Johann Christoph Gottsched und die »philosophische« Predigt

Andres Straßberger does the first study of the homiletics of Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700-1766), a Leipzig professor of philosophy and literary reformer, by examining his biography and his background in intellectual, cultural and political history. He focuses on a manual of homiletics which he published anonymously in 1740 and which can claim to be the first enlightened homiletics in Germany. Andres Straßberger is interested in the networks and strategies of as well as the social groups responsible for the propagation of Gottsched's »philosophical« homiletics, which used the approach of the Enlightenment philosophy of Christian Wolff (1679-1753). In addition, he deals with the discussion in theological and public circles which were critical of the Enlightenment. He attempts to give a clear picture of the process of (theological) Enlightenment in the first half of the 18th century by using one specific case as an example.
For this work, the author received the Hanns-Lilje-Preis 2008 der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen and the Nachwuchsförderpreis des Fördervereins der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig 2008.