Edition Paul Tillich´s Correspondence (1887-1933)

In the International Joint Project supported by the Austrian Science Fund and the Deutsche For- schungsgemeinschaft (FWF and DFG), Paul Tillichs (1886-1965) extensive correspondence from his German period from 1887 to 1933 will be made accessible to research in a hybrid edition in three clus- ters at the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Vienna and the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the University of Munich: Cluster I: Correspondence of the young Tillich until the beginning of World War I, Cluster II: War Correspondence, Cluster III: Correspondence of the German time until emigration. Paul Tillich, one of the most important and influential Protestant theologians and philosophers of reli- gion of the 20th century, taught at the theological faculties of Berlin and Marburg, the Technic al Uni- versity of Dresden and the University of Frankfurt am Main after his studies, doctorate and habilita- tion. During the 1920s he maintained close contacts with economists and political scientis ts , c ultural and social scientists and philosophers. Tillich was one of the first non-Jewish university lecturers to be granted leave by the National Socialists in April 1933. In the USA, to which he emigrated in the s ame year, he found a new place of work after initial difficulties and made an exemplary career in his new home. The hybrid edition project remedies a serious desideratum of previous research. So far, no critical standards-satisfactory edition of his extensive correspondence has been published. While other im- portant theologians and philosophers of the 20th century have now had their correspondence published in critical editions and become an indispensable source for a reconstruction of their thinking, this is not the case with Tillich. Only such an edition makes it possible to scientifically explore his career and the ramified networks in which his thought was formed. This applies not only to the history of his works, but also to his biography, which has not yet been sufficiently researched. With the edition of Tillichs correspondence from his German period, the project not only does fundamental groundw ork for an intellectual and intellectual history of his work, it also brings into focus aspects and connections of his work that have been completely ignored until now. In this way, it opens up completely new perspectives on the work history of his thought in the complex theological-philosophical and politic al debates of the 20th century. Precisely because of the heterogeneity of Tillichs effectiveness, his many contacts in the social, cultural and various other sciences, his correspondence is of outstanding im- portance for the exploration of the intellectual and political history of the 20th century.

In this FWF-funded project, the correspondence of the Protestant theologian and philosopher of religion Paul Tillich (1886-1965) from the years 1887 to 1933 was edited text-critically and scientifically indexed. As no comprehensive edition of Tillich's extensive correspondence has been available to date, the project makes a fundamental contribution to the study of his thought in its historical development up to his emigration to the USA in 1933. The edited correspondence makes it possible to explore his academic education at universities in the German Empire, his participation in the First World War and his diverse activities in the Weimar Republic in a new light. Tillich's correspondence is not only of interest for Tillich research, but also for the study of intellectual biographies in the first half of the 20th century between the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. They document the struggles over the interpretation of the political and intellectual-historical classification of social and cultural developments in the early 20th century.