PILGRAM, FRIEDRICH. – German thinker, sociologist, and lay theologian, born at Imbach near Solingen in 1819, died at Monheim on the Rhine on 21 November 1890. Educated in Protestant rationalism, he soon perceived its inadequacy and began to seek a solution to his doubts in science and philosophy. Dissatisfied with Spinozist pantheism and also with Hegel’s idealism, which he had previously studied with such enthusiasm, he finally found the truth through reading the works of St. Augustine and in Catholicism, to which he converted on 23 December 1846 at Koblenz.
Having found inner peace, P. withdrew to Monheim, where he devoted all his time to preparing his writings. Having thoroughly understood German idealism, in which he had been formed, P. sought, in a style of his own, to bring to light the objective reality of the work of the Redemption and of its continuation in the Church of Christ. Linking this idea with another that was fundamental for him, namely, the unity of all human beings in God and in Christ, he sought to translate them into his studies on the Church and the State. Thus arose his principal works, Physiologie der Kirche (Mainz 1860, French ed. Paris 1864), an attempt to expound the sociology of the Church, and Neue Grundlagen der Wissenschaft vom Staate (Berlin 1870), a synthesis of a doctrine of the State based on Christian principles.
Although he felt little inclination toward the unsettled vicissitudes of political life, for a time he was editor of the Rheinischer Rüst (1859–64), and in 1870 one of the founders and, for a brief period, also an editor of Germania, taking a position in favor of the new Prussian German Empire.
Writings: in addition to those already mentioned v.: Kontroversen mit den Ungläubigen (Freiburg im Breisgau 1855); Soziale Fragen betrachtet aus dem Prinzip der kirchlichen Gemeinschaft (ibid. 1855); Leben und Wirken hervorragender Protestanten betrachtet aus katholischen Glaubensprinzipien (ibid. 1857).