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LANGE, J. P.—LANGENBECK
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at Duisburg, resigning when the government forbade schoolmasters to take part in political agitation. Lange then entered on a career of militant journalism in the cause of political and social reform. He was also prominent in the affairs of his town, yet found leisure to write most of his best-known books, Die Leibesübungen (1863), Die Arbeiterfrage (1865, 5th ed. 1894), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart (1866; 7th ed. with biographical sketch by H. Cohen, 1902; Eng. trans., E. C. Thomas, 1877), and J. S. Mill’s Ansichten über die sociale Frage (1866). In 1866, discouraged by affairs in Germany, he moved to Winterthur, near Zürich, to become connected with the democratic newspaper, Winterthurer Landbote. In 1869 he was Privatdozent at Zürich, and next year professor. The strong French sympathies of the Swiss in the Franco-German War led to his speedy resignation. Thenceforward he gave up politics. In 1872 he accepted a professorship at Marburg. Unhappily, his vigorous frame was already stricken with disease, and, after a lingering illness, he died at Marburg, on the 23rd of November 1875, diligent to the end. His Logische Studien was published by H. Cohen in 1877 (2nd ed., 1894). His main work, the Geschichte des Materialismus, which is brilliantly written, with wide scientific knowledge and more sympathy with English thought than is usual in Germany, is rather a didactic exposition of principles than a history in the proper sense. Adopting the Kantian standpoint that we can know nothing but phenomena, Lange maintains that neither materialism nor any other metaphysical system has a valid claim to ultimate truth. For empirical phenomenal knowledge, however, which is all that man can look for, materialism with its exact scientific methods has done most valuable service. Ideal metaphysics, though they fail of the inner truth of things, have a value as the embodiment of high aspirations, in the same way as poetry and religion. In Lange’s Logische Studien, which attempts a reconstruction of formal logic, the leading idea is that reasoning has validity in so far as it can be represented in terms of space. His Arbeiterfrage advocates an ill-defined form of socialism. It protests against contemporary industrial selfishness, and against the organization of industry on the Darwinian principle of struggle for existence.

See O. A. Ellissen, F. A. Lange (Leipzig, 1891), and in Monatsch. d. Comeniusgesell. iii., 1894, 210 ff.; H. Cohen in Preuss. Jahrb. xxvii., 1876, 353 ff.; Vaihinger, Hartmann, Dühring und Lange (Iserlohn, 1876); J. M. Bösch, F. A. Lange und sein Standpunkt d. Ideals (Frauenfeld, 1890); H. Braun, F. A. Lange, als Socialökonom (Halle, 1881).  (H. St.) 


LANGE, JOHANN PETER (1802–1884), German Protestant theologian, was of peasant origin and was born at Sonneborn near Elberfeld on the 10th of April 1802. He studied theology at Bonn (from 1822) under K. I. Nitzsch and G. C. F. Lücke, held several pastorates, and eventually (1854) settled at Bonn as professor of theology in succession to Isaac A. Dorner, becoming also in 1860 counsellor to the consistory. He died on the 9th of July 1884. Lange has been called the poetical theologian par excellence: “It has been said of him that his thoughts succeed each other in such rapid and agitated waves that all calm reflection and all rational distinction become, in a manner, drowned” (F. Lichtenberger). As a dogmatic writer he belonged to the school of Schleiermacher. His Christliche Dogmatik (3 vols., 1849–1852, new edition, 1870) “contains many fruitful and suggestive thoughts, which, however, are hidden under such a mass of bold figures and strange fancies, and suffer so much from want of clearness of presentation, that they did not produce any lasting effect” (Otto Pfleiderer).

His other works include Das Leben Jesu (3 vols., 1844–1847), Das apostolische Zeitalter (2 vols., 1853–1854), Grundriss der theologischen Enzyklopädie (1877), Grundriss der christlichen Ethik (1878), and Grundriss der Bibelkunde (1881). In 1857 he undertook with other scholars a Theologisch-homiletisches Bibelwerk, to which he contributed commentaries on the first four books of the Pentateuch, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Matthew, Mark, Revelation. The Bibelwerk has been translated, enlarged and revised under the general editorship of Dr Philip Schaff.


LANGEAIS, a town of west-central France in the department of Indre-et-Loire, on the right bank of the Loire, 16 m. W.S.W. of Tours by rail. Pop. (1906) town, 1755; commune, 3550. Langeais has a church of the 11th, 12th and 15th centuries but is chiefly interesting for the possession of a large château built soon after the middle of the 15th century by Jean Bourré, minister of Louis XI. Here the marriage of Charles VIII. and Anne of Brittany took place in 1491. In the park are the ruins of a keep of late 10th-century architecture, built by Fulk Nerra, count of Anjou.


LANGEN, JOSEPH (1837–1901), German theologian, was born at Cologne on the 3rd of June 1837. He studied at Bonn, was ordained priest in 1859, was nominated professor extraordinary at the university of Bonn in 1864, and a professor in ordinary of the exegesis of the New Testament in 1867—an office which he held till his death. He was one of the able band of professors who in 1870 supported Döllinger in his resistance to the Vatican decrees, and was excommunicated with Ignaz v. Döllinger, Johann Huber, Johann Friedrich, Franz Heinrich Reusch, Joseph Hubert Reinkens and others, for refusing to accept them. In 1878, in consequence of the permission given to priests to marry, he ceased to identify himself with the Old Catholic movement, although he was not reconciled with the Roman Catholic Church. Langen was more celebrated as a writer than as a speaker. His first work was an inquiry into the authorship of the Commentary on St Paul’s Epistles and the Treatise on Biblical Questions, ascribed to Ambrose and Augustine respectively. In 1868 he published an Introduction to the New Testament, a work of which a second edition was called for in 1873. He also published works on the Last Days of the Life of Jesus, on Judaism in the Time of Christ, on John of Damascus (1879) and an Examination of the Vatican Dogma in the Light of Patristic Exegesis of the New Testament. But he is chiefly famous for his History of the Church of Rome to the Pontificate of Innocent III. (4 vols., 1881–1893), a work of sound scholarship, based directly upon the authorities, the most important sources being woven carefully into the text. He also contributed largely to the Internationale theologische Zeitschrift, a review started in 1893 by the Old Catholics to promote the union of National Churches on the basis of the councils of the Undivided Church, and admitting articles in German, French and English. Among other subjects, he wrote on the School of Hierotheus, on Romish falsifications of the Greek Fathers, on Leo XIII., on Liberal Ultramontanism, on the Papal Teaching in regard to Morals, on Vincentius of Lerins and he carried on a controversy with Professor Willibald Beyschlag, of the German Evangelical Church, on the respective merits of Protestantism and Old Catholicism regarded as a basis for teaching the Christian faith. An attack of apoplexy put an end to his activity as a teacher and hastened his death, which occurred in July 1901.  (J. J. L.*) 


LANGENBECK, BERNHARD RUDOLF KONRAD VON (1810–1887), German surgeon, was born at Horneburg on the 9th of November 1810, and received his medical education at Göttingen, where he took his doctor’s degree in 1835 with a thesis on the structure of the retina. After a visit to France and England, he returned to Göttingen as Privatdozent, and in 1842 became professor of surgery and director of the Friedrichs Hospital at Kiel. Six years later he succeeded J. F. Dieffenbach (1794–1847) as director of the Clinical Institute for Surgery and Ophthalmology at Berlin, and remained there till 1882, when failing health obliged him to retire. He died at Wiesbaden on the 30th of September 1887. Langenbeck was a bold and skilful operator, but was disinclined to resort to operation while other means afforded a prospect of success. He devoted particular attention to military surgery, and was a great authority in the treatment of gunshot wounds. Besides acting as general field-surgeon of the army in the war with Denmark in 1848, he saw active service in 1864, 1866, and again in the Franco-German campaign of 1870–71. He was in Orleans at the end of 1870, after the city had been taken by the Prussians, and was unwearied in his attentions, whether as operator or consultant, to wounded men with whom every public building was packed. He also utilized the opportunities for instruction that thus arose, and the “Militär-Aerztliche Gesellschaft,” which met twice a week for some months, and in the discussions of which every surgeon