Wilhelm Gräb (1948–2023)

Abstract

On January 23rd, practical theologian Wilhelm Gräb of Humboldt University Berlin passed away. He would have been 75 this summer. Far from resting in his retirement from the Berlin Faculty of Theology, he stayed engaged in many projects even as an emeritus, because scholarship was his vocation. On March 21st 2020, he wrote to me, “I have been spared from Corona so far, but I am sorry to report to you that it has got me much worse.” Despite an aggressive form of cancer, he worked unabatedly in the field of Practical Theology – a Practical Theology which he shaped as an academic discipline, but also lived as a way of dialogue. Wilhelm Gräb was born on August 21st 1948 in Bad Säckingen in Baden, near the German-Swiss border, and was raised in a pastor’s household with an affinity for art and culture. He studied Protestant Theology at the Seminary (Kirchliche Hochschule) in Bethel and at the Faculties of Protestant Theology in Göttingen and Heidelberg. In 1979, he received his doctorate in Göttingen with a thesis on Friedrich Schleiermacher’s concept of humanity and history. Schleiermacher’s thoughts would have a strong influence on him for the rest of his life (Humanität und Christentumsgeschichte. Eine Untersuchung zum Geschichtsbegriff in Schleiermachers Spätwerk, Göttingen 1980). The Schleiermacher renaissance in Systematic and Practical Theology since the 1980 s owes essential impulses to Gräb. In 1996, together with Ulrich Barth and other companions and friends, Gräb founded the International Schleiermacher Society in Halle, serving on its board for many decades. From 1980–1988 he was assistant to religious educator Christoph Bizer in Göttingen. During this time, he wrote his habilitation on the concept of preaching (Predigt als Mitteilung des Glaubens. Studien zu einer prinzipiellen Homiletik in praktischer Absicht, Göttingen 1988). In this book, he developed an understanding of the practical task of preaching as the situational interpretation of a biblical text that releases its potential for meaning. A central insight of Gräb’s, which he made fruitful throughout his life, is that the concept of authority must be abandoned in favor of the question how religious communication can prove to be relevant. He explored this question in all practical