Hase, KARL AUGUST VON

Hase, KARL AUGUST VON, a celebrated German theologian, was born at Steinbach, in Saxony, 25th August 1800. After being expelled from Erlangen University for his connection with the political students' unions called the 'Burschenschaften,' he became in 1823 a university tutor at Tübingen, but after a new investigation was imprisoned for ten months in the fortress of Hohenasperg. He settled at Leipzig in 1829, and in the following year was called to Jena as professor of Theology. Here he remained till his retirement in 1883, when, after sixty years of teaching, he was ennobled, and appointed a privy-councillor. His chief writings are Des alten Pfarrers Testament (1824); Lehrbuch der Evangelischen Dogmatik (1826; 6th ed. 1870); Gnosis (3 vols. 1826–28; 2d ed. 1870); Hutterus redivivus (1828; 12th ed. 1883), which was an able attempt to present dogmatic theology in the form that Hutter would have chosen, had he been living in the present century, and involved him in a long controversy with Röhrl, the exponent of 'vulgar-rationalism'; Das Leben Jesu (1829; 5th ed. 1865); Kirchengeschichte (1834; 11th ed. 1886); Die beiden Erzbischöfe (1839); Neue Propheten (1851; 2d ed. 1860); a life of St Francis (1856); a handbook of Protestant polemical theology (1863); a life of St Catharine of Siena (1864); Geschichte Jesu (1876); Des Kulturkampfes Ende (1879); and lectures on church history (1880). He subsequently began the publication of a church history based on his university lectures (1885 et seq.). His autobiography down to 1830 is entitled Idealc und Irrthümer (1872; 2d ed. 1873). Hase was called the Nestor of modern scientific theology. He did great service in the reconciliation of the church's faith to modern thought, and was an equally resolute and effective opponent of orthodoxy on the one hand and rationalism on the other. He died 3d January 1890.