Aneke Dornbusch: Hermann Dörries: Apophthegmata Patrum during the ‘Kirchenkampf‘

This short communication will take a closer look at the life and works of German church historian Hermann Dörries (1895 – 1977) to answer a question relevant to every historian past and present: Can current social and political circumstances influence research on seemingly distant topics, such as the Apophthegmata Patrum? During Dörries's time as a professor at the University of Göttingen alone (1929 – 1963), politics and society in Germany underwent massive changes, of which the biggest is of course the rise and fall of National Socialism. Dörries's interest in the Apophthegmata lasted his whole career, as several essays and monographs published from the 1920s to the 1970s show.This paper will try to give a first impression of how Dörries's approach to the Apophthegmata was shaped by the political and social surroundings he found himself in. Dörries's immense work on monasticism and the Apophthegmata Patrum in particular will be narrowed down to some key examples, most prominently the essay “Das Bruderwort” (1939). Crucial information about the background of Dörries's work found in unpublished archival sources will also be integrated into the paper. The paper will claim that Dörries's struggle for personal and academic integrity during the so called ‘Third Reich’ had a direct effect on his approach to Patristic sources as well as his profile as a church historian on the whole.