1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lücke, Gottfried Christian Friedrich

LÜCKE, GOTTFRIED CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH (1791–1855), German theologian, was born on the 24th of August 1791, at Egeln near Magdeburg, where his father was a merchant. He studied theology at Halle and Göttingen. In 1813 he became repetent at Göttingen, and in 1814 he received the degree of doctor in philosophy from Halle; in 1816 he removed to Berlin, where he became licentiate in theology, and qualified as privat-docent. He soon became intimate with Schleiermacher and de Wette, and was associated with them in 1819 in the redaction of the Theologische Zeitschrift. Meanwhile his lectures and publications (among the latter a Grundriss der Neutestamentlichen Hermeneutik, 1816) had brought him into considerable repute, and he was appointed professor extraordinarius in the new university of Bonn in the spring of 1818; in the following autumn he became professor ordinarius. From Bonn, where he had J. C. W. Augusti (1772–1841), J. K. L. Gieseler, and Karl Immanuel Nitzsch for colleagues, he was called in 1827 to Göttingen to succeed K. F. Stäudlin (1761–1826). In that year he helped to found the Theologische Studien und Kritiken, the chief organ of the “mediation” theology (Vermittelungstheologie). At Göttingen he remained, declining all further calls elsewhere, as to Erlangen, Kiel, Halle, Tübingen, Jena and Leipzig, until his death, which occurred on the 4th of February 1855.

Lücke, who was one of the most learned, many-sided and influential of the so-called “mediation” school of evangelical theologians (Vermittelungstheologie), is now chiefly known by his Kommentar über die Schriften d. Evangelisten Johannes (4 vols., 1820–1832); it has since passed through two new and improved editions (the last volume of the 3rd edition by E. Bertheau, 1856). He is an intelligent maintainer of the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel; in connexion with this thesis he was one of the first to argue for the early date and non-apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse. His Einleitung in die Offenbarung Johannis was published in 1832 (2nd ed., 1848–1852). He also published a Synopsis Evangeliorum, conjointly with W. M. L. de Wette (1818, 2nd ed., 1840). See Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie.