Goldene Buchstaben Ins Herz Schreiben

This volume deals with the subject of learning by heart in the context of Protestant teaching. What traditions are there? What potential does this religious cultural technique hold? Memorizing is identified here - not just against the background of the observations of Jan und Aleida Assmann on "cultural memory" - as the chief mode of the Judaeo-Christian culture of remembrance. It is shown how important mnemonics was in this field from the Reformation to the mid-20th century; only in the course of the decade of reforms did it begin to lose significance. The author uses basic insights on cultural memory and specifies the potential of learning off-by-heart for processes in religious education: the formation of social identiy, the constitution of personal identity, counterfactual suspension, religious performance and the competence to use theological reasoning. Thus, even at the horizon of modernity, memorizing - the original mode of Judaeo-Christian remembrance - thus seems to be an invaluable desideratum of endeavours in religious education.