Eleonore Schulz presents a working paper on 'Theologie des "Activ-Bürgers" - Der Freiheitsbegriff im Schwäbischen Magazin zur Beförderung der Aufklärung des Ulmer Theologen Johannes Kern'

The paper introduces Johannes Kern, protestant pastor and representative of enlightenment theology in Ulm. In addition to a brief biographical introduction and an overview of the social and political situation in Ulm at the end of the 18th century, references to the term freedom are contextualized and interpreted, which can be found in his journal "Schwäbisches Magazin zur Beförderung der Aufklärung". The references to the term freedom are presented in the context of Kern's overall argument in various articles and are interpreted in the context of his affiliation with a new bourgeois elite in the Reichsstadt. The concept of freedom is mentioned explicitly in Johannes Kern's journal articles in two contexts. First, freedom is a condition for human development and perfection, in the sense of a "trial and error" approach. However, this development is not open to results, but directed along continuous perfection. Second, Kern makes clear by using a description of "false freedom" that freedom is realized only in the perception of duty in the context of a meaningful social whole. This includes the acceptance of the social order and the individual position in this order. The freedom of God, the theologians had been busy with over so many centuries, vanishes implicitly. The order of nature, history and society is recognizable and manageable. The deficiencies of man serve his perfection, rather than putting him in need of the free divine decision of grace. The worldliness and controllability of salvation becomes particularly clear from the fact that arguments originally used to defend divine freedom in the relationship between man and God are now only used to defend social order. In the context of the reference to the term freedom it also gets clear that Kern is well aware of the contradiction between the universal demands of the Enlightenment and their particular fulfillment and that he searches for strategies to hide or balance this contradiction.

Eleonore Schulz gives a working paper on ' "... that everyone is free to perform his duties" - Freedom concepts of theologians in Southern Germany between 1780 and 1792'

The paper presents texts from the period 1780-1792, in which theologians from Southern Germany draft concepts of freedom. The presented theologians are the rabbi Isaak Alexander, the Catholic theologians Eulogius Schneider, Benedikt Maria Werkmeister and Joseph Rendler, and the Protestant theologians Johannes Kern and Gebhard Ulrich Brastberger. They are geographically mobile - important cities are: Augsburg, Heidelberg, Regensburg, Salzburg, Strasbourg, Stuttgart, Vienna, Würzburg - and are connected to different social spaces, the court, universities and schools, monasteries and parishes. Because of their social background, their education and often far-reaching interests that are not limited to theology and philosophy, they are very articulate representatives of the
emerging modern bourgeoisie. None of them has been examined in detail so far in his theological reference to the political and philosophical discussions and changes of his time and against the background of social and regional history. This paper focuses on an interpretation of the sources based on the critique of the Enlightenment and the interests of its social carriers. The concepts of freedom and the perception of social relationships and changes they illustrate are thus classified in their social function. By this means an argumentation common to all of them becomes clear, in which central elements of the emerging modern bourgeois consciousness are articulated: The judicial office of God is relocated into nature and the conscience of man. The fact that man makes God available in
his special function as a judge relates to a new conception of time. Apocalypticism is reinterpreted into a worldly, dynamic eternity. This corresponds to the growing experience of an accumulation of knowledge, world domination and property. The alleged universalism which the new, predictable, logically acting and omnigracious judge and planner God represents, masks the particularity of this accumulation. This judge God supposedly serving the common good is in reality biased. Via nature, history and conscience he ultimately dissolves in the civil law and state. Thus, all of the five theologians speak in principle of liberties, not of freedom.