73 In August, he wrote to New England, “My dear parents, I havedecided to remain the next semester here in Berlin, instead of returninghome . . . . The first question is, where can I study to the most advantage?and about this there can be but one opinion.”74

Smith’s early experiences captivated his imagination long after he eventuallyreturned home. He again trained his gaze on German theological Wissenschaftwhen he undertook a revision of Gieseler’s Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte inthe 1850s. As he realized the goal, however, Smith found himself disappointedwith Gieseler, surprising in light of the time he had spent reworking the multi-volume text. In spite of all the energy he had poured into it, Gieseler’s Text-book remained “cold, but cautious; it is more rational than sympathetic.”75 Ifthe outcome left him lukewarm, it hardly portended the exuberance hedisplayed in his next major translation project. On another Europeanexcursion in 1859, Smith journeyed beyond Berlin and Halle to theRhineland and the Swiss city of Basel, where he met Hagenbach.76 Excitedby the meeting and unswayed by his earlier dispiriting engagement withGieseler, Smith conceived of an English translation of Hagenbach’sDogmengeschichte, to be published as a new History of Doctrines, updatingthe earlier translation by Carl Buch, which, by then, had already been issuedin a second edition.77

He began the task in the spring of 1860, at first comparing the Buchtranslation to the original German text. In order to “give it, to a great degree,the character of a new work,” as he put it, Smith incorporated ampleadditions, particularly on recent theological developments in the English-speaking world. The project subsumed all his other plans, and he devoted toit nearly all his time, even as he suffered from poor health and put off otherpressing concerns. Finally seeking some relief, in the summer of 1860, he

72Smith to Horatio Southgate, May 15, 1839, in E. L. Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, 67; Smith tohis parents, June 12, 1839, in E. L. Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, 69.

73See, for example, the letters sent from Smith to his parents, April 30, 1839, in E. L. Smith,Henry Boynton Smith, 64–66; Smith to Southgate, May 15, 1839, in E. L. Smith, HenryBoynton Smith, 66–69; Smith to his parents, June 12, 1839, in E. L. Smith, Henry BoyntonSmith, 69; and Smith to a friend, June 30, 1839, in E. L. Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, 69–72.

74Smith to his parents, August 15, 1839, in E. L. Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, 74–75.75Henry B. Smith, “Introductory Note,” in Gieseler, Text-book, 1:iii–iv.76Smith to his wife Elizabeth L. Smith, August 31, 1859, in E. L. Smith, Henry Boynton Smith,

218–219. Cf. Smith to Hagenbach, March 10, 1862, in StaBS, PA 838a D 407.77K. R. Hagenbach, Compendium of the History of Doctrines, trans. Carl W. Buch, rev. ed., 2

vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1850–1852).


set out on a rehabilitating expedition “into the wilds of Maine,” before which hedivulged, “I want to get out of this unnatural city life, to see how the woods, andtrees, and hills look. But I have to work on and on. The second volume ofHagenbach will make me a great deal of work. He does not know anythingabout the English (to say nothing of the American) theological literature.”78

The first volume of the History of Doctrines appeared in 1861.79

The History received an immediate and near overwhelmingly positiveresponse. In a letter to Smith, Bancroft expressed his initial reaction toSmith’s choice to exchange the writing of original (and American)systematic theology, as well as Smith’s apparent erstwhile aspirations for ahistorian’s career, for a “life” of updating the textbooks of the Swiss-GermanHagenbach, articulating a widespread view. “My dear Smith,” Bancroftwrote, “in these times one is reminded of the heathen philosopher, who,being asked after his country, pointed upwards. I used to regret your leavinghistory for dogmatics; but there is little trust to be put in anything but thatwhich is eternal.” Bancroft noted that he delighted in the volume, applaudedthe “precision and exactness shown in . . . [its] editing,” and added, “whatinterests me most in this publication is the evidence it gives of the highcharacter you are imparting to the rising generation of students. Suchteachings will upset bigotry and scepticism.” Undoubtedly, he concluded,“you are doing the best service.”80

Smith worked on the second Hagenbach volume throughout the summer of1861, persisting in the excessive heat in his surroundings in New Hampshireand New York. On August 1, 1861, he wrote from New York to his wife, inNorthampton, that he was “getting on, quite famously, in these quiet and hottimes, with Hagenbach. This month, I think will see the end of the book forme.” Still, he said, “I wish I was there with you to drive round and enjoythis grand weather; but work seems to be part of my life. I often think I willhaul up short, and not do so much, but then there comes something thatmust be done; and, after all, I’m a great deal more contented when I amdoing something than when I am idling about.” A fortnight later he wrote inhis diary: “August 15th.—Finished. A long, hard job done.” Withresounding subtlety, his wife and biographer Elizabeth L. Smith reported thatHenry “then gave a week to the seaside with his family, and went back toHagenbach.” Indeed, she noted, he spent Christmas Eve of that yearcorrecting the proof-sheets, at last capping his more than two-year longcommitment to Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines. Both holiday-season

78E. L. Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, 224–225.79K. R. Hagenbach, A Text-book of the History of Doctrines, ed. Henry B. Smith, trans. Carl W.

Buch, rev. ed., 2 vols. (New York: Sheldon & Co., 1861–1862).80Bancroft to Smith, March 11, 1861, in E. L. Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, 225.

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episodes readily evince Smith’s keen interest in his colleague from the region ofthe upper Rhine (Oberrhein).81

Years later, when asked why he had filled so much of his time with Germanacademic theology in general, and translating Hagenbach in particular, at theoutbreak of the American Civil War, Smith justified his actions by appealingto the quality of material. “The works of the Germans were then soimmeasurably superior to anything that had been produced in thiscountry.”82 When Hagenbach queried him on his interest, Smith wrote, “Ihope that this work may meet with your approval. I have devoted to it agood deal of care. Your various works are so highly esteemed by ourAmerican scholars.” Facing far from ideal external political conditions, “ourpresent war makes the sale of theological works less active; but we arehoping for better times.” Bringing Hagenbach up to date on recent strugglesin the United States, he added that “recent military [and] naval successes,[and] the wise policy of President Lincoln, give promise of a final victoryover this unexampled and most wicked rebellion. Providence, I firmlybelieve, will not allow a Slave Republic to be established in the nineteenthcentury.”83 After the War, he congratulated Hagenbach on the fact that histranslated textbooks had acquired an “excellent” reputation, consistently“highly valued by scholars in this country.”84

Where Smith brought Hagenbach’s textbooks into English and employedthem in his own courses, others related to the volumes implicitly. It isinstructive to compare Smith’s endeavors with those of another influentialPresbyterian, William G. T. Shedd (1820–1894), concerning Hagenbach andthe Halle theologian Ferdinand Guericke (1803–1878). Shedd taught Englishat the University of Vermont (1845–1852), theology at Auburn Theological

81E. L. Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, 228–230.82Stearns, Smith, 172–174.83Henry B. Smith to K. R. Hagenbach, March 10, 1862, in StaBS, PA 838a D 407. In April of the

same year, Smith wrote to Tholuck in Halle: “Our dear country is now passing through a terribleconflict, but it never was so strong, it never was so united, as it is now. We look forward withfaith and hope to the issue. We believe that the slave-power has received its death-blow. And wenever had so much faith in the republic as we have now” (Smith to Tholuck, April 1862, in E.L. Smith, Henry Boynton Smith, 230). On Smith’s role supporting the North in the Civil War,see Smith, “Moral Aspects of the Present Struggle,” American Theological Review 3 (October1861): 710–733; and Smith, “British Sympathy with America,” American Theological Review 4(July 1862): 487–544, subsequently reissued as British Sympathy with America: A Review of theCourse of the Leading Periodicals of Great Britain upon the Rebellion in America (New York:W. H. Bidwell, 1862); and the sermon he delivered after Lincoln’s assassination, Smith,“Sermon XXI,” in Our Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln: Voices from the Pulpit of New Yorkand Brooklyn (New York: Tibbals and Whiting, 1865), 359–81. On the broader context of hisviews, see Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 2006); and Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles ReaganWilson, eds., Religion and the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

84Henry B. Smith to K. R. Hagenbach, April 6, 1867, in StaBS, PA 838a D 407.


Seminary (1852–1854), church history at Andover Theological Seminary(1854–1862), and sacred literature at Union Theological Seminary (1863–1874). In 1874, he succeeded Smith as professor of systematic theology atUnion, a post which he held for the next sixteen years. Considered apowerful advocate of Old School Presbyterianism, despite his affections forRomantics like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the conservative Shedd at timeseven criticized the so-called “guardian of orthodoxy,” Charles Hodge, foradopting metaphysical ideas that he thought were too modern and irenic.This put Shedd on a different path than his predecessor, the more liberal andrelatively more ecumenical Smith, who had been a major force in the 1869reunion of the Old and New School Presbyterian churches.85

Deviating slightly from the dominant pattern when it came to selectingGerman works of church history, Shedd preferred Guericke’s handbook tosuch an extent that he issued a translation of it under the title, A Manual ofChurch History, in 1857.86 A student of Shedd’s recalled that Shedd “toldhis class that he believed that there had been no significant contribution totheology since the seventeenth century, and he certainly acted on thatbelief.”87 Why, then, Guericke, or recent German textbooks at all? Shedd’sinfluence on his numerous students, stretching well beyond the Northeaststates, and his fondness, as a conservative Presbyterian, for certain flavors ofnineteenth-century German academic theology, mark him out as noteworthyand warrant investigation.

Guericke’s pull on Shedd rested on the former’s circumstances in Germany.He had studied theology at Halle under some of its most famous rationalistthinkers, Julius Wegscheider and Wilhelm Gesenius, before a turnabout in

85See, for example, Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 3 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,1888–94), 2:3–94; 3:iii. Shedd’s edition of Coleridge’s collected works remained a longtimestandard for American scholars: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Complete Works of SamuelTaylor Coleridge, ed. W. G. T. Shedd, 7 vols. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1853). See alsoCushing Strout, “Faith and History: The Mind of W. G. T. Shedd,” Journal of the History ofIdeas 15, no. 1 (January 1954): 153–162. On Smith’s push for reunion, see, for example, hisaddress as outgoing moderator to the General Assembly of the New School Presbyterian ChurchUSA in 1864, “Christian Union and Ecclesiastical Reunion,” in Henry B. Smith, Faith andPhilosophy: Discourses and Essays, ed. George L. Prentiss (New York: Scribner and Armstrong,1877), 265–296.

86Henry E. F. Guericke, A Manual of Church History, trans. William G. T. Shedd, 2 vols.(Andover, Mass.: W. F. Draper, 1857). Guericke’s work was originally published in 1833. Cf.Heinrich Ernst Ferdinand Guericke, Handbuch der Kirchengeschichte, 9th ed., 2 vols. (Leipzig:Wilhelm Engelmann, 1866–1867).

87The statement came from W. A. Brown (1865–1943). Brown graduated from UnionTheological Seminary in 1890, and spent the next two years studying at the University of Berlinunder Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930). See William Adams Brown, A Teacher and His Times:A Story of Two Worlds (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940), 76. Cf. Gary J. Dorrien, TheMaking of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity 1900–1950(Louisville, K.Y.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 21–72.

672 CHURCH HISTORY

his thought led him to the pietist and politically conservative Tholuck. Hereceived a professorial appointment at Halle in 1829 through the influence ofthe Prussian Crown Prince, and thereafter cooperated with the overtures ofTholuck and Hengstenberg to oust Wegscheider and Gesenius from office.88

Soon, he grew dissatisfied with the 1817 Prussian Union of Lutheran andReformed congregations (Unionskirche). In 1833, he left the Prussian statechurch, siding with the Silesian Johann G. Scheibel (1783–1843) and theOld Lutherans, a group that rejected the Unionskirche for more traditionalLutheranism; two years later, he was dismissed from Halle’s faculty onaccount of his decision, and was not reinstated for another five years.89 Allof these factors earned Guericke favor in Shedd’s eyes.Delineating four reasons for positive engagement with his Halle counterpart,

Shedd first championed Guericke’s confessional Protestant roots. Guericke’scommitment to the Old Lutherans, for Shedd, himself a strong Calvinist,demonstrated Guericke’s “hearty sympathy” with the shared Reformationtradition.90 A “living interest” in the “cardinal doctrines of the ProtestantReformation as they throbbed in the heart of Luther” combined with“personal experience,” molded the Halle figure, and that alone, Sheddclaimed, can “prepare the historian of the Christian Church to enter vividlyinto its whole varied career.” Guericke bore courageously the consequencesof his “decided and frank orthodoxy” in his vocational troubles.91

Second, as a combative Lutheran, Guericke evidenced a painstaking interestin the minutiae of religious controversies and doctrinal development, whatShedd termed the “internal history of the Church.” Contrary to many of hisGerman peers, he believed the “inspired truth” of the scriptures, Sheddobserved. Third, Shedd paid homage to the work’s “slow and gradualformation, by a German student and professor, over a period of thirtyyears”—it was true to type “German” scholarship, he meant, in all thefullness (or problems) that such a descriptor revealed. The appearance ofmultiple editions of the Handbuch, “in a country distinguished for thefecundity of its authorship, and the fastidiousness of its scholarship,” could

88See, for example, Heinrich Ernst Ferdinand Guericke, Geschichte der lutherischen Gemeindein und um Halle (Halle: Fr. Fleischer, 1835).

89See Robert M. Bigler, The Politics of German Protestantism: The Rise of the Protestant ChurchElite (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), 83, 100–103, 115–116.Facing persecution from the Prussian Ministry of Culture (Kulturministerium), many of the OldLutherans emigrated to such countries as Canada, the United States, and Australia; see WilhelmIwan, Die altlutherische Auswanderung um die Mitte des 19. Jahrhundert, 2 vols.(Ludwigsburg: L. Kallenberg, 1943). For an overview of the Unionskirche, see Walter Elliger,ed., Die evangelische Kirche der Union (Witten: Luther-Verlag, 1967).

90On his Calvinist convictions, see William G. T. Shedd, Calvinism, Pure and Mixed: A Defenceof the Westminster Standards (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893).

91William G. T. Shedd, “Translator’s Preface,” in A Manual of Church History, iii–iv.


only inspire confidence. Finally, he praised the Handbuch for its care inattending to small, variegated details as well as big ideas, achieving abalance “between the full and flowing narration of history proper, and themere meager synopsis or epitome,” the reference book and the classroommanual.92

Guericke’sHandbuch, for Shedd, represented a somewhat more confessional(if Lutheran) alternative to other less traditionally orthodox, German churchhistories, Hagenbach’s included. Nevertheless, and despite a supposition ofShedd’s suspicion toward Hagenbach’s brand of mediating theology(Vermittlungstheologie)—the mid-nineteenth-century centrist positioninclined to harmonize the differences between Protestant groups as well asthe demands of modern science and traditional faith—interpreters haveremarked on Shedd’s extended reliance on Hagenbach’s History ofDoctrines.93 The dependency is most clear, perhaps, in Shedd’s A History ofChristian Doctrine. In the preface, Shedd confessed his debt “to thedogmatic historians of Germany of the present century,” as well as “the greatlights of the English Church in the preceding centuries,” drawing togetherThomas Hooker (1586–1647), George Bull (1634–1710), Bishop of ChesterJohn Pearson (1613–1686), and Daniel Waterland (1683–1740), with thetowering German thinkers F. C. Baur (1792–1860) and Isaak Dorner (1809–1884). The Dogmengeschichte from Baumgarten-Crusius and fromHagenbach, he added with radical understatement, “have to some extentfurnished the rubric under which the generalizations have been made, as wellas considerable material itself.”94 He might have applied to Hagenbach hispositive statements on Guericke, save the Lutheran emphases. ThoughHagenbach focused too narrowly on the European continent, Sheddadmitted, his organization of material and periodization of history—always ahotly contested issue in the literature—remained unrivaled.95 As Bradley andMuller expertly concluded, “Shedd’s history could almost be composed outof Hagenbach’s.”96

If Smith, Shedd, and others complained that German theologians ignored thetheological developments taking shape in the NewWorld, and to a lesser extent,

92Shedd, “Translator’s Preface,” iii–viii.93On some of the broader themes of mediating theology, see Matthias Gockel, “Mediating

Theology in Germany,” in The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century Theology, ed. DavidFergusson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010), 301–318; and Ragnar Holte, Die Vermittlungstheologie:Ihrer theologischen Grundbegriffe kritische untersucht, trans. Björn Kommer (Uppsala:Almquist & Wiksells, 1965).

94William G. T. Shedd, A History of Christian Doctrine, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner,1863), 1:vii.

95See, for example, Shedd, History of Christian Doctrine, 1:36, 40, 77, 146, 161, 354. Cf.Hagenbach, “Neanders Verdienste um die Kirchengeschichte,” 543–94.

96Bradley and Muller, Church History, 29.

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in Scotland and England, this was hardly the final word. In Shedd’s case, hisprotestations masked his own appropriation of Hagenbach. The latter’stextbooks continued to attract attention to a degree that translators and“adapters” like Buch, Gage, Stuckenberg, and Smith preferred to remedy thislack simply by adding references to English-language theological literature,and not, as one might suppose, by placing their efforts elsewhere, either intranslating a different work that heeded, to a greater extent, American andBritish developments (which they perhaps would not have found) orabandoning such projects altogether. “You will see that I have madeconsiderable additions to your work, on English [and] American Theology.This was needed for our use,” Smith notified Hagenbach.97 Though theysaw flaws in Hagenbach’s volumes—most commonly, an understandableoveremphasis on continental Europe—they labored intensively and excitedlynonetheless to present them to an American audience and shape the contoursof their fields. Anthony Grafton has noted how textbooks can “offer modelsof correct comportment and practice,” and textbook writers can “not onlyinform the young, but . . . form them, at one and the same time.”98

Reflecting this concern as they claimed Hagenbach’s texts for use in theirlecterns, pulpits, and public squares, the stories of these American figuressuggest the possibilities of accord among juste-milieu partisans. Putdifferently, a shared narrative of reception, based on moderate notions ofWissenschaft, piety, and pedagogy, obtains among their distinct ecclesiasticaland academic traditions.

IV. A TRANSATLANTIC “GUIDE TO HUNDREDS”

Like hisHistories, Hagenbach’s textbook of theological encyclopedia became amodel and norm in its respective genre in America.99 First published in Germanin 1833, the Encyklopädie und Methodologie der theologischen Wissenschaftenwas translated into English in 1884 by the Methodists John F. Hurst andGeorge R. Crooks.100 Such volumes were not encyclopedic in the sense of

97Smith to Hagenbach, April 6, 1867, in StaBS, PA 838a D 407.98Anthony Grafton, “Textbooks and the Disciplines,” in Scholarly Knowledge, 23.99See Edward Farley, Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education

(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983); Robert Wood Lynn, “Notes toward a History: TheologicalEncyclopedia and the Evolution of Protestant Seminary Curriculum, 1808–1868,” TheologicalEducation 17, no. 2 (Spring 1981): 118–141; and Glenn T. Miller, Piety and Profession:American Protestant Theological Education, 1870–1970 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,2007), 48–50, 145.

100George R. Crooks and John F. Hurst, Theological Encyclopedia and Methodology: On theBasis of Hagenbach (New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1884). Cf. K. R. Hagenbach, Encyklopädieund Methodologie der theologischen Wissenschaften, ed. Emil Kautzsch, 12th ed. (Leipzig: S.Hirzel, 1889).


an alphabetically-organized reference book or series like EncyclopaediaBritannica, but rather as introductory guidebooks designed to introducebeginning students to the various branches of theology and the state oftheological inquiry in each branch, frequently in required first-year universityor seminary courses. The reception of Hagenbach’s contribution to the genrebegan with the Edwardsean Congregationalist Edwards Amasa Park (1808–1900).

In 1839, Park, dubbed by Perry Miller as a “behemoth among thetheologians,” comparable in stature to Walt Whitman and Henry DavidThoreau, who, “when he lifted up his head and trumpeted, AmericanProtestantism listened with great rapture,” published a collection of sermonsfrom contemporaneous German mediating theologians that ran to almost fivehundred pages.101 The introduction described the Germans as “purveyors ofmind,” engaged in “the commerce of intellect”: while pragmatic Americans“are making ships, they [German theologians] are manufacturing theories.”Park’s anthology was an attempt at “looking away from our own land” tosee “phrases that truth assumes elsewhere.”102 Fixed on Europe, Park madethree trips to Germany. The first of 1842–1843 followed a similar path asSmith’s, just two years prior. Schaff, then still in Europe, was one of twolecturers (Privatdozenten) hired to introduce Park to the theological andphilosophical works of Schleiermacher, Hegel, Hagenbach, and others whenPark visited Heidelberg in 1843.103

Park also called on Neander and Hengstenberg in Berlin and Tholuck inHalle. Upon meeting Hengstenberg, Park blazoned: “I saw his library, in twolarge rooms, and it contains 21,000 volumes, only 2,000 less than our whole[Andover] Seminary Library. No wonder these men know something!”104

When he returned home, he took over editorial duties of Bibliotheca Sacra,modeling it after the distinguished journal of mediating theology in German-speaking Europe, Theologische Studien und Kritiken. As editor, Parkdemonstrated a resolute commitment to discuss matters of foreign religiousscholarship and culture in the journal.105

101Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America from the Revolution to the Civil War (New York:Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965), 58; Edwards Amasa Park and Bela Bates Edwards, eds.,Selections from German Literature (Andover, Mass.: Gould, Newman, and Saxon, 1839).

102Park and Edwards, Selections from German Literature, 5, 8, 10.103Frank Hughes Foster, The Life of Edwards Amasa Park (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1936),

113–127; and George R. W. Scott, “Professor Edwards Amasa Park, D.D., LL.D.: BiographicalSketch,” in Professor Park and His Pupils (Boston: S. Usher, 1899), 34–35.

104Foster, Life of Edwards Amasa Park, 190.105Edward Robinson had founded the journal in 1843, and in 1844, relinquished editorial control

to Parks and Bela Bates Edwards. On the place of Bibliotheca Sacra in the development of NewEngland Theology, see John D. Hannah, “History of Bibliotheca Sacra,” Bibliotheca Sacra 133(July 1976): 229–242.

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In the first issue of Bibliotheca Sacra in 1844, writing for an unnamed groupof New England academic theologians, Park compared the state of theologicalscience and education in America with that in Germany.106 He rhapsodizedover American theology’s practicality and good sense. “We give ourselvesbut little time to elaborate and publish splendid air-castles on any subject,and least of all on subjects of sacred science,” he claimed. “We received atour country’s origin, a favorable impulse to the employment of our nativegood sense in theological investigation; for our forefathers made an openrenunciation of all prescriptive systems, and took the Bible alone for theirtext-book.”107 Lurking beneath the self-aggrandizing tone was a distantanticipation of some of the chief tenets of Frederick Jackson Turner’s nowfamous “frontier thesis.” America’s founding and geographical traits, Parkintimated, had succored pragmatic religion. Yet, he lamented, “we have notreatise, which can serve the purpose of an encyclopedia, or generalintroduction to the science of theology; no comprehensive outline of thescience, its various departments, its literature.”108

The task of furnishing such an English-language “encyclopedia,” aguidebook introducing beginners to the academic study of theology, basedon the German model, began through translation. Schleiermacher’s KurzeDarstellung des theologischen Studiums (1811; 2nd ed., 1830) was translatedinto English by the English Congregationalist William Farrer in 1850,surprisingly antedating the English arrival of his foundational dogmatics(Glaubenslehre), The Christian Faith, by nearly eighty years. Both wereproducts of Edinburgh’s publishing firm, T&T Clark.109 Park translatedportions of Tholuck’s lectures on the subject at Halle in 1842–1843 andpublished them in the inaugural 1844 issue of Bibliotheca Sacra.110 Over thenext four decades, only a handful of American works in the literatureappeared, and two of the more significant, substantial forays were bothculled from transcriptions of classroom lectures. In 1873, John T. Short

106Society of Clergymen [Edwards Amasa Park], “Thoughts on the State of Theological Scienceand Education in our Country,” Bibliotheca Sacra 1 (November 1844): 736–767.

107Park, “Thoughts on the State of Theological Science,” 737.108Park, “Thoughts on the State of Theological Science,” 739. The application of Turner’s ideas

to these issues is indebted to Howard, God and the Atlantic, 147–148. On Turner’s 1892 “frontierthesis” in the United States, see Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962).

109Friedrich Schleiermacher, Brief Outline of the Study of Theology, Drawn up to Serve as theBasis of Introductory Lectures, trans. William Farrer (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1850);Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. and trans. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1928). Cf. Friedrich Schleiermacher, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed.Hermann Fischer et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1980–), I/6, I/7, I/13.

110Friedrich A. G. Tholuck, “Theological Encyclopedia and Methodology: Translated from theUnpublished Lectures of Prof. Tholuck of Halle,” Bibliotheca Sacra 1 (1844): 178–217; 332–367;552–578; 726–735.


circulated class lectures on theological encyclopedia from the recently deceasedJohn M’Clintock (1814–1870), the first president of Drew TheologicalSeminary, the Methodist school in New Jersey.111 Short admitted thatM’Clintock’s posthumous work was “scarcely more than a syllabus oroutline” taken down from speeches occasionally extemporaneouslydelivered.112 Nevertheless, M’Clintock had composed his notes and outlineswith Hagenbach’s text in view.113 The other “homegrown” source was acompilation of notes from the Swedish Lutheran Revere Franklin Weidner,titled Theological Encyclopedia and Methodology: Based on Hagenbach andKrauth.114

M’Clintock, like Smith and Park, toiled to subtend the Atlantic academic-theological divide. At midcentury, he helped establish the strategic MethodistMission Institute in Bremen, Germany, an important breeding ground fornew Methodist scholars. At the same time, he spearheaded the MethodistQuarterly Review. It was in these roles that he first came into contact withHagenbach’s textbooks.115 The Bremen Institute assumed a crucial mantle inthe transmission of German ideas to a burgeoning Methodist population. Ofspecial importance here, in addition to M’Clintock, was another bishop inthe Methodist Episcopal Church, John Fletcher Hurst (1834–1903).

Hurst had studied at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania before removing tothe German universities of Halle and Heidelberg in the 1850s. Upon his return,he served various pastoral appointments, taught historical theology at Drew,served as Drew’s third president from 1873 to 1880, and was elected the firstchancellor of the Methodist American University in Washington, D.C., from1891–1903. Following M’Clintock, Hurst taught at the Bremen Institutefrom 1866 to 1871, served a term as the Institute’s director, and wrote, aswell, as a foreign correspondent for the Methodist Quarterly Review.116

111John M’Clintock, Lectures on Theological Encyclopedia and Methodology: Delivered atDrew Theological Seminary, ed. John T. Short (Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden, 1873).

112John T. Short, preface to Lectures, by John M’Clintock, 3–6.113See the comments from John F. Hurst, “Translator’s Preface,” in K. R. Hagenbach, History of

the Church in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, trans. John F. Hurst, vol. 1 (London:Hodder and Stoughton, 1870), iv.

114Revere Franklin Weidner, Theological Encyclopedia and Methodology: Based on Hagenbachand Krauth, 2nd rev. ed., 2 vols. (Chicago: Wartburg, 1910). Two British examples of the genrefrom this period include James Drummond, Introduction the Study of Theology (London:Macmillian Co., 1884); and Alfred Cave, An Introduction to Theology: Its Principles, ItsBranches, Its Results, Its Literature (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1886). There were other Americanworks that approximated these, to be sure, but they do not appear to have attained comparabledegrees of popularity.

115John Morrison Reid, Missions and Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 2vols. (New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1879), 2:64, 66. On M’Clintock’s tenure as editor of theMethodist Quarterly Review, see Reid, Missions, 2:80–82.

116See, for example, Albert Osborn, John Fletcher Hurst: A Biography (New York: Eaton andMains, 1905).

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In 1863, Hurst commenced, with another Methodist pastor and professor ofchurch history at Drew, Bernard H. Nadal, on a translation of Hagenbach’slectures on the history of the Protestant church in the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries.117 They postponed the work on account of thepublication of William Gage’s translation of the same lectures under the titleGerman Rationalism (1865).118 Hurst, Schaff, and Hagenbach himself allcame to express some disappointment with Gage’s edition, particularly thetitle of German Rationalism—“an utter misnomer.”119 After some debate,Hurst proceeded with his own edition of Hagenbach’s History, acquiring theexplicit support of Hagenbach along the way.120 As Smith had done, Hurstrelayed his congratulations to Hagenbach for “the success of your booksboth at home and in our own country.” In the United States, they were all“received with much favor.”121 The two-volume edition appeared in 1870.122

In 1867, Hurst ventured on holiday to Switzerland. During the trip, he metHagenbach while attending the latter’s lecture on the Zurich ReformerHuldrych Zwingli at the University of Basel.123 In conjunction with theMethodist series Library of Biblical and Theological Literature—aprominent organ for the translation and dissemination of German theologicaltexts—Hurst worked with Crooks to bring Hagenbach’s Encyklopädie intoEnglish and render it more directly useful for the intended Americanclassroom, by providing English-language bibliographic resources andnew sections on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American theology,particularly Wesleyanism—much as Smith had done with Hagenbach’sHistory of Doctrines. Hurst’s and Crooks’s part translation, part redraftingcame into print in 1884, and a second edition appeared ten years later, withboth developed explicitly “on the basis of Hagenbach.” The opening line byHurst and Crooks read:

Our American and English theology has been singularly destitute of ageneral introductory work to the theological sciences. The followingEncyclopedia and Methodology is designed to supply this lack . . . . The

117Cf. Hurst, “Hagenbach on the Later History of the Church,” 195–215.118Cf. Hagenbach to Gage, March 29, 1863, Autograph File H, Houghton Library, Harvard

University, Cambridge, Mass. On Nadal, see Henry A. Buttz, ed., The New Life Dawning, andother Discourses, of Bernard H. Nadal (New York: Nelson and Phillips, 1873), 11–96.

119John F. Hurst to K. R. Hagenbach, February 18, 1866, in StaBS, PA 838 D 191. Cf. Gage andStuckenberg, “Introduction,” in Hagenbach, German Rationalism, xi–xii.

120K. R. Hagenbach to John F. Hurst, March 2, 1866, in Bishop John Fletcher Hurst Papers,Series 1: Correspondence (1863–1903), Box 1, 1863–1893, University Archives, AmericanUniversity (Washington, D.C.); Hurst to Hagenbach, November 24, 1866, in StaBS, PA 838 D 191.

121Hurst to Hagenbach, February 18, 1866, in StaBS, PA 838 D 191.122K. R. Hagenbach, History of the Church in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, trans.

John F. Hurst, 2 vols. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1870).123Osborn, John Fletcher Hurst, 174.


volume on this subject by the Rev. Dr. Karl Hagenbach, who taughtHistorical Theology many years at Basel University, has been so highlyesteemed that we have made it the basis of our work. We haveendeavored, by utilizing the rich material of Hagenbach, to make ahandbook for the theological student; a guide to show him the right pathof inquiry; a plan or draft of the science, so that by the help here affordedhe can see its exterior lines, the boundaries of its subdivisions, and cantake the whole into the compass of a complete survey.124

The Hurst-Crooks rendering garnered enthusiastic support. H. M. Scott, aprofessor at Chicago Theological Seminary, praised the work, while alsopointing out the difficulty in identifying it as “simply” a translation, due tothe bibliographical additions and periodic insertions on American religion.“The valuable and indispensable book of Hagenbach is not merely given tous in American address, but the additions and adaptations make it well-nighan independent authority.” Hagenbach is the unparalleled “guide to hundredsdesiring to investigate special fields of religious philosophy, history, anddoctrine,” declared another reviewer.125 Analysts as different as the editorialstaff at Harper’s Magazine and the conservative and confessional presidentof Princeton Seminary, Francis L. Patton (1843–1932), expressed the sameconclusion.126 “America has not yet produced an original work on thesubject,” Schaff ruled near the end of the century, “but has [at least] madeHagenbach accessible to American students.”127

Where Hurst and Crooks adapted Hagenbach’s textbook, Schaff used it as amodel for his own, reflecting his aims to “mediate” between German-speakingEurope and the New World. Schaff stands out as an intriguing complement tothe transatlantic figures above, as he moved in the other direction, fromGermany to America (and made fourteen trips back and forth over theyears). In Germany; its Universities, Theology, and Religion (1857), Schaffreminisced that as a student in Germany, he and his classmates would “takedown in short-hand every word that drop[ped] from the mouth of livingwisdom [that is, the professor], thinking with the freshman in Goethe’sFaust: ‘Denn was man schwarz auf weiss besitzt, Kann man getrost nachHause tragen’” (For what one holds in black and white can confidently becarried home).128 Attempting “to bring the German and American mindcloser into union,” Schaff declaimed: “the German universities are regarded

124Crooks and Hurst, Theological Encyclopedia and Methodology, 6.125Osborn, John Fletcher Hurst, 286–287.126“Editor’s Literary Record,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (September 1884), 639; Francis

L. Patton, “Review of Theological Encyclopedia and Methodology on the Basis of Hagenbach,”The Presbyterian Review 5 (1884): 741–742.

127Schaff, Theological Propaedeutic, 10.128Schaff, Germany, 44–45.

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by competent judges as the first among the learned institutions of the world.”The “German theology of the last thirty or forty years,” moreover, “whateverits errors and defects, . . . is, upon the whole, the most learned, original, andprogressive theology of the age, and no active branch of Protestantism cankeep entirely aloof from its contact without injuring its own interests.”129

Schaff had taught theological propaedeutics, the term he preferred over“encyclopedia,” since the 1860s, first at Mercersburg and then at Union, at atime when it was far from common to offer the course and potentialaccompanying readers remained rarer still. An anecdote illustrates thesituation: “when I was appointed, in 1869, ‘Professor of Encyclopedia andSymbolic,’ in the Union Theological Seminary,” Schaff once remarked, “adoctor of divinity and editor of a leading religious periodical asked me,‘Pray, tell me the name of your professorship.’ When I told him, he saidwith an expression of surprise, ‘As to Symbolic, I have never heard of it inall my life; and as to Encyclopedia, if you are a professor of that, they needno other professor!’” In 1893, Schaff published his class notes asTheological Propaedeutic: A General Introduction to the Study of Theology.“Propaedeutic is as yet a new study in this country,” he said, “but it shouldbe taught in every institution.” He leaned heavily on Hagenbach throughoutthe entire work, a dependence he openly acknowledged. The Propaedeuticaspired “to answer the same purpose for English-speaking students as thewell-known Encyklopädie und Methodologie of the late Dr. Hagenbach ofBasel (whom I knew very well), has served and still serves for Germanstudents (who prize it as a useful Studentenbuch [a book for students, asopposed to a book solely for specialized scholars]).”130 As Charles Torrey,writing in The Andover Review, opined at first with envy and then feelingsof belated pride: “German and Swiss theological students since 1833 havehad their Hagenbach’s Encyklopädie, which has passed through a dozed ormore editions.” After the Crook-Hurst translation and now Schaff’s volume,Torrey beamed, “at last we have a text-book of Theological Encyclopediathat we can call our own.”131 After Schaff’s death, Charles Ripley Gillett,the librarian of Union Seminary, took over instruction of the course,“Theological Encyclopedia, Methodology, and Bibliography,” using Schaff’stext, thereby giving extended life to Hagenbach’s work.132 Outside the hallsof Union, others, like Smith, in colleges, seminaries, and divinity schools as

129Schaff, Germany, 8.130Schaff, Theological Propaedeutic, iii–iv.131Charles C. Torrey, review of Theological Propaedeutic: A General Introduction to the Study of

Theology by Philip Schaff, The Andover Review 29 (1893): 249.132George Lewis Prentiss, The Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (New York:

A. D. F. Randolph, 1899), 340; cf. Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the Union TheologicalSeminary in the City of New York, 1891–’92 (New York: Union Theological Seminary, 1892).


diverse as Lane, New Brunswick, Chicago, Hartford, and a host of others,similarly borrowed from the German model.133

V. CONCLUSION

The experiences of Smith, Park, M’Clintock, Hurst, Schaff, and additionalfigures in between, were decidedly not unique, but represent the many andsundry nineteenth-century transatlantic “trips”—literal and figurative—takenby American students, professors, and clergy to learn at the feet of Germantheologians and Doktorväter—a kind of nineteenth-century iteration of thetransmission of knowledge during the Republic of Letters. Their effortsresulted in a series of influential German textbooks in English translation,contributing to the transatlantic and, indeed, as Jürgen Osterhammel hasrecently argued in his magisterial treatment of the nineteenth-century world,global impact of European “cultural exports” in education.134 “Atlantichistory,” Alison Games has underscored, “is a slice of world history.”135

Finally, the American reception of Hagenbach suggests an intriguing line ofinquiry to further understand nineteenth-century academic and religiousinterests in the rich cultural traffic across the Atlantic. Hagenbach’s academicmanuals and student handbooks presented a unique blend of Germanlearning (Wissenschaft) still attentive, according to diverse leaders ofPresbyterian, Transcendentalist, and Methodist circles, to the sensibilities of“evangelical piety.” As Hurst put it in 1870: “Hagenbach . . . is one of themost genial, attractive and fruitful theologians on the Continent. Though aSwiss citizen, so far as his language and literary labors are concerned he isessentially a German, for, ever since the latter part of the eighteenth century,the theology of German Switzerland has been identical with that of Germanyitself. The frequent editions of his works treating the history of the Church,owing at once to their fascinating style, liberality, and fidelity to fact, provehim to be the most popular of all European writers in that department.”136

These transatlantic textbooks wielded considerable force in the life ofnineteenth-century American Protestantism, making regular appearances onuniversity and seminary reading lists and shaping the evolution of the

133Lynn, “Notes toward a History,” 118–144; Clark, Founding the Fathers, 144–145. See also“Theological Libraries’ Round Table: Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth AnnualMeeting of the American Library Association,” Bulletin of the American Library Association 11,no. 4 (July 1917): 357.

134Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts(Munich: C. H. Beck, 2009), 1132–1146.

135Alison Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities,” AmericanHistorical Review 111, no. 3 (June 2006): 741–57, here 748.

136Hurst, “Translator’s Preface,” iii.

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disciplines and genres of introductory church history and the history ofdoctrine.137 In an already fissiparous academic and theological setting, thefact that so many theologians and church historians of such different viewsthrew their weight behind Hagenbach’s “genial” textbooks reveals animportant example of the achievement of centrist points of commonality. In1875, one year after his death, Hagenbach was hailed in America as “themost popular ecclesiastical historian . . . in the German language.”138

137Clark, Founding the Fathers, 81, 93; Bradley and Muller, Church History, 27–29; Miller,Piety and Profession, 145.

138John F. Hurst, Life and Literature in the Fatherland (New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co.,1875), 184.


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