WALCH, the name of a family of scholars.
I. Johann Georg Walch (1693-1775) was born at Meiningen, and studied at Leipsic and Jena under Olearius and Buddaeus. From 1716 he was professor at Jena of philosophy, rhetoric, and poetry successively, and afterwards (from 1724) of theology. He married the only daughter of Buddaeus, and in his learned and theological career followed in the footsteps of his father-in-law. His theological position was that of a very moderate orthodoxy, which had been influenced greatly by the philosophy and controversies of the Deistic period. His university lectures and published works ranged over the wide fields of ecclesiastical history in its various branches, particularly the literature and the controversies of the church, dogmatics, ethics, and pastoral theology.
Of his works the most valuable were Bibliotheca Theologica (1757-64); Bibliotheca Patristica (1770, new ed. 1834); his edition of Luther’s works in 24 vols. (1740-52); Historische und theologische Einleitung in die religiösen Streitigkeiten ausserhalb der Lutherischen Kirche, 5 vols. (1734-36); and the companion work to this, Streitigkeiten der Evangel. Luth. Kirche (1730-39). His life, with a complete list of his writings, which amounted to 287, Leben und Charakter des Kirchenraths J. G. Walch, was published by his son C. W. F. Walch (Jena, 1777). Comp. Gass, Protestantische Dogmatik, iii. p. 205 sq.
II. Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch (1725-1778), son of the above, born at Jena in 1725, became professor of philosophy in the university in 1750, and of rhetoric and poetry in 1759. He died in 1778. He was distinguished for his philological, antiquarian, and mineralogical acquirements....
See Lebensgeschichte Johann Ernst Im. Walch, Jena, 1780, and Meusel's Lexicon verstorbener deutscher Schriftsteller, vol. xiv.
III. Christian Wilhelm Franz Walch (1726-1784), younger brother of J. E. I. Walch, was born at Jena December 25, 1726. He was educated at Jena under his father’s direction, and as early as 1745-1747 lectured in the university in branches of exegesis, philosophy, and history. He then travelled with his brother J. E. I. Walch for a year through the Continent, making the acquaintance of the learned men of each country. On his return he was made professor of theology in Jena, but in 1753 he accepted an invitation to Göttingen, where he spent his life as professor of theology. He lectured on dogmatics, church history, ethics, polemics, natural theology, symbolics, the epistles of Paul, Christian antiquities, historical theological literature, ecclesiastical law, and the fathers. His permanent place amongst learned theologians rests on his works on ecclesiastical history. He here holds the third place in the important trio Semler, Mosheim, Walch. Semler was much his superior in originality and boldness, and Mosheim in clearness, method, and elegance. But to his wide, deep, and accurate learning, to his conscientious and impartial examination of the facts and the authorities at first hand, and to his exact quotation of the sources and works illustrating them and careful discussion of the most minute details” all succeeding historians are deeply indebted. His method is critical and pragmatic, “pursuing everywhere the exact facts and the supposed causes of the outward changes of history,” leaving wholly out of sight the deeper moving principles and ideas which influence its course. He speaks of history as consisting of “the accidental changes of accidental matters.” But, although he thus failed to reach the modern standard of an historian, the results of his industry and research remain as permanent historical materials.
His principal work was his Entwurf einer vollständigen Historie der Ketzereien, Spaltungen, und Religionsstreitigkeiten, bis auf die Reformation, ll vols., Leipsic, 1762-85. It was a great advance in theological liberality that he defined a heretic on the one hand as a Christian and on the other as one in fundamental error. He thus claimed for the heretic a place in the church, while he declined to treat as heretical such differences as divided great sections of Christians. Of his other valuable works may be mentioned Entwurf einer vollständigen Historie der Römischen Päpste (1756, 2d ed. 1758), Entwurf einer vollständigen Historie der Kirchenversammlungen (1759), Bibliotheca Symbolica Vetus (1770), Kritische Untersuchung vom Gebrauch der heiligen Schrift unter den alten Christen (1779), occasioned by the controversy between Lessing and Goeze, and to which Lessing began an elaborate reply just before his death.
On C. W. F. Walch as historian see Baur, Epochen der kirchlichen Geschichtschreibung (1852), p. 145 sq ., and Dogmengeschichte, p. 38 sq. (1867, 3d ed. ); Gass, Geschichte der Protestantischen Dogmatik, iii. p. 267 sq. ; Meusel, Lexicon verstorbener deutscher Schriftsteller, vol. xiv.
IV. Carl Friedrich Walch (1734-1799), brother of the last-named, was professor of jurisprudence at Jena, and the author of several valuable legal works. He died at Jena in 1799. His son Georg Ludwig (1785-1838) was for a time professor in the Kloster gymnasium of Berlin and afterwards in the university of Greifswald. He edited valuable editions of Tacitus’s Agricola and Germania.
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