Christian Gotthilf Salzmanns Osterpredigt »Vom Spaziergehen« (1778): Zur Praxis populärer Kanzelrede in der deutschen Aufklärung

In 1778, Christian Gotthilf Salzmann (1744-1811), a pastor in Erfurt, published a volume of sermons entitled »Sermons for Hypochondriacs«. One of these sermons, »On Taking a Walk«, was held at Easter. In the Protestant historiography of sermons, this text was seen as proof of a utilitarian constriction and equalization of the sermon during the Enlightenment. In this article, the author attempts to render several pivotal historical contexts and homiletic explanations for Salzmann's Easter sermon understandable. The result shows that his sermon was a paradigmatic realization of the homiletic ideal of a »popular« sermon on nature in the Enlightenment. This embodied a new understanding of the sermon whose goal was the religious integration of the secular lifeworld and that of the Enlightenment.