Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich - Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, p. 399

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

JUNG-STILLING, JOHANN HEINRICH. - Pietist, born at Grund (Hilchenbach) on 12 Sept. 1740, died at Karlsruhe on 2 Apr. 1817. In 1787 he was professor of economic and administrative sciences at the University of Marburg. Goethe made him famous by publishing, without his knowledge, in 1777 the first part of Heinrich Stillings Jugend; in this and in his many other works (Sämtliche Werke, 12 vols., Stoccarda 1841-42), J.-S. is among the most evocative followers of Pietism, into which, moreover, flowed the legacy of the “abandonment” of seventeenth-century Quietism.

His life and writings are permeated by a profound religiosity that discerns in every smallest thing the direct and constant intervention of Providence, by a “longing for heaven” that colours every act of life, and by a marked taste for the esoteric: “he who is assailed with mysteries must defend himself with mysteries.” J.-S. was a convinced opponent of the Enlightenment and anti-Jacobin: he saw in the principles of 1789 the beginning of an era of dechristianization.

BIBL.: R. Morax, Le docteur H. S., Parigi 1914; H. Grellmann, Die Technik der empfindsamen Erziehungsromane J. S., Greifswald 1924; H. R. G. Günther, J.-S. Ein Beitrag zur Psychologie des deutschen Pietismus, Monaco 1928 (another ed., ibid. 1948); G. Necco, La spirito filisteo, Roma 1929, p. 180 ff.; H. Reuter, J. H. J.-S. als Staatswissenschaftler, Diss., Giessen 1930; E. Craveri Croce, Studi di letteratura tedesca. La « Giovinezza » di J. S., in Quaderni della Critica, 13 (1949), pp. 33-44; 14 (1949), pp. 18-33; R. Paoli, Goethe e S. ovvero pietismo e romanticismo nella prima autobiografia romantica, Roma 1949. For further bibliography, J. Körner, Bibliographisches Handbuch des Schrifttums, Berna 1949, p. 259. Massimo Petrocchi