Baron Friedrich von Hügel
| Friedrich von Hügel | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Friedrich Maria Aloys Franz Karl von Hügel 5 May 1852 Florence |
| Died | 27 January 1925 (aged 72) London |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Other names | Baron von Hügel |
| Education | private |
| Known for | Modernist Christian theologian |
| Title | Freiherr (Baron) |
| Spouse(s) | Hon. Mary Catherine Herbert |
| Children | three daughters: Gertrude, Hildegarde and Thekla |
Friedrich von Hügel (born Friedrich Maria Aloys Franz Karl Freiherr von Hügel, usually known as Baron von Hügel; 5 May 1852 – 27 January 1925) was an influential Austrian Roman Catholic layman, religious writer, Modernist theologian and Christian apologist.
Friedrich von Hügel was born in Florence, Italy, in 1852, to Charles von Hügel, who was serving as Austrian ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, and a Scottish mother, Elizabeth Farquharson, who was a convert to Roman Catholicism. Friedrich was educated privately, and moved with his family to England in 1867 when he was fifteen, where he remained for the rest of his life. It has been suggested that Count Felix Sumarokov-Elston, an ataman of the Kuban Cossacks, was his elder brother; but as the Count was born in 1820 this is impossible, and the Count is more likely to have been his uncle, the son of von Hügel's father.
In 1873 he married Lady Mary Catherine Herbert (1849–1935), daughter of the statesman Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea, by Elizabeth Ash à Court-Repington, an ardent convert to Catholicism and philanthropist. Mary, like von Hügel's mother and her own, was also a convert. The couple had three daughters: Gertrude (1877–1915), Hildegarde (1879–1926), and Thekla (1886–1970), who became a Carmelite nun. He remained an Austrian citizen until he found himself to be a "hostile alien" after England declared war with Austria in August 1914. He applied for naturalisation and received it in December of the same year.
He was a Baron of the Holy Roman Empire (an inherited title), and a frequent visitor to Rome. A self-taught biblical scholar, a linguist with a fluency in French, German and Italian as well as his adopted English, and a master of many subjects, he never held office in the Catholic Church, or an academic post, nor did he ever earn a university degree. However, he is often mentioned alongside John Henry Newman as one of the most influential Catholic thinkers of his day. The scope of his learning was impressive and the list of his correspondents reads like a "who's who" of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European religious leadership (for example, Louis Duchesne, Alfred Loisy, Germain Morin, Maurice Blondel, Henri Brémond, John Henry Newman, William George Ward, Wilfrid Philip Ward, Lord Halifax, Cuthbert Butler, Claude Montefiore, George Tyrrell, Maude Petre, Evelyn Underhill, Antonio Fogazzaro, Ernesto Buonaiuti, Rudolf Christoph Eucken, Hans Vaihinger and Ernst Troeltsch). In Italy von Hügel frequently met two future popes, Achille Ratti and Eugenio Pacelli, later Pius XI and Pius XII. In Milan in 1901 Ratti helped him in his research at the Ambrosiana for The Mystical Element of Religion. Von Hügel did much to bring the work of the philosophers Eucken and Troeltsch to the attention of the English-speaking public, despite the hostility during and after the First World War to all things German.
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