Joseph Edmund Jörg

Who was Joseph Edmund Jörg?

Joseph Edmund Jörg was a Catholic historian and politician. The son of a subaltern, he first studied theology, then philology and history at Munich. He was a pupil of Johann Döllinger, and was for years his collaborator in his Geschichte der Reformation. In 1852 he was engaged in the Bavarian Record Office, and undertook in the same year the editorship of the Historisch-politische Blätter I which he retained till a short time before his death. For decades his "Zeitläufte", which appeared in this periodical, attracted great attention.

On account of his opposition to the Government, he was transferred to Neuburg an der Donau, but was elected in 1863 a substitute member of the Bavarian Lower House, to which he belonged till 1881. He was promoted in 1866 to the position of district archivist in Landshut; from 1868 to 1869 he was a member of the German Zollparlament, and from 1874 to 1879 a member of the German Reichstag. His first work, Deutschland in der Revolutionsperiode, 1522-26, was a history of the German Peasants' War. The later books, Geschichte des Protestantismus in seiner neuesten Entwickelung and Die Rene Aera in Preussen, are a collection of separate essays published in the paper Historisch-politische Blätter. He was interested in the development of socialism, and as early as 1867 his Geschichte der sozialpolitischen Parteien in Deutschland appeared, having originated in his "Aphorisms" on the socialist movement, published in the Historisch-politische Blätter. Jörg was a conservative, a convinced Bavarian monarchist and a determined opponent of the Bavarian Liberal Party and of the subordination of Bavaria to Prussia. The Bavarian "Volkspartei" grew with his cooperation in a few years from a modest group to a majority in the House.