Johann Baptist Metz
German Roman Catholic political theologian (1928–2019)
Johann Baptist Metz (5 August 1928 – 2 December 2019) was a German Catholic priest and theologian. He was ordinary professor of fundamental theology at the University of Münster and a consultant to the synod of German dioceses. He is regarded as one of the most important German theologians after the Second Vatican Council, and was an influence on the development of liberation theology.
Life and career
Metz was born on 5 August 1928 in Auerbach in der Oberpfalz and grew up there. As a teenager, Metz was drafted into the German military in 1944, towards the end of the Second World War. Six months before the end of the war, he was captured by the Americans and sent to prisoner of war camps in Maryland and then Virginia. After the war, he moved back to Germany. He studied theology and philosophy from 1948, first in Bamberg, then in Munich and at the University of Innsbruck. He completed his dissertation on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger in 1951. Metz was ordained a priest in 1954, working in ministry from 1958 to 1961.
The public source identifies “Johann Baptist Metz” as german Roman Catholic political theologian (1928–2019). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Johann, Baptist and Metz.
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This entry incorporates text from “Johann Baptist Metz” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.