BUNSEN, CHRISTIAN KARL JOSIAS VON

Prussian diplomat, publicist, Protestant lay theologian, and liturgist; b. Korbach (Waldeck) Prussia, Aug. 25, 1791; d. Bonn, Germany, Nov. 28, 1860. Supporting the union of Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Prussia established by Frederick William III in 1817, Bunsen became the chief liturgist of the new church. As Prussian ambassador to the Holy See (1832–39) he played a leading role in the cologne mixed marriage dispute and was, as a result, removed from Rome. He was ambassador to Bern (1839–41) and to London (1841–54). In furtherance of his desire for a rapprochement with the Anglicans, he was largely instrumental in creating the joint Anglican and Prussian Protestant bishopric in Jerusalem (1841). John Henry Newman confessed in his Apologia that his alienation from Anglicanism was decisively affected by this event. Despite his shortcomings as a diplomat, Bunsen served as an intellectual bridge between Germany and England. He helped impregnate Protestant theology with liberal thought. His own theology was liberal but amateurish, with a fondness for liturgy and sentiment, and a pronounced anti-Catholicism. Bunsen's books were numerous, verbose, and rarely of enduring value, ranging over such diverse fields as art history, Egyptology, patrology, ecclesiastical history, and religious philosophy. They include Das evangelischen Bisthum zu Jerusalem (1842); Allgemeines evangelisches Gesangbuch (1846); Gott in der Geschichte (3 v. 1857–58); and Die Zeichen der Zeit (2 v. 1855).

Bibliography: f. bonsen, A Memoir of Baron Bunsen, 2 v. (London 1868). r. pauli, Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (Leipzig 1875–1910) 3:541–552, detailed but tendentious. w. hÖcker, Der Gesandte Bansen als Vermittler zwischen Deutschland und England (Göttingen 1951). r. a. d. owen, Christian Bunsen and Liberal English Theology (Montpelier, Vt. 1924). w. bussmann, Neue deutsche Biographie 3:17–18.

[s. j. tonsor]