1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Huber, Johann Nepomuk

HUBER, JOHANN NEPOMUK (1830–1879), German philosophical and theological writer, a leader of the Old Catholics, was born at Munich on the 18th of August 1830. Originally destined for the priesthood, he early began the study of theology. By the writings of Spinoza and Oken, however, he was strongly drawn to philosophical pursuits, and it was in philosophy that he “habilitated” (1854) in the university of his native place, where he ultimately became professor (extraordinarius, 1859; ordinarius, 1864). With Döllinger and others he attracted a large amount of public attention in 1869 by the challenge to the Ultramontane promoters of the Vatican council in the treatise Der Papst und das Koncil, which appeared under the pseudonym of “Janus,” and also in 1870 by a series of letters (Römische Briefe, a redaction of secret reports sent from Rome during the sitting of the council), which were published over the pseudonym Quirinus in the Allgemeine Zeitung. He died suddenly of heart disease at Munich on the 20th of March 1879.

Works.—The treatise Über die Willensfreiheit (1858), followed in 1859 by Die Philosophie der Kirchenväter, which was promptly placed upon the Index, and led to the prohibition of all Catholic students from attending his lectures; Johannes Scotus Erigena (1861); Die Idee der Unsterblichkeit (1864); Studien (1867); Der Proletarier; zur Orientirung in der sozialen Frage (1865); Der Jesuitenorden nach seiner Verfassung und Doctrin, Wirksamkeit und Geschichte (1873), also placed upon the Index; Der Pessimismus (1876); Die Forschung nach der Materie (1877); Zur Philosophie der Astronomie (1878); Das Gedächtnis (1878). He also published adverse criticisms of Darwin, Strauss, Hartmann and Häckel; pamphlets on Das Papsttum und der Staat (1870), and on Die Freiheiten der französischen Kirche (1871); and a volume of Kleine Schriften (1871).

See E. Zirngiebl, Johannes Huber (1881); and M. Carrière in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, xiii. (1881), and in Nord und Süd (1879).