Wilhelm Pauck (January 31, 1901 - September 3, 1981) was a German-American church historian and historical theologian in the field of Reformation studies whose fifty-year teaching career reached from the University of Chicago and Union Theological Seminary, to Vanderbilt and Stanford universities. His impact was extended through frequent lectures and visiting appointments in the U.S. and Europe. Pauck served as a bridge between the historical-critical study of Protestant theology at the University of Berlin and U.S. universities, seminaries, and divinity schools. Combining high critical acumen with a keen sense of the drama of human history, in his prime Pauck was considered the Dean of historical theology in the United States. In the course of his career he became associated with Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich as friend, colleague, and confidant.Marion Pauck (1999). "Wilhelm Pauck: Church Historian and Historical Theologian 1901-1981 Précis of a Memoir," in Journal for the History of Modern Theology / Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte 6(1), pp. 50-68.
Biography
Formative years in Germany After moving to Berlin with his family as a young boy, Pauck received a classical education in Greek, Latin, French, arithmetic, history, geography, and science at the Paulsen Realgymnasium in Berlin-Steglitz. Amid the pessimism and confusion of the First World War he became valedictorian of his class in 1920. Upon enrolling at the University of Berlin he intended to study history and philosophy, but his encounter with Karl Holl and Ernst Troeltsch caused him to turn to the study of the Reformation and to the history of theology.Marion Pauck, "Wilhelm Pauck," JHMTh, p. 54. Through Holl, Pauck was introduced to the "Luther Renaissance," which applied critical historical study to the work of the Reformer, while Troeltsch taught him how the sixteenth-century Reformation underwent reinterpretation in the modern world.Wilhelm Pauck, "Introduction," to Karl Holl, The Cultural Significance of the Reformation, trs. by Karl and Barbara Hertz and John H. Lichtblau (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1959), pp. 7-19. Two courses taken with Adolf von Harnack in Berlin impressed Pauck greatly. He also heard lectures by Karl Barth in Göttingen prior to returning to Berlin to pursue his dissertation on Martin Bucer's reformation treatise, De Regno Christi. In Göttingen he joined the German fraternity Göttinger Wingolf.Mitgliederverzeichnis des Göttinger Wingolf. Jahrgang 2007. p. 46. He received the degree of Licentiate of Theology, University of Berlin, August 31, 1925. As the leading candidate of the theology faculty Pauck was sent as an exchange student to Chicago Theological Seminary for the year 1925-26. When he returned to Germany, Holl had died and a chance for a teaching appointment in Berlin was negated. Pauck declined a chance to teach in Königsberg. Fortuitously, upon the death of the church historian Henry H. Walker in Chicago, Pauck was called back to Chicago, where he was named Instructor in Church History in 1926 and remained in America for the rest of his career. On April 15, 1928 he was ordained to the ministry in the Hyde Park Congregational Church.Marion Pauck, "Wilhelm Pauck," JHMTh, pp. 50-68.
Life as a German-American Having been educated in urban Berlin, Pauck experienced Chicago as a vibrant center of American life and culture. His genial and inquisitive nature made him an avid student of the U.S., both within the academy and in the larger world of politics, economics, and the arts. As a youth and university student he had witnessed the human grief and suffering that surrounded the First World War. He rejected the cultural pessimism espoused by Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West (orig. German, 1918), because he knew persons in all walks of life who were affected by these tribulations but who remained unshaken in their spiritual roots. Alongside his Americanization Pauck never lost sight of the twentieth-century plight and horror that had seized his homeland with the rise of fascism and the Hitler state. In a speech given in 1939 at Chicago Theological Seminary, he stated:
I have detested this movement from that moment when it became clear to me that by its will to destroy the Christian foundations of Western civilization, it would lead Germany and the rest of the western world on the road to cultural ruin.Quoted in Marion Pauck, "Wilhelm Pauck: A Biographical Essay," in Interpreters of Luther: Essays in Honor of Wilhelm Pauck, ed., Jaroslav Pelikan (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968) p. 353.
In the midst of ongoing crises of the 1930s-1940s, Pauck remained anchored in the traditions of his 19th-century forebears, especially the thought of Goethe, whom he frequently cited from memory.Marion Pauck, "Wilhelm Pauck," JHMTh, pp. 50-51. Pauck's life mediated between his native and his adopted culture. He became an American citizen on November 3, 1937.
Academic career
Chicago Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago When Chicago Theological Seminary appointed Pauck an instructor in 1926 he joined a growing and impressive list of scholars in the University of Chicago Divinity School, including Shailer Mathews, Shirley Jackson Case, William E. Dodd, John T. McNeill, Matthew Spinka and Charles H. Lyttle. In 1927, William W. Sweet, an American church historian joined the faculty and quickly befriended Pauck.
Wilhelm Pauck married Olga Dietz Gümbel on May 1, 1928 and rose to the rank of full professor by age 30. His 1936 presidential address of the American Society of Church History was on "The Nature of Protestantism."Heritage of the Reformation, pp. 165-182. In 1939 he was appointed Professor of Historical Theology, Chicago Theological Seminary and The Divinity School of the University of Chicago with an additional appointment being made to the Department of History in 1945. Beginning in Chicago and continuing in his later career Pauck served on numerous elected boards, historical and theological scholarly societies, and committees of the university and the divinity schools where he pursued his career.Marion Pauck, "Wilhelm Pauck," JHMTh, p. 59.
During the 1940s Pauck urged University President Robert Hutchins to invite refugee professors from Nazi Germany and was deeply involved with the refugee community of intellectuals and academics. In 1948-49 Pauck was an Exchange Professor at the University of Frankfurt and the University of Marburg, Germany and received the Goethe plaque from the city of Frankfurt.Marion Pauck, "Wilhelm Pauck," JHMTh, pp. 64-65.
Early on Pauck was troubled by the lack of attention that American liberal Protestantism gave to the theology of Karl Barth. In 1931, Pauck published Karl Barth: Prophet of a New Christianity? in an effort to defend Barth's critique of Protestant liberalism. While Pauck did support Barth's critique of liberalism he found Barth's lack of historical criticism troubling and could not defend Barth's attempt to confine God's revelation to the Bible. In later years Pauck emphasized that the title of this early book had ended with a question mark. Barth was angry at Pauck's critique but eventually came to regard him in friendly terms and suggested to him that he look at the theological ideals of Paul Tillich.Marion Pauck, "Wilhelm Pauck," JHMTh, pp. 61-62.
Union Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt and Stanford Universities Wilhelm Pauck was already familiar with Tillich when he met the young Privatdozent in Berlin in 1921. Despite Pauck's residing in Chicago, the two became good friends after Tillich came to New York in 1934. That friendship deepened when Pauck moved from Chicago to teach alongside Niebuhr and Tillich at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1953. He had long been acquainted with east coast theologians through participation in The Theological Discussion Group, which met twice a year to reflect on theological and social-economic issues. Consisting of some twenty-five theological educators, the participant list included the layman Francis P. Miller, Henry P. Van Dusen, John Coleman Bennett, Roland Bainton, Robert L. Calhoun, Georgia Harkness, H. Richard Niebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, in addition to Pauck, who became the group's secretary.Heather A. Warren, "The Theological Discussion Group and Its Impact on American and Ecumenical Theology, 1920-1945, " Church History, Vol. 62 No. 4, Dec., 1993, pp. 528-543.
As Professor of Church History (1953-1960) and as the Charles A. Briggs Graduate Professor Church History (1960-1967), Pauck brought to Union Seminary the same level of institutional engagement he had practiced for 27 years in Chicago. During this time Pauck's first wife, Olga Dietz Gümbel, died January 15, 1963, and on November 21, 1964 he married the Union Seminary alumna and former Oxford University Press religion editor, Marion Hausner.
After reaching the age of retirement from Union Seminary, Wilhelm Pauck assumed the position of Distinguished Professor of Church History at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School (1967–72). His list of publications in this setting included the long-awaited book, Harnack and Troeltsch: Two Historical Theologians (1968). Following the Vanderbilt professorship he served as Visiting Professor in the Departments of History and Religious Studies at Stanford University from 1972 until his official retirement in 1976.
Together Wilhelm and Marion Pauck planned a two-volume work on Tillich, of which Volume 1 would focus on Tillich's life and be written primarily by Marion, and volume two would focus on Tillich's thought and be written primarily by Wilhelm. The first volume, Paul Tillich: Life and Thought (New York: Harper & Row), appeared in 1976. The second volume, planned as Wilhelm Pauck's exploration of Tillich's roots in German thought, was not completed, mainly due to Pauck's failing health but also because Pauck's admiration of Tillich was mixed with severe reservations about his dependence upon the German philosopher Friedrich Schelling.Marion Pauck, "Preface," From Luther to Tillich: The Reformers and their Heirs (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984) p. xi-xii. A significant initial section of Pauck's unpublished volume on Tillich's thought appeared posthumously in 1984 as "Paul Tillich: Heir of the Nineteenth Century."From Luther to Tillich, pp. 152-209. In addition, a multi-authored volume, The Thought of Paul Tillich, published by Harper and Row in 1985, includes a poignant Tillich portrait by Pauck, entitled, "To Be or Not to Be: Tillich on the Meaning of Life."The Thought of Paul Tillich, eds., James Luther Adams, Wilhelm Pauck, and Roger Shinn (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), pp. 29-43. The book chapter had been Pauck's last public address, given at New Harmony, Indiana, March 31, 1979.
Teacher and educator Pauck's impact as a teacher and educator was felt among colleagues as much as by his immediate students. A correspondence of 30 years with his Harvard colleague, James Luther Adams, is found among the Pauck papers at Princeton Seminary.Henry Luce III Library, Princeton Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey. http://libweb.ptsem.edu/collections/pdf/lucenewsspring2008.pdf Speaking in 1968 at the presentation of a Festschrift, his Divinity School colleague in Chicago, Lutheran theologian Joseph Sittler, described teaching as Pauck's "fabulous métier." Sittler stated further that
It is possible to say of very few men that they established a discipline in the American theological scene. . . . Now this discipline was not done by a detached career of scholarship ensconced within a university and principally engaged in research and writing; it was done in full engagement with students in classrooms and seminars. . . .Marion Pauck, "Wilhelm Pauck," JHMTh, p. 60, n. 20.