LIEBERMANN, BRUNO FRANZ LEOPOLD. — Head of the theological school of Mainz, born at Molsheim (Alsace) on 12 October 1759, died at Strasbourg on 11 November 1844. Ordained a priest in 1783, he was immediately appointed spiritual director of the Seminary and German-language preacher at the Cathedral. Appointed parish priest of Ernolsheim (1783), he fulfilled his office with zeal and courage during the French Revolution. Imprisoned by Napoleon on the false charge of being a royalist conspirator, he was granted his freedom after eight months (1805), on condition that he never return to Strasbourg.
Invited by his friend Giuseppe Colmar, who had become bishop of Mainz with Napoleon’s support, he accepted the direction of the Seminary, which had just been reopened. L. created an atmosphere of piety and faith around the young men, fostering in their souls feelings of respect for the Pope and the bishop, the true “sentire cum Ecclesia,” in opposition to the Enlightenment tendencies of the theology then in vogue and to the prevailing Febronianism. His teaching made an impression on the young because of the breadth of his culture (he successively taught ecclesiastical history, canon law, and dogmatic theology), and above all because of the clarity and inner warmth of his exposition. He collected his theology lectures in Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae (5 vols., Mainz 1818–27), which went through many editions, among them the noteworthy Roman edition, praised by Cardinal Cappellari, who, after becoming Gregory XVI, had it adopted at the Collegio di Propaganda Fide, requiring, however, a more decisive affirmation of papal infallibility. His Institutiones iuris canonici remain unpublished in the major Seminary of Strasbourg. The Predigten were printed in 3 vols. (Mainz 1851–53).
Around L. there spontaneously developed what was later called the Mainz school, which, through the journal Der Katholik, whose motto was “Christianus mihi nomen, catholicus cognomen,” waged, in a more popular than scholarly tone, a victorious struggle against the spirit of the age, causing a breath of Roman faith to waft across Germany. L.’s best disciples were Raess, bishop of Strasbourg; Weis, bishop of Speyer; Cardinal Geissel, who from his see of Cologne guided the German Church; Lenning, canon of Mainz, who prepared the unification of Germany’s Catholic energies; and Klee, the learned theologian who in Bonn firmly opposed the Hermesian followers. In 1823 L. refused the bishopric of Metz, but accepted the office of vicar general to the bishop of Strasbourg, Monsignor Tharin. Under Monsignor Trevern he presided over the commission BAUTZEN (v.).