Theodor Steinbüchel's Great Figures of Christian Humanism

Abstract Theodor Steinbüchel (1888–1949) offers a study of eight figures in Western history who may be regarded as gestalts of Christian Humanism. He argued that none of these eight figures will ever return in the same way, but since there was an eternal conception of Christianity to which their ethos gave human form, each of these gestalts can be imitated in a new way in subsequent eras. Foundational to his presentation of the Christian Humanism of the eight figures is the idea that Western Christian culture and its humanism is built upon what he calls the trinity of antiquity, Christianity and Germanism.