The religious history of Bremen includes many impressive figures. Probably the most enigmatic figure of Bremen's church life around 1900 was the pastor at St. Martini, Albert Kalthoff. However, his impact reached beyond the borders of local religious history: He was important for the history of the Protestant culture of piety as well as for a religious historical analysis of reform attempts within Protestantism in Imperial Germany. Kalthoff was part of the leftist reform movement within German Protestantism. Furthermore, he can (...) be said to have had certain sympathies for the free thinker movement. This article wants to situate Kalthoff and his public works and goals in religious history with regard to the religious-confessional, cultural-religious, and cultural-political tendencies of his time. His example delineates the contours of a transitional space between Protestantism and the free thinker movement. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 22 Heft: 2 Seiten: 176-225.

As the embodiment of a border-crosser between science, literature, and occultism, the writer Stanisław Przybyszewski also represents the ambivalent consciousness of the avant-garde. Behind the facade of imperial Berlin, he opens up a world of wonder, demons and ecstasy. Without using a normative understanding of modernity, this article attempts to portray Przybyszewski as proof of the irreconcilable tensions between rationalism and irrationalism in the period around 1900. Central to this argumentation are his spiritual references, such as satanism and occultism.