Karlheinz Deschner

Karlheinz Deschner (right) in conversation with Hans Albert

Karl Heinrich Leopold Deschner (born on May 23, 1924, in Bamberg, Bavaria), is a German researcher and writer who has achieved public attention in Europe for his thorough and fiercely critical treatment of Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular, as expressed in several articles and books, culminating in his opus The Criminal History of Christianity (Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, Rowohlt Verlag GmbH, Reinbek) which is planned in 10 volumes, of which 9 volumes have been published so far.^[1]

Biography

Deschner's father Karl was a Roman Catholic forest ranger in Bamberg, while his mother, Margareta Karoline, née Reischböck, was a Protestant, who grew up on the estates of her father in Franconia and Lower Bavaria. She converted later to Catholicism.

Karlheinz, the eldest of three children, attended elementary school in Trossenfurt (close to Würzburg) from 1929 to 1933. Afterwards he attended the Franciscan Seminary in Dettelbach. There he first lived with the family of his godfather and sponsor, the clerical councilor Leopold Baumann, afterward in the Franciscan monastery. From 1934 to 1942 he attended the Alte, Neue and Deutsche Gymnasium as a boarding school student with the Carmelite and English Sisters. In 1942 he passed his final exams. Like the rest of his entire class he reported immediately as a military volunteer and was wounded several times. He served as a soldier until Germany's capitulation, in the final stages as a paratrooper.

Initially matriculating as a major in Forestry in the University of Munich, Deschner attended lectures on Law, Theology, Philosophy and Psychology during 1946/47 at the Philosophical-Theological College in Bamberg. From 1947 to 1951 at the University of Würzburg he studied Contemporary German Literature, Philosophy and History and graduated in 1951 with a doctoral dissertation entitled Lenau's Lyrics As an Expression of Metaphysical Despair. In the same year he married Elfi Tuch. They had three children: Katja (1951), Bärbel (1958) and Thomas (1959 to 1984).

From 1924 to 1964 Deschner resided in a former hunting lodge of the prince-bishops of Tretzendorf (Steigerwald), then for two years in the country house of a friend in Fischbrunn (Hersbrucker Schweiz). Since then he has resided in Hassfurt am Main.

Karlheinz Deschner has published novels, literary criticism, essays, aphorisms, and history critical of religion and the Church. Over the years he has given more than 2,000 public lectures.

In 1971 he was called before a court in Nuremberg, charged with "insulting the Church". He was acquitted, but his works remained largely unpublished until the eighties, when they were translated and published in Spain, Switzerland, Italy and Poland. (The fourth part of The Cock Crowed Once Again was translated into Norwegian and published in 1972).

Deschner has been working on his ambitious The Criminal History of Christianity since 1970. He has no official research grants, honoraria, stipends, emoluments or official positions, but has been financially supported by a few friends and readers. His friend and patron Alfred Schwarz was able to celebrate the appearance of Volume 1 in September, 1986, but did not live to see Volume 2 reach publication. The German industrialist Herbert Steffen has continued to support Deschner's work.

During the summer semester of 1987 Deschner taught a course entitled Criminal History of Christianity at the University of Münster.^[2]

He is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Department of Historical Sciences^{[citation needed]}.

Prizes

In a foreword of his The Criminal History of Christianity an overview of awards and prizes is presented^[2]:

Deschner was awarded the Arno Schmidt Prize in 1988, succeeding Wolfgang Koeppen, Hans Wollschläger and Peter Rühmkorf. In June 1993 he followed Walter Jens, Dieter Hildebrandt, Gerhard Zwerenz and Robert Jungk in winning the Alternative Büchner Prize and in July 1993, following Andrei Sacharow and Alexander Dubcek, he was the first German to be recognized with the International Humanist Award. In September 2001 he received the Erwin Fischer Prize, to be followed in November 2001 by the Ludwig Feuerbach Prize.

Works

As of November 2006, none of Karlheinz Deschner's books has been translated into English. This translation of the titles is taken from the English version of his official website.^[3]

Novels

• Night Surrounds My House (1956)
• Florence Without Sun (1958)

Critique of Religion and the Church

• What Do You Think of Christianity? (1957)
• The Cock Crowed Once Again (1962)
• With God and the Fascists (1965)
• Images of Jesus from a Theological Perspective (1966)
• The Century of Barbarism (1966)
• Church and Fascism (1968)
• Christianity in the View of Its Opponents, Volume 1 (1969)
• Why I Left the Church (1970)
• Church and War (1970)
• The Manipulated Faith (1971)
• Christianity in the View of Its Opponents (1971)
• On the Cross of the Church (1974)
• Church of the Unholy (1974)
• Why I Am a Christian/Atheist/Agnostic (1977)
• A Pope Travels to the Scene of the Crime (1981)
• A Century of Sacred History, Vol. 1 (1982)
• A Century of Sacred History, Vol. 2 (1983)
• The Offended Church (1986)
• The Criminal History of Christianity, Vol. 1 (1986)
• Opus Diaboli (1987)
• The Criminal History of Christianity, Vol. 2 (1988)
• What I Believe In (1990)
• The Criminal History of Christianity, Vol. 3 1990)
• The Politics of the Papacy in the 20th Century (1991)
• The Anti-Catechism (1991)
• God's Representatives (1994)
• The Criminal History of Christianity, Vol. 4 (1994)
• World War of the Religions: the Eternal Crusade in the Balkans (1995)
• The Criminal History of Christianity, Vol. 5 (1997)
• Nobody on Top (1997)
• The Criminal History of Christianity, Vol. 6 (1999)
• Between Subjection and Damnation. Robert Mächler (1999)
• Memento (1999)
• The Criminal History of Christianity, Vol. 7 (2002)
• The Criminal History of Christianity, Vol. 8 (2004)
• The Criminal History of Christianity, Vol. 9 (2008)
• The Criminal History of Christianity, Vol. 10 (?)

Literary Criticism

• Kitsch, Convention and Art (1957)
• Talents, Poets, Dilettantes (1964)

Social Criticism

• Who Is Teaching in German Universities? (1968)
• The Moloch: A Critical History of the U.S.A. (1992)
• What I Think (1994)
• For a Bite of Meat (1998)

Aphorisms

• Only the Living Swims Against the Current (1985)
• Offences (1994)

Miscellaneous

• Dreams of Sleeping Beauty and Stench from the Stall (1989)
• The Rhoen Region (1998)

External links

• Karlheinz Deschner's website (English part)

Footnotes

1. ^ Hans Kung, p. xxi of The Catholic Church, 2001
2. ^ ^{a b} Deshner, Karlheinz (1986). Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums. Rowohlt. p. 526. http://rzblx10.uni-regensburg.de/dbinfo/detail.php?bib_id=alle&colors=&ocolors=&lett=a&titel_id=5672. , Über den Autor, Bd. 8, p. 526
3. ^ http://www.deschner.info/index.htm?/en/work/work.htm

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Name	Deschner, Karlheinz
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Date of birth	May 23, 1924
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