ABSTRACT
The article offers a survey about the research in patristics and early church history, especially history of early Christian literature, in German Protestant theology in the years before World War I. Adolf Harnack was the most prominent figure, though a closer look at the approaches of the individual scholars beside him shows considerable differences. A clear shaped discipline Patristics or Early Church History did not exist in this time, but patristics was sometimes simply the main interest of a scholar in church history or even New Testament studies. The impact of Harnack on the patristics of his time is clear from the reticence towards the so-called Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, the preference of texts of the first three centuries (cf. the title of the series Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte) and the concentration on Greek patristics. Important contributions appeared after 1900 (the Realencyclopädie, the RGG, Schwartz's articles about Athanasius and the fourth century, the debate about the synod of Antioch 324/325, the controversy between Harnack and Rudolf Sohm). The main part of the article consists of a detailed survey of the 17 German Protestant faculties of theology, 9 of them being Prussian faculties. In addition to Berlin, the faculties of Halle, Kiel, Marburg and Gießen (Gustav Krüger!) deserve special attention. As for publication organs, the series Texte und Untersuchungen was very successful. Founded in 1900, the Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft (edited by Erwin Preuschen) became important and included even the Kunde der älteren Kirche, a special issue dedicated to Adolf Harnack was published in 1911.
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