# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S191
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History. 191

diocesan assemblies. But these are hardly a sufficient guarantee of ecclesiastical
independence. And what does such a thing help in the realm of the constitution, when a
church voluntarily does, as the Danish Church does through its clergy in the duchies, enters
into the service of the political interests of the State and forgets its own dignity so far as to
make of the pulpit a political tribune? The separation of the ecclesiastical and civil domains,
as it has taken place in Denmark, will perhaps in time prove unavoidable in Germany as well.
The question of divorce is a wedge that loosens the bond between State and Church. And
how compulsory baptism can be morally justified, I do not know how to say. Or how far the
demand for proof of confirmation, as a condition for establishing civil status, is inwardly well
founded will be hard to answer. And whatever else is similar to this. But to undertake this
separation before the Church has an independent ecclesiastical constitution means ruining it.
The Concordat compels the Evangelicals of Austria to draw together more closely as a
church. To be sure, this is wholly impossible to carry through so long as the incredible
anomaly is not removed whereby a Roman Catholic stands as president at the head of the
Consistory in Vienna. The Concordat, and the freedoms of the Roman Church guaranteed
by it, have also given offense in Württemberg, giving rise to movements and petitions aimed
at greater independence for the Evangelical Church of Württemberg. The reference to the
peculiar and anomalous relation in which the Protestant Supreme Consistory stands to the
Ministry in Bavaria is what has lent the well-known Giech interpellations a deeper interest
and significance. In this same direction are now turned the expectations and hopes with
which we in Saxony look forward to the proposed constitutional measures.

Leipzig. Superintendent Großmann in Grimma has given notice to the city
authorities of a legacy of 100 thalers which his father, our late superintendent, had donated
as a contribution toward the salary of a newly founded clerical post, whether at a newly
built church or toward the increase of divine services at an existing one. May this legacy
draw public attention to the fact that there are not sufficient churches or clergy in Leipzig
for the cure of souls.

In a petition, "many like-minded citizens" had turned to the city council with the
request that they work toward having the vacant superintendency in Leipzig filled by a
genuinely Protestant clergyman who stands on the standpoint of the present age and has no
intention of leading his congregation back into the murky centuries of the Middle Ages.
Anonymous petitions are usually simply filed away; but on the motion of city councilman
Advocate Rose, the assembly resolved: that this petition be posted for eight days in the
council's office, and, should a councilman make it his own, be brought again before the
assembly for discussion.

(Sax. Ch.- and Sch. Gaz.)

Enrollment at the University of Leipzig in the winter half-year 1857-58: 850,
of whom 232 foreigners. Increase 22, of whom 13 foreigners. Of theology students there
are 187, of whom 52 foreigners. The University of Erlangen counts, in this
semester, 326 theologians, of whom 155 foreigners. In the previous semester it counted
281, and in the one before that 253 theologians. (Sax. Ch.- and Sch. Gaz.)

Württemberg. A correspondent of the Saxon Church and School Gazette writes,
at the end of last year:

It has often been said that our Württemberg Church is a thoroughly peculiar
phenomenon within the circle of the Lutheran Church as a whole. The historical
causes of this special position we need not discuss here. To us that remark matters
only in order to explain the comparative scantiness of the news which we have to
share from our ecclesiastical life. — All the "burning questions" which our