# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1858_S202
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

202 Münkel on Prof. Baumgarten's Dismissal.

The grand-ducal government accordingly felt compelled to have
Professor B.'s removal from office delivered to him on January 6, 1858,
with the remark that his salary of 1200 Thalers would remain undiminished,
provided he did not "by his further conduct occasion a suspension
of this payment" — an addition which B.'s whole bearing made necessary.
Concerning what followed, the Berlin "Zeit" reports: "When the hearers
of Professor B., at the door of the hall in which his lectures took
place, found a notice signed by the Rector to the effect that Professor
B. was prevented from lecturing, they betook themselves to his lodgings
and there learned of the removal from office imposed on their teacher,
of which he himself declared that it had come to him quite unexpectedly,
since, for so long after the publication of the writings said to
contain doctrinal deviations from the confession of the Lutheran Church,
people had kept silent and had let him continue his activity. The
event arouses the liveliest sympathy not only among the students of
theology, but among the members of every faculty, so that on that day
no lectures at all could be held. The student body first resolved to
give Prof. B. a torchlight procession; but since the Rector did not
grant permission for this, they had to content themselves with informing
Prof. B., by means of a deputation that drove through the city in two
four-horse carriages, of the intended but prevented step. Moreover, the
sympathy for B. is not confined to the student body alone, but shows
itself most vividly throughout the whole city, in which he, a "highly
gifted clergyman, vividly filled with the spirit of Christianity, who,
moreover, shares the Lutheran confession warmly as to its content, even
though as a man of scholarship he construes its verbal expression on
individual points in his own way, has, through his sermons, gathered a
numerous congregation." We cite these utterances as a sample of many,
such as have for some time now been circulating through many political
and church papers. People feel their own flesh and blood in B., and
therefore feel themselves struck along with him. People were so hotly
stirred up that they did not even wait for the "documents," but took
sides from the very outset and condemned the grand-ducal government.
This sympathy alone, on the part of churchly and political men of
freedom, lets one guess both what was really at issue and that there
was cause enough for intervention, if one did not intend to rear up
apostles of freedom.

Professor B., however, was not minded to let his official position be
destroyed with a stroke of the pen. He entered an appeal, complaining
that he had not been removed by due process according to the church
order. For the church order prescribes that in such a case the erring
one is to be admonished and corrected, and, "if it be necessary, that
synods be held and that understanding men be called in for the purpose
from other churches" — with the