RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Locust Ijoeho
LOEBE, lub'e, AUGUST JULIUS: German Lutheran; b. at Altenburg (24 m. s. of Leipsic) Jan. 8, 1805; d. at Rasephas (a suburb of Altenburg) Mar. 27, 1900. He was educated at the gymnasium of his native city and at the universities of Jena (1825-27; Ph.D., 1831) and Leipsic (1827- 1828), after which he conducted a private school in Altenburg until 1839. Becoming deeply interested in Gothic, he determined on the first critical edition of the translation of Ulfilas (q.v.) in collaboration with Hans Conon von der Gabelentz; and for this purpose he visited Upsala in 1834 to inspect the famous Codex Argenteus, and in the following year went to Wolfenbtittel with Von der Gabelentz to study the Codex Carolinus of Ulfilas. The edition, which appeared under the title Ulfilas: Veteris et Novi Testamenti versionis Goihicce fragmenta quce supersunt (3 vols., Leipsic and Altenburg, 1836^6), was accompanied by Lobe's Beitrage zur Textberichtigung und Erkldrung des Skeireins (Altenburg, 1839) and supplemented by the collaborators' Nachschrift zu der Ausgabe des Ulfilas (Leipsic, 1860).
In 1839 Lobe became pastor at Rasephas, where the remainder of his life was to be spent. Here he contributed largely to Pierer's Universal-Lexikon, and practically edited the fourth and fifth editions of the work (1857-64; 1867-72), as well as the three additional year-books incorporated in the same encyclopedia (1865-73). He also did most of the work on the edition planned by Preuss of the Loci theologici of Johann Gerhard (9 vols., Berlin and Leipsic, 1863-85). His third field of activity was the local and ecclesiastical history of Altenburg, represented by his Geschichtliche Beschreibung der Residenzstadt Altenburg und ihrer Umgebung (Altenburg, 1841), and the completion, in collaboration with his eldest son, Ernst Conon Lobe, of Sachse's Altenburger Kirchengallerie (3 vols., ib. 1886-91).
LOEHE, lu'e, JOHANN KONRAD WILHELM:
Lutheran theologian and philanthropist; b. in Fiirth (5 m. n.w. of Nuremberg) Feb. 21, 1808; d. at Neuendettelsau (12 m. s. of Nuremberg) Jan. 2, 1872. Descended from a pious middle-class family, he went from the gymnasium of Nuremberg to the University of Erlangen in 1826 to study theology. First the Reformed, then powerfully and inflexibly the Lutheran, view influenced him. In 1828 he spent a term at the University of Berlin, attracted not so much by the lectures of the professors as by the sermons of the famous preachers. In 1831 he became vicar at Kirchenlamitz where he drew large congregations by his original and fervent preaching. But the civil and ecclesiastical authorities on the charge of mysticism removed him after two years and he became assistant pastor of St. Giles in Nuremberg. Here his gift of preaching was fully developed. Like a prophet of old, Lohe denounced sin without fear, and thus set the magistracy of the city against him. He had, however, the support of the Church authorities. In 1837 he finally settled as preacher at Neuendettelsau, an inconsiderable and unattractive place, which after many a struggle he transformed into
a busy Christian colony. From 1848 to 1852 the idea of leaving the Bavarian State Church frequently took hold of him, and his relations with its authorities became very strained. The reason for his dissatisfaction did not lie so much in actual conditions, but in the fact that Lohe measured these conditions by his ideal standards. It was the conflict between the ideal and the real that agitated him; he tried to identify the communion of saints with its visible organism. He planned originally not a reformation, but an entirely new formation of the Church. He addressed a petition signed by 330 people to the General Synod in which he demanded the withdrawal of secular supremacy over the Protestant Church, complete purification of confession, and the strictest adherence to the symbols of the Church. Although the synod tried to meet his demands as far as possible, Lohe was not satisfied and was several times actually on the point of secession; but his historical feeling and love for the traditions of the Church deterred him from the execution of his plan. As a strictly orthodox Lutheran, he was chiefly offended by the free intercourse between the Lutherans and the Reformed, and especially by their common celebration of the Lord's Supper, which threatened to eliminate the differences in doctrine, although no actual union existed. A proposition was made to suspend Lohe, but many voted against this measure, which, on account of his numerous following, would have led to an actual split within the Church of Bavaria. But these disagreeable conditions were changed when in 1852 the leadership of the consistory was entrusted to Harless, whose attitude toward Lohe was less hostile, and who effected a definite but peaceable separation between the Lutherans and Reformed. In his great, work on the Church (Drei Biicher von der Kirche, 1845) Lohe propounds the strictest Lutheran orthodoxy. Impurity of doctrine is for him as bad as immoral conduct, and Lutheran doctrines are complete and perfect, in no need of development. But his zeal for orthodoxy was at times so excessive that it brought him dangerously near to Roman Catholicism, as for instance in his doctrine of a visible Church and his ideas of church government, the efficacy of works, self-denial, and celibacy. But he was so firmly rooted in the doctrine of justification that it is impossible to speak of a conscious inclination toward the Roman Catholic Church.
The personality of Lohe must, however, be judged in its entirety. He was not only a man of pure, although sometimes one-sided, orthodoxy, but a creative power in the field of charitable work. From 1840 he was active in educating spiritual workers for the German emigrants to America. He founded the Missouri Synod in union with the emigrant Lutherans of Saxony, the Franconian colonies in Michigan, and at a later time the Iowa Synod. Neuendettelsau possesses two stately buildings devoted to the education of missionaries for North America and Australia. In 1849 Lohe founded the Lutheran Society of Home Missions, and in 1853 an institution of deaconesses which was dedicated in the following year, the eighteenth in order of foundation, but the third or
Loehe Loosener