RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Klarer Klopstock
and the organization of a parliamentary government, the rule of the Church by the State had become an impossibility. Thus there originated in 1850 a superior ecclesiastical court with Kliefoth as chief ecclesiastical councilor. In 1886 he became its president. During the decades 1850-70, he was actively engaged in ecclesiastical reforms. Being convinced that the prosperity of the Church is principally dependent upon the efficiency of the administrators of the means of grace, he was intent upon filling the clergy with the spirit and doctrines of the Lutheran Church. To this end the faculty of Rostock was reorganized with teachers of strictly Lutheran tendency, the institution of church inspections by superintendents was again called into life, abuses in the church service and in the administration of ecclesiastical acts were abolished, and the rationalistic spirit was removed from the pulpit. New formularies of liturgy on the basis of the old church orders were made, and the old treasures of Lutheran church music were embodied in a new book of melodies.
Kliefoth laid down his conception of the Church and church polity in his Acht Biicher von der Kirche (vol. i., Schwerin, 1854). The first four books treat of the kingdom of God founding of the Church, of the means of grace, of the congregation and its service, and of the
His Views Church and its order and government. of the The last four books, which were to
Church and treat of the development and comple- Church tion of the Church never appeared. Polity. Kliefoth's peculiar conception was due chiefly to his occupation with the old Lutheran church orders. With great energy he emphasizes the divine foundation of the Church through the acts of salvation of the triune God; its divine basis in the means of grace, which mediate and vouchsafe the continuous effect of Christ and his spirit; the divine institution of the office of the means of grace; and the necessity of the organization and incorporation of the Church in church order and church government. The Church is for him the empirical congregation of the called, and not merely the congregation of true believers; and for him Lutheranism is not merely a doctrine or dogmatical tendency, but a distinctive church body whose peculiar historical development is to be perpetuated. He opposed the territorialism of state omnipotence, which denied the independence of the Church, the collegialism of modern representative church government, which originated in the Reformed Church and seemed to him to endanger the privilege and authority of the office of the means of grace; unionism, which threatened to absorb the Lutheran Church as such, or at least its confession; and the amalgamation of Church and politics, with its tendency toward the establishment of a national German Evangelical Church. On the other hand he aimed at the restoration of the Lutheran state churches and the strengthening of Lutheranism through a closer union. In this sense he represented the government of the Mecklenburg church at the Eisenach Conference after 1852; and in 1868 he founded with others the Allgemeine evangelischlutherische Konferenz,
Kliefoth was one of the strongest men among the churchmen and theologians of his day, and one of the most effective preachers of the nineteenth century. The political and ecclesiastical liberals decried him as a dangerous reactionist, the unionists hated his strict Lutheranism, the representatives of pietistic subjectivism were offended by his ecclesiasticism, and popular sentiment disliked his hierarchical tendencies. He was also the most notable authority of his time on liturgies and the old Lutheran church orders. His Liturgische Abhandlungen (8 vols., Schwerin, 1854-61, 2d. ed., 1858-69) is his most prominent work, the most peculiar expression of his spirit. Other important works are: Einleitung in die Dogmengeschichte (Lud wigslust, 1839); Theorie des Kultus der evangelischen Kirche (1844); Ueber Predigt und Katechese in der Vergangenheit und in der Gegenwart (in Mecklenburgisches Kirchenblatt, ii. 1-55, 169-245, Rostock, 1846) ; Die urspriingliche Gottesdienstordnung in den deutschen Kirchen lutherischen Bekenntnisses (Rostock, 1847); Das Verhdltnis der Landesherren als Inhaber der Kirchengewalt zu ihren Kirchenbehorden (Schwerin, 1861); Der preussische Staat und die Kirchen (1873); and Christliche Eschatologie (Leipsic, 1886). He also wrote commentaries on Zechariah (Schwerin, 1859), Ezekiel (2 parts, Rostock, 1864-65), Daniel (Schwerin, 1868), and Revelation (Leipsic, 1874). With Prof. O. Mejer of Rostock he edited the Kirchliche Zeitschrift (Schwerin, 1854-59), which, with A. W. Dieckhoff, he continued as Theologische Zeitschrift (1860-64). He published several collections of sermons, and a great number of single and occasional sermons.
(Ernst Haack.)
Bibliography: Allgemeine evangelisch-lutherische Kirchenzeitung, 1883, no. 19, 1895, nos. 10-15; L. von Hirschfeld, Friedrich Franz II. und seine Vorganger, 2
vols., Leipsic, 1891; C. Meusel, Kirchliches Handlexikon, iv. 11-13, ib. 1894.
KLING, CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH: German Protestant; b. at Altdorf (11 m. s.w. of Stuttgart), Wurttemberg, Nov. 4, 1800; d. at Marbach (15 m. s. of Heilbronn), Wurttemberg, Mar. 8, 1862. He studied at Tubingen and Berlin, became pastor at Waiblingen in 1826, professor of theology at Marburg in 1832, at Bonn in 1842, pastor at Ebersbach in 1849, and dean of Marbach in 1851. He was a pupil of Schleiermacher and Neander. In his writings, as in his lectures, he was instructive, sound, and winning, and showed himself a man of fine discrimination and independent judgment. He edited the sermons of the Franciscan Bertholdt (Bertholdt des Franciscaners Predigten, Berlin, 1824), prepared for J. P Lange's Bibelwerk the commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians (Eng. transl., in Schaff's edition of Lange's Commentary (N. T., vol. vi., New York, 1868). He also published a number of treatises in TSK. KLOPSTOCK, klep'stek, FRIEDRICH GOTTLIEB.
Early Life and Studies (§1).
Studies at Leipsic. Earlier Poetic Work (§ 2).
Life and Works after 1748 (§ 3).
His Influence and Importance (§ 4).
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, the great German religious poet, was born at Quedlinburg (31 m. s.w. of Magdeburg), Prussia, July 2, 1724; d. at Ham-
Klopstook Klostermann