Johann Baptist Metz Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Metz lived in Münster until his death on 2 December 2019.

He was professor of Fundamental Theology at the University of Münster from 1963 to 1993, where he developed a Theology after Auschwitz (Holocaust theology). He introduced philosophical and political ideas of 1968, by Ernst Bloch and the Frankfurt School of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, in theology, which was received with opposition. His concepts were applied by the liberation theology in Latin America. He participated in the founding of the University of Bielefeld, and was a leading member of the international Paulus-Gesellschaft dedicated to a dialogue of Christianity and Marxism. After the Second Vatican Council, he was a consultant of the papal secretariate for the noncredentibus from 1968 to 1973. Metz was a consultant of the Würzburg Synod of the German dioceses from 1971 to 1975, and was the principal author of its document “Unsere Hoffnung” (Our hope) which became a key document for the reception of the Second Vatican Council in Germany.

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, who influenced liberation theology and focused on compassion.

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. He was then promoted to Ph.D., with a work on the theology of Thomas Aquinas under the supervision of Karl Rahner. His experience in the war matches that of the German Calvinist theologian Jürgen Moltmann who would go on to write with Metz on political theology against a background of direct confrontation with Nazism. In 1962–63, he was granted a scholarship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.