Quotes:Strauss, David Friedrich

Zirkoff, Boris

Strauss, David Friedrich. German theologian and man of letters, b. at Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart, Jan. 27, 1808; d. in 1874. Educ. at the evangelical seminary of Blaubeuren and the univ. of Tübingen. After short interval of teaching, he went to Berlin, 1831. Ideas of Schelling, Jakob Böhme, Schleiermacher and Hegel, successively claimed his attention; under the influence of Hegel, he conceived the main idea of his two great works. Returning to Tübingen, he devoted his entire energy to the preparation of his Leben Jesu, which was published in two volumes 455 in 1835–36 (Tübingen: C. F. Osiander). The work produced an immense sensation by its destructive method, causing the author to lose his position at the Lyceum of Ludwigsburg. In the third edition of his work (1839), Strauss made important concessions to his critics, which he withdrew, however, in the fourth ed. (1840; transl. into English by Geo. Eliot, with Latin preface by Strauss, 1846; there is also an English tr. by Marian Evans, 1855, in one vol.; and one in two vols., publ. in London by Williams & Norgate, 1865). In 1840–41, Strauss published his Christliche Glaubenslehre (2 vols.), the principle of which is that the history of Christian doctrines is their disintegration. Elected previously to the chair of theology at the Univ. of Zürich, he did not assume his duties on account of a storm of popular ill will which made the authorities pension him off before he was installed. After 1841, he left theology aside for a while, and produced a number of biographical works of clear and captivating style. In 1862, he returned to theology, publishing several works, the last of which was Der alte und der neue Glaube (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1872; 16th ed., 1904; Engl. tr. by M. Blind, 1873). His Collected Writings were published in 12 vols. by E. Zeller, 1876–78.

Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 9, pp. 454-455