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The Life of Heiko Augustinus Oberman
15 October 1930"”22 April 2001
By G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes, trans. Julian Deahl
In The Work of Heiko A. Oberman: Papers from the Symposium on His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Thomas A. Brady, Jr. et al (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), 195-202.
On 22 April of this year Heiko Augustinus Oberman died at the age of seventy in Tucson, Arizona, where since 1984 he had held a professorship in modern history. From 1963 he had been a corresponding member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. With his death an end came to a very rich, very varied and international life in the service of historical science in general, and of the history of theology in particular.
As fifth and penultimate child of Dr G.W. Oberman and Elza H. Graanboom, he was born in 1930 in the Maliebaan in Utrecht. His father was a well-known Dutch Reformed clergyman there, known either as the "Red" or as the "Roman" parson, according to whether emphasis was laid on his strong social conscience or on his advocacy of an ecumenical Catholicism. He was known for his contacts with Archbishop De Jong, with whom he was to be occasionally seen strolling along the Maliebaan.
Oberman senior was a man whose studiousness was matched by his sense of humor and who had a tendency towards provocation and anti-establishment stances, but he was also a great lover of soccer, in short someone ideally suited to captivate young people in particular. I should add that at an early date he came into contact with the "Confessing Church" in Germany and thus was well prepared for the horrors to come. This contributed to the fact that in the war he proved to be a very courageous patriot, in particular by vigorously taking up the cause of Dutch Jews and other victims of the occupiers.
I evoke this portrait of his father, because many of his characteristics lived on in his son and were to be given a strikingly idiosyncratic effect in him. And not only in his scholarly activities and theological preferences, but also in his remarkable gifts of performance and organization, and above all in his warm relations with his many students and friends, wherever in the world they happened to be.
Initially Oberman junior had intended to study medicine, but during his final years of high school he decided against this, because theology attracted him more. He transferred in high school from sciences to humanities, indeed changed schools to do so "” from a Christian to the Municipal Grammer school "” thanks to help from his mother who had graduated in classical languages, and he did so without missing a school year, even if this was a very close call.
He joined his father, who in the meantime had become a minister in Batavia (Dutch East Indies), for a few months and discussions with him led to a final decision to continue the family tradition and, "” by this time in the third generation "” to study theology, in Utrecht itself.
In the beginning he was less enthused by what the faculty had to offer him than by the attractions of student and fraternity life (Secor Dabar). As a fraternity member he was regularly seen at the student club PHRM, in which for a year he held the position of wine-fellow. So it is indeed doubly fitting that it was with the Heineken prize of all things that the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences honored him in 1996. The pleasures of student life did not however prevent him from concluding his studies (including his doctorate) within 8 years.
In 1955, shortly after his church examinations for the ministry, Oberman married Geertruida (Toetie) R. Reesink, who was to bear him four children "” two sons and two daughters "” and who was to provide him with exceptional support throughout his life. The first years of their marriage took the young couple to Oxford, where Oberman in a short time managed to prepare his MA examination and also to complete his dissertation, entitled Thomas Bradwardine, a fourteenth-century Augustinian, with which on 24 October 1957 "” at the age of just 27 "” he obtained his doctorate cum laude . His supervisor was Professor Dr M. van Rhijn. Looking back over his whole oeuvre this work clearly set the tone for what, in ever widening circles, was to remain his main focus of interest: continuity and discontinuity in the period from the late Middle Ages and Reformation, in particular illustrated by the development of nominalism.
After his doctorate Oberman served for a short time as a teaching assistant, a post which he combined with that of curate in Holten, where the family owned a country retreat "Ekeby." For him, the "flying Dutchman," who in the course of his life "” as a sought-after speaker, guest professor or prize winner "” visited all the continents for shorter or longer periods of time, this was and remained a precious home-base, where time after time, surrounded by his immediate and wider family, and friends, he found rest and refuge.
After he had been ordained by his father in June 1958 as a Dutch Reformed minister in general employ, he left for the United States in order as of August 1 to accept the position of instructor in church history and dogma at the Harvard Divinity School. Immediately students, of both divinity and other subjects, were attracted to him as by a magnet and he acquired a position and reputation in his new surroundings. The consequences of this were appointments as early as 1959 as associate professor, in 1963 (after Yale University has in vain tried to lure him away) as full professor, and in 1964 as Winn Professor in Church History at Harvard University.
Even in his early years as professor at Harvard he had looked for a home for the book output of his students in the first place, but also of others. This led to a contract with E.J. Brill (now Koninklijke Brill) of Leiden for the launching of two book series in the history of church and dogma, each with a select editorial board headed by Oberman. This turned out to be a very good choice, for both series gained an excellent international reputation and now comprise more than 180 volumes.
Shortly before the Second Vatican Council Oberman had, together with Daniel J. Callahan and Daniel J. O'Hanlon S.J., written a book: Christianity Divided (1961), in which the most important points of disagreement between Rome and the Reformed churches were explained. Its publication attracted unexpectedly high interest, which probably explains why he, although not belonging to the denomination, was asked by the Congretionalists to attend the Council as an observer. And so it came to pass. At the age of 32 he was the youngest observer.
Despite expectations, the stay in Rome was not to be a period of rest and study, for he was immediately swallowed up by a maelstrom of meetings. "I landed," he once said in an interview, "in an endless round of introductory meetings and discussions with bishops and their advisers, the periti , extraordinarily absorbing." By means of articles in magazines and newspapers he kept America and the home front in Holland informed of his experiences in Rome. In the corridors of the Council he was much sought-after as a discussion partner, not only for the periti but also for the representatives of the media, for whom he was "” thanks to his well developed feeling for publicity "” an ideal fielder of questions and a clear interpreter of the historical background of the conciliar discussions. He had the advantage above many other observers that the Latin in which the discussions took place posed no problem at all for him.
That Oberman had not marked time in Harvard was clear from the fact that he was able to complete in Rome the foreword of a weighty new book that "” in an allusion to Huizinga's Harvest of the Middle Ages "” was entitled: The Harvest of Medieval Theology (1963). One would be right in saying that none of his later works contributed more to his reputation in the international theological world. Building on his previously published in-depth studies of schools and directions within nominalism and Augustinianism, he had two aims with this work. On the one hand, to rehabilitate late medieval nominalism, by a thorough analysis of the theology of the fifteenth century scholastic Gabriel Biel. On the other hand, to trace the traditon of theology and piety in which Luther was to grow up. Luther himself was however not yet discussed in The Harvest . This would come later.
Following in the footsteps of Paul Vignaux in particular, he laid to rest the widely held opinion "” chiefly still defended in handbooks "” that nominalism was a system of thought tending to disintegration, which had destroyed the Thomistic synthesis and had called into being an essentially uncatholic and anticatholic theology, which had no place for mysticism and which had undermined any certainty of faith. All this was considered to have contributed in a significant way to the emergence of a Reformation. Oberman countered that one definitely could not deny a synthetic character to nominalism, and he showed convincingly that nominalism and mysticism were not mutually exclusive. In his Forerunners of the Reformation (1965) which appeared shortly afterwards, an anthology of late medieval theological texts with commentaries, he presented his insights in an accessible form.
In Germany his innovative publications had not gone unnoticed. This led to an invitation, together with simultaneous requests from other Universities, in 1966, to accept an appointment to a chair in the Protestant theological faculty at Tübingen, traditionally an important center for Luther research. He agreed, primarily because the number of staff that he would have in his charge here was larger than in Harvard and he could thus spread his wings further. He succeeded his predecessor, Hanns Rückert, in two posts: as professor and as director of the Institut für Reformationsgeschichte. At Oberman's initiative the terms of reference of the institute were broadened and altered to Institut für Spätmittelalter und Reformation . Under his responsibility fell the preparation of an analytic index to the collected works of Luther "” the so-called Weimar edition. In addition he acted as head of an interdisciplinary research group in the field of the late Middle Ages and Reformation, and under his discretion critical editions were produced of works by Gabriel Biel, the Augustinian theologian Gregory of Rimini, and the 15th century figure, Johannes von Paltz.
Even more than in Harvard he made a name in Tübingen as a thorough organizer of scholarly enterprises. Both demanding and humane to his collaborators, he ensured that they were molded into a close team. And in this he had outstanding success, judging by the fact that the German academic grapevine spoke of the "Oberman trust" in Tübingen, in contrast to some other institutes in the Federal Republic, which were labeled disparagingly as "people's enterprises", on the East German model.
On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the University of Tübingen in 1977, Oberman produced a major new work, more heavily documented than ever "” it was almost bent double under the weight of its footnotes "” entitled Werden und Wertung der Reformation. It is a highly audacious work, presenting an overwhelming body of material, written in a very self-confident manner, full of associations and "witty" speculations, at one point extremely detailed and at another dogmatically sweeping, although its composition was less of a success. The main thesis of the book is that the disputes within the University of Tübingen in the first 70 years of its existence has a very far-reaching influence on the development of the Reformation in general.
Distancing himself forcefully from modern research, he argued that the decisive factors affecting the Reformation were not primarily humanist influences, or even social or economic conditions, but that it was above all the University "Wegestreit" of this period between the via antiqua and the via moderna that had led to it. Anyone knowing the author's preferences will not be surprised to hear that in his depiction of this controversy he was strongly inclined to side with the followers of the via moderna.
In preparation for the commemoration of Luther's 500th birthday in 1983, Oberman began two studies, the first of which "” most strongly than any others in his immense list of publications "” bears witness to an intense personal involvement with the subject of his choice. I refer to a small but very substantial book from 1981: Wurzeln des Antisemitismus: Christenangst und Judenplage im Zeitalter von Humanismus und Reformation (1981). It goes without saying that courage was needed to grasp such a sensitive theme as this, but Oberman realized that clarity was required on precisely this point, before he could produce a new biography of Luther. And this came about a year later with his Luther "” Mensch zwischen Gott und Teufel (1982).
It has been said of this book that it can be seen as probably the most original contribution of the 20th century to an understanding of the Reformer (Peter Blickle). And justifiably so, for here Oberman succeeded in liberating Luther from later glosses and in returning him completely to his own time. He shows elegantly how in the late Middle Ages people felt wedged in between God and the devil, and both suffered on this account and drew strength from it. Luther, who lived with the awareness of being called to be a prophet, was placed by Oberman in this framework, and Oberman described him as someone who was convinced that the Last Judgment was nigh. The book was largely written during a study leave in Jerusalem and is one of Oberman's best-known works. It went through may printings and was translated into several languages; the same happened, by the way, to all his other major works mentioned above.
In 1984 an end came to Oberman's stay in Tübingen. After 18 years of bravely enduring the damp climate there, he had to look for a warmer domicile, because of Toetie Oberman's arthritis. And this was more than adequately provided by the desert city of Tucson (Arizona). The local University was not known as a center for the study of the late Middle Ages and the Reformation. Yet that was not seen as an objection, but rather as a challenge to build a center of this type here. And this indeed worked. Oberman's international reputation meant that students flew in from all quarters to be trained by him. The University played its part by providing the necessary facilities. In this way, shortly after his death, a center for the study of the Reformation was established in Tucson, with a second position in Reformation history. At the same time Oberman's awe-inspiring personal library was donated to the University. In his final years he occupied himself largely with preliminary studies for a larger work on Calvin.
During his time at Tucson, Oberman flew 31 times to the Netherlands as a member of the "Committee of Inquiry into Theology," set up in 1987 by Dutch Minister Deetman. Its remit was "to describe, evaluate and if necessary to reorganize the field of academic theology in the Netherlands." The committee did some very thorough and useful work, although this did not occur without much tumult, anger and sorrow on the part of some of the persons and institutions concerned. But I need not go into this. I would only recollect that when in March 1989 the final report of the Committee was presented to the institutes at a large meeting in the Free University of Amsterdam, Professor Dr A.H. Smits opened the session and announced with a smile that he had the honor of being the chairman of what was referred to in informal circles as the "Oberman Committee."
It is well enough known that throughout his career Oberman received an unbroken stream of scholarly prizes and other accolades, and, given his outstanding ability, this should hardly be cause for surprise. Without claiming to be comprehensive, and ignoring his many memberships of learned associations, editorial boards of journals, and so on, I shall limit myself to the honorary doctorates he received. These were awarded him by the Universities of Harvard, St. Louis, Aberdeen, and Valparaiso (Indiana).
Finally an attempt to offer a portrait of Oberman in a few sentences: 1. A driven, unusually focussed and rapid worker. 2. A highly ambitious scholar with strong journalistic and commercial talents. 3. A leader, organizer, builder and positive thinker: as such demanding, authoritarian and idiosyncratic. 4. A true pastor: as such loyal, warm and sympathetic, and much loved as a teacher. 5. A verbally gifted man with strong powers of persuasion and a sense of humor: for this reason a born performer and an exceptional preacher. In short: a phenomenon without equal, whose singular personality and impressive oeuvre will not quickly be lost from memory.