Wilhelm Pauck

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

On April 15, 1928 he was ordained to the ministry in the Hyde Park Congregational Church.

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.

Wilhelm Pauck married Olga Dietz Gümbel on May 1, 1928 and rose to the rank of full professor by age 30.

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.

Pauck's life mediated between his native and his adopted culture.

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.

His 1936 presidential address of the American Society of Church History was on "The Nature of Protestantism."

He became an American citizen on November 3, 1937.

In a speech given in 1939 at Chicago Theological Seminary, he stated:

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.

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.

Early on Pauck was troubled by the lack of attention that American liberal Protestantism gave to the theology of Karl Barth.