Gotthold Julius Rudolph Sohm (29 October 1841 in

Rostock Rostock (; Polabian language, Polabian: ''Roztoc''), officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock (), is the largest city in the German States of Germany, state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the Mecklenburgian part of the sta ...

– 16 May 1917 in

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

) was a German

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyzes and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal education in law (a law degree) and often a Lawyer, legal prac ...

and

Church historian Church history or ecclesiastical history as an academic discipline studies the history of Christianity and the way the Christian Church has developed since its inception. Henry Melvill Gwatkin defined church history as "the spiritual side of th ...

as well as a

theologian Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of ...

. He published works concerning

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

and German law,

Canon law Canon law (from , , a 'straight measuring rod, ruler') is a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical jurisdiction, ecclesiastical authority (church leadership) for the government of a Christian organization or church and its membe ...

and Church History.

Biography

Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

, Sohm studied Law in Rostock, Berlin, Heidelberg and Munich between 1860 and 1864. His doctoral dissertation in 1864 at the

University of Rostock The University of Rostock () is a public university located in Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. Founded in 1419, it is the third-oldest university in Germany. It is the oldest university in continental northern Europe and the Baltic Se ...

was on

Roman Law Roman law is the law, legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (), to the (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I. Roman law also den ...

; he then worked on German legal history and devoted himself to ecclesiastical law. He lectured in German Law and Commercial Law at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen (, commonly referred to as Georgia Augusta), is a Public university, public research university in the city of Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1734 ...

from 1866 to 1870, before being appointed professor at that university in 1870. He was professor in Canon Law and German Law at the

University of Freiburg The University of Freiburg (colloquially ), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (), is a public university, public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The university was founded in 1 ...

1870 to 1872, and at the

University of Strasbourg The University of Strasbourg (, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers. Founded in the 16th century by Johannes Sturm, it was a center of intellectual life during ...

from 1872 to 1887, and was appointed Rector in 1882. From 1887 until his death in 1917 he was professor of Canon Law and German Law in the Faculty of Law at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

.Sohm
on the

website In 1892 he published the first volume of his great work ''Kirchenrecht'' (''Canon Law''). The second volume was published posthumously in 1923. In this work Sohm argued that the

Early Church Early Christianity, otherwise called the Early Church or Paleo-Christianity, describes the historical era of the Christian religion up to the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Christianity spread from the Levant, across the Roman Empire, and bey ...

had no legal constitution. He stated that "ecclesiastical law stands in contradiction to the nature of Ecclesia." The Early Church, he argued, was ruled not by legal concepts but by a power he called "

charisma () is a personal quality of magnetic charm, persuasion, or appeal. In the fields of sociology and political science, psychology, and management, the term ''charismatic'' describes a type of leadership. In Christian theology, the term ''chari ...

" (from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

'charis'), which is "a gift of grace" bestowed by the

Holy Spirit The Holy Spirit, otherwise known as the Holy Ghost, is a concept within the Abrahamic religions. In Judaism, the Holy Spirit is understood as the divine quality or force of God manifesting in the world, particularly in acts of prophecy, creati ...

. In his work Sohm explored how the charismatically based Jesus movement of the

changed into the legalistic bureaucracy of

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

. The sociologist

Max Weber Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economy, political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sc ...

derived his concept 'charismatic authority' from Sohm's 'charismatic organization,' a term Sohm had coined in ''Kirchenrecht'' to describe the social organization of primitive Christianity. ''Kirchenrecht'' was immediately recognized in Germany as an epoch-making work. It also stimulated a debate between Sohm and leading theologians and religion scholars which lasted more than twenty years and stimulated a rich

polemic Polemic ( , ) is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called polemics, which are seen in arguments on controversial to ...

al literature. Sohm was one of the committee of 22 members, comprising not only

s but also representatives of financial interests and of the various ideological currents of the time, who compiled a second draft of the

Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch The ''Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch'' (, ), abbreviated BGB, is the civil code of Germany, codifying most generally-applicably private law. In development since 1881, it became effective on 1 January 1900, and was considered a massive and groundbr ...

(German Civil Code) which was accepted by the Reichstag in 1896. Also in 1896, with

Friedrich Naumann Friedrich Naumann (25 March 1860 – 24 August 1919) was a German Liberalism in Germany, liberal politician and Protestant parish pastor. In 1896, he founded the National-Social Association that sought to combine liberalism, nationalism and ...

and

Caspar René Gregory Caspar René Gregory (November 6, 1846 – April 9, 1917) was an American-German theologian. Life Gregory was born to Mary Jones and Henry Duval Gregory in Philadelphia. He was the brother of the American zoologist Emily Ray Gregory. After comp ...

, he founded the

National-Social Association The National-Social Association (, NSV) was a political party in the German Empire, founded in 1896 by Friedrich Naumann. It sought to synthesise liberalism, nationalism and non-Marxism, Marxist socialism with Protestantism, Protestant Christian ...

(National-Sozial Partei), based on Socialist Christianity.Short article on Sohm on bookrags.com
/ref> The party failed in the elections of 1898 and 1903 and was then dissolved into the

Freeminded Union The Free-minded Union (; FVG) or Radical Union was a liberal party in the German Empire that existed from 1893 to 1910. Emergence Inside its predecessor, the German Free-minded Party, there had always been tensions between the leftist and the ...

. He was a Member of the

Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium The Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium (RASAB) is a non-governmental association that promotes and organises science and the arts in Belgium by coordinating the national and international activities of its constituent academies su ...

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

, was a Corresponding Member of the

Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities () is an independent public institution, located in Munich. It appoints scholars whose research has contributed considerably to the increase of knowledge within their subject. The general goal of th ...

in Munich between 1875 and 1917, and a member of the Philology and History class of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences in Leipzig from 1892 to 1917. In 1914 the book ''Festgabe für Rudolph Sohm, dargebracht zum goldenen Doktorjubiläum von Freunden'' was published in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Sohm receiving his doctorate.Published by Schülern und Verehrern in Leipzig, (1914) Sohm was awarded the

Pour le Mérite The (; , ), also informally known as the ''Blue Max'' () after German WWI flying ace Max Immelmann, is an order of merit established in 1740 by King Frederick II of Prussia. Separated into two classes, each with their own designs, the was ...

(civil class) in 1916. One of his students was Walter Simons. Rudolph Sohm died in

in 1917 aged 75.

Selected publications

*''Das Verhältniss von Staat und Kirche, aus dem Begriff von Staat und Kirche entwickelt'', Tübingen, (1873) *''Institutionen des Römischen Rechts'', Leipzig, (1884) *''Die Deutsche Genossenschaft'', Academia Lipsiensis - Juristische Fakultaet, Leipzig, (1888) *''Kirchenrecht'', München & Leipzig 2 vols. (1892) and (1923) *''Kirchengeschichte im Grundriss'', E. Ungleich, Leipzig, (1894) ** ''Outlines of Church History'', Boston, Beacon Press, (1958) *''Institutionen ... Elfte neu durchgearbeitete Auflage'', Leipzig, (1903) *''Wesen und Ursprung des Katholizismus'', (1909) *''Die altdeutsche Reichs- und Gerichtsverfassung'', Leipzig, (1911) *''Weltliches und geistliches Recht'', Academia Lipsiensis - Juristische Fakultaet, Leipzig, (1914)

Bibliography

* Adams, James Luther. "Rudolf Sohm's Theology of Law and the Spirit." In ''Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Paul Tillich'', edited by Walter Leibrecht, pp. 219–235. New York, 1959. * Haley, Peter. "Rudolf Sohm on Charisma." In ''Journal of Religion'', 60 (1980): 185–197. * Köhler, Wiebke. ''Rezeption in der Kirche: begriffsgeschichtliche Studien bei Sohm, Afanas'ev, Dombois und Congar.'' Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998.
Lease, Gary ''"Odd Fellows" in the Politics of Religion - Modernism, National Socialism and German Judaism'' - 'A Protestant "Modernist"? A reevaluation of Rudolph Sohm'
''

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...

'' (pg 44) * Lowrie, Walter. ''The Church and its Organization in Primitive and Catholic Times, An Interpretation of Rudolph Sohm's Kirchenrecht'' Longmans, Green, and Co. 1904.

References

External links

* *
ebook of Sohm's ''Outlines of Church History''Professorenkatalog der Universität Leipzig , catalogus professorum lipsiensisSohm on Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sohm, Rudolf 1841 births 1917 deaths German Lutheran theologians People from Rostock German legal historians Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) German legal scholars 19th-century German jurists 20th-century German jurists 19th-century German Protestant theologians 20th-century German Protestant theologians University of Rostock alumni Academic staff of the University of Göttingen Academic staff of the University of Freiburg Academic staff of the University of Strasbourg Academic staff of Leipzig University 19th-century German male writers German male non-fiction writers 19th-century Lutherans