STAHL, FRIEDRICH JULIUS (1802-1861)

This article appears in Volume V25, Page 760 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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STAHL, FRIEDRICH JULIUS (1802-1861) , German ecclesiastical lawyer and politician, was born at Munich on the ,6th of January 1802, of Jewish parentage. Although brought up strictly in the Jewish religion, he was allowed to attend the
gymnasium, and, as a result of its influence, was at the age of nineteen baptized into the Lutheran Church. To this faith he clung with

earnest

EARNEST (probably a corruption of the obsolete arles or erles, adapted from Lat. equivalent arrha, due to a confusion with the adjective " earnest," serious, O. Eng. eornust, cognate with Ger. ernst)

devotion and persistence until his death. Having studied law at Wurzburg,

Heidelberg

HEIDELBERG

and Erlangen, Stahl, on taking the degree of

doctor

DOCTOR (Lat. for " teacher ")

juris, established himself as privatdozent in Munich, was appointed (1832)

ordinary

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

professor of law at Wurzburg, and in 1840 received the chair of ecclesiastical law and polity at Berlin. Here he immediately made his mark as an ecclesiastical lawyer, and was appointed a member of the first chamber of the synod. Elected in 185o a member of the short-lived

Erfurt

ERFURT

parliament

PARLIAMENT (Anglo-Lat. parliamentum, Fr. parlement, from parler, to speak)

, he bitterly opposed the idea of German federation. Stahl early fell under the influence of Schelling, and at the latter's insistence, began in 1827 his

great

GREAT

work

WORK

: Die Philosophie des Rechts nach geschichtlicherAnsicht (an historical view of the philosophy of law), in which he bases all law and political science upon Christian

revelation

REVELATION, BOOK OF

, denies rationalistic doctrines, and, as a deduction from this principle, maintains that a state church must be strictly confessional. This position he further elucidated in his Der christliche Statt and rein Verhdltniss zum Deismus and Judenthum (The Christian State and its relation to Deism and Judaism; 1874). As Oberkirchenrath (synodal councillor) Stahl used all his influence to weaken the Evangelical Union (i.e. that compromise between the Calvinist and Lutheran doctrines which is the essence of the Prussian Evangelical Church) and to strengthen the influence of the Lutheran Church (cf. Die Lutherische Kirche and die Union, 1859). The Prussian- minister von Bunsen attacked, while King Frederick William IV. supported, Stahl in his ecclesiastical policy, and the Prussian Evangelical Church would probably have been dissolved had not the regency of Prince William (afterwards the emperor William I.) supervened in 1858. Stahl's influence fell under the new regime, and, resigning his seat on the synod, he retired into private life and died at Briickenau on the loth of August 1861.
See " Biographic von Stahl," in Unsere Zeit, vi. 419447 (

anonymous

ANONYMOUS

, but probably by Gneist) ; Pernice, Savigny, Stahl (

anonymous

ANONYMOUS

; Berlin, 1862).

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