ABEL, KARL. - Minister of State in Bavaria, b. at Wetzlar on 17 Sept. 1788, d. at Munich on 3 Sept. 1859. His career as a civil servant took him as far as the office of councillor of state and then of minister of the interior and of worship (1837); in which office, for ten years, he earned great merit for religion and the Church. He worked, among other things, for the restoration of the school system, promoted and favored the establishment of religious houses, especially of teaching sisters, made correspondence between the bishops and the Holy See free, and interpreted benignly the vexatious organic articles added by the State to the concordat of 1817. Hence he did not lack the opposition of Protestants and liberals, which made his work difficult; until certain excesses, and above all the refusal to grant "indigenate" to the dancer Lola Montez, a favorite of King Louis I, caused him to fall into complete disgrace. In 1847 he was for a short time ambassador to the court of Turin; then he was put into private life (1850).

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: [M. Strödl], Kirche und Staat in Bayern, unter dem Minister A. u. seinem Nachfolger, Schaffhausen 1849; G. Goyau, L'Allemagne religieuse, 1800-1870, vol. II, Paris 1905; M. Staudinger, Die Katholische Bewegung in Bayern, Munich 1925.

Celestino Testore

@incollection{ec1_abel_karl, author = {Testore, Celestino}, title = {Abel, karl}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {I}, pages = {60--61}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1948}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/abel-karl} }

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Abel, Karl

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