HERRMANN, (JOHANN) WILHELM

born , Dec. 6, 1846, Melkow, near Magdeburg, Prussia died Jan. 3, 1922, Marburg, Ger. liberal German Protestant theologian who emphasized that faith should be grounded in a direct experience of the reality of the life of Christ rather than in doctrine. He was an important influence on his students Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann. He himself was a disciple of Albrecht Ritschl, whose emphasis on ethics and rejection of metaphysics Herrmann continued. Herrmann began his studies at the University of Halle in 1866, becoming a lecturer there in 1875. In 1879 he was appointed professor at Marburg and remained there for the rest of his career. Both in his teaching and in his writing he stressed the view that faith is a living personal relationship with God, derived through direct communication with God in Jesus Christ. He believed that men see the truly good disclosed and actualized in Jesus. Like Ritschl before him, Herrmann drew heavily from Kant in making the assertion that God is an object not of theoretical but of practical knowledge and that therefore theology can be neither supported nor attacked by science or philosophy. Among his chief works are Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott (1886; The Communion of the Christian with God) and Ethik (1901).