Hermann Gruber (priest)

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Hermann Gruber

Hermann Gruber SJ (5 February 1851 – 8 May 1930) was an Austrian Roman Catholic priest, writer and essayist of renown, and a noted specialist of positivism and Freemasonry. He frequently used the pen name Hildebrand Gerber.

Biography

Hermann Gruber was born in Kufstein. After completing his secondary education at the Jesuit boarding school Stella Matutina in Feldkirch, young Hermann entered the order novitiate on 2 October 1868. After the novitiate, he studied classics in Munster, philosophy at Maria-Laach (1871–1872), which ended in exile (with the German Jesuits) and a move to Bleijenbeek in the Netherlands.

After a period of teaching at Feldkirch (the regency), Gruber studied theology in preparation for the priesthood at Ditton Hall (1876–1880), near Liverpool, England, while teaching philosophy to the French Jesuit exiles in Mold, Wales. From 1881 to 1887, he did pastoral work with Germans in Arlon, Belgium, and Bern, Switzerland.

From 1887 onwards, Father Gruber's life was entirely devoted to writing. He returned to Exaten (Netherlands), the headquarters of the German Jesuits in exile, where he contributed to the journal Stimmen aus Maria-Laach (now Stimmen der Zeit). His preoccupations were Auguste Comte's religious positivism and Freemasonry, both of which he opposed. As far as Freemasonry was concerned, he became an internationally recognised authority.

In 1889, he met the impostor Paul Rosen in Antwerp and unmasked him. In Brussels (1914), he investigated and exposed the deceptions of Léo Taxil, whom he had initially believed.

His study of the school question and the constitutional crisis in Luxembourg (1916) earned him a sentence in absentia. His main works have been translated into French and Italian.

Father Hermann Gruber died in Valkenburg, the home of the German Jesuits in exile in the Netherlands, at the age of 79.

See also

• Ernest Jouin

Works

• August Comte, der Begründer des Positivismus. Sein Leben und seine Lehre (1889)
• Der Positivismus vom Tode August Comte's bis auf unsere Tage, 1857-1891 (1891)
• Schwindler und Beschwindelte oder Bilder aus der inneren Geschichte der Freimaurerei (1891)
• Die Freimaurerei und die öffentliche Ordnung (1893)
• L. Taxils Palladismus-Roman (1897–1898; 3 volumes)
• Betrug als Ende eines Betrugs (1897)
• Einigungs-Bestrebungen und innere Kämpfe in der deutschen Freimaurerei seit 1866 (1898)
• Der 'giftige Kern' oder die wahren Bestrebungen der Freimaurerei (1899)
• Mazzini, Freimaurerei und Weltrevolution (1900)
• Freimaurerei und Umsturzbewegung (1901)
• Schulfrage und Verfassungskrisis in Luxemburg (1916)
• Freimaurerei, Weltkrieg und Weltfriede (1917)

References

• Pirri, Pietro (1930). "La massoneria americana e la riorganizzazione della massoneria in Europa," La Civiltà Cattolica, Vol. IV, pp. 193–208.

External links

• Works by Hermann Gruber at Gallica