Martin Hengel

Martin Hengel (14 December 1926 – 2 July 2009) was a German historian of religion, focusing on the "Second Temple Period" or "Hellenistic Period" of early Judaism and Christianity.

Hengel was born in Reutlingen, south of Stuttgart, in 1926 and grew up in nearby Aalen. In 1943 he was conscripted as a 17-year-old schoolboy into the German Army and served in an anti-aircraft battery on the Western Front. In 1945, after one of the final battles of World War II, he threw away his weapons and uniform and walked home from France, completing his schooling in 1946. In late 1947 Hengel began his theological studies in Tübingen, moving to the University of Heidelberg in 1949. In 1951 he qualified as a Lutheran parish minister, but in 1954 his father voiced his opposition to this and insisted that he join 'Hengella', the family textile business in Aalen, which makes women’s underwear and lingerie.

This caused a ten-year struggle for Hengel, who had to study when he could based around his working hours. The strain on his health led to a serious breakdown. He later referred to these ten years as "wasted years" and gave the impression of almost having an inferiority complex about the amount of study he had been forced to miss. However, he remained a director of the company until his death. In August 1957 he married Marianne Kistler.

For a short period he was also able to lecture at a theological college, and served as an assistant to Professor Otto Michel in Tübingen, but this ended in 1957 when he was sent to manage a factory in Leicester for several years. He continued to work on his doctoral thesis in his spare time. Hengel graduated in 1959 with a PhD. He completed his postgraduate work on his Habilitation thesis, a requirement for academic teaching, at the University of Tübingen in 1967. His thesis was concerned with Judaism and Hellenism. He was a professor at the University of Erlangen starting in 1968. In 1972 Hengel returned to Tübingen to succeed Professor Michel.

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