X-Nico

4 unusual facts about Adolf von Harnack


Adolf von Harnack

In 1886 Harnack was called to the University of Marburg and in 1888, in spite of violent opposition from the conservative church authorities, to Berlin.

The society's flagship conference centre in Berlin, the Harnack House, which opened in 1929, was named in his honour.

Like many liberal professors in Germany, Harnack welcomed World War I in 1914, and signed a public statement endorsing Germany's war-aims (the Manifesto of the Ninety-Three).

Criticism of Jesus

The Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry of Tyre (c. 232–c. 304) authored the 15 volume treatise Against the Christians, proscribed by the Emperors Constantine and Theodosius II, of which only fragments now survive and were collected by Adolf von Harnack.


Harnack House

Located in the intellectual colony of Dahlem, seat for example of the Free University Berlin, it was founded by the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft (KWG) on the initiative of its first president, the theologian Adolf von Harnack, and of its then chairman, Friedrich Glum.

Peter Taylor Forsyth

Although Forsyth rejected many of his earlier liberal leanings he retained many of Adolf von Harnack's criticisms of Chalcedonian Christology.

University of Giessen

Next to Liebig, famous professors at the university included the theologian Adolf von Harnack, the lawyer Rudolf von Jhering, the economist and statistician Etienne Laspeyres, the physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, the mathematicians Moritz Pasch and Alfred Clebsch, the gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka, the philologist and archaeologist Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, and the orientalist Eberhard Schrader.


see also

Abgar IX

Adolf von Harnack and many later scholars believe a corruption of a story of Abgar IX corresponding with Pope Eleuterus was the origin of the legend of King Lucius of Britain, who supposedly introduced Christianity to his realm.