Pietismus

Pietismus, a religious trend manifesting itself in Germany in the late 16th c. and early 17th c. (c.1680-1740) among Protestants dissatisfied with the rigid and formal orthodoxy of the Lutheran Church of the time. The Pietists maintained a personal devotion to God and encouraged emotion in their religious life, and in so doing they fostered a tendency to introspection. J. Arndt, who lived in the early 17th c., is often quoted as a forerunner, but, in spite of similarity of outlook, there is no direct connection between him and what was later recognized as Pietism. The Pietists tended to form closely knit groups, of which the best known are those headed by G. Arnold in Quedlinburg, Arnold's friend P. J. Spener in Strasburg and Frankfurt, A. H. Francke in Halle, and, most prominent of all, the fraternity fostered by Count Zinzendorf on his estate at Herrnhut in Silesia, which acquired the name Herrnhuter. The Pietists sought to live quietly in devout and heart-searching meditation and were also active in unostentatious acts of charity. Though their importance in church history declined after c.1740, individuals of pietistic outlook made contributions to literature well after that date, notably Klopstock, Jung-Stilling (see Jung, J. H.), and J. C. Lavater, while Goethe was for a time (1768-9) deeply influenced by the Pietist Susanna von Klettenberg, whom he commemorated as late as 1795 in Bk. VI. Bekenntnisse einer schönen Seele of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. Fontane in Vor dem Sturm, which is set in 1812, gives a credible portrait of a pietistic lady (Tante Schorlemmer) attached to a country gentleman's household. In the second half of the 18th c., Pietism, with its stress on emotion, tended to encourage the expression of deep feeling, which not infrequently degenerated into sentimentality. Though the antithesis of Rationalism, Pietism was in agreement with the ideals of tolerance and humanitarianism. Indeed, Lessing intended (1750) a defence of the Pietists in his unfinished essay Gedanken über die Herrnhuter. The Pietists were themselves for the most part only interested in literature as a means of edification, but some of their number, notably Arnold, Spener, G. Tersteegen, J. Neander, and Zinzendorf wrote hymns of merit.