DIECKHOFF, AUGUST WILHELM. - Protestant theologian, b. 5 Feb. 1823 at Gottinga, d. 12 Sept. 1894 at Rostock. Extraordinary professor of systematic and historical theology at Gottinga in 1854,
he became full professor of the same subject at the University of Rostock in 1860.
He wrote various scholarly works, being especially concerned with the origins of Lutheranism. His first important work on the Waldensians in the Middle Ages (Die Waldenser im Mittelalter. Zwei historische Untersuchungen, 1851) refuted the then prevalent common opinion that regarded these heretics as precursors of the Protestant Reformation; according to D., rather, they were, in speculative terms, representatives of medieval Christianity, merely accepting Pelagian doctrines. In other works D. developed further the concept of the originality of the Lutheran Reformation. In 1870 he published a writing against papal infallibility.