KUECHENER, ku'hen-er, HERMANN: German mystic. He is known only through his trial for heresy at Würzburg in 1342. The trial ended with his recantation, but, as his sincerity was doubted, he was detained in prison for some time. His confessions before the court show that he was an adherent of the then widely prevalent quietistic-pantheistic mysticism (see FREE SPIRIT, BRETHREN OF THE). By a mystical absorption into the absolute divine being he imagined that he transformed himself into God. He became impervious to all sense-impressions, fancied that he was soaring high above the earth, and that he could walk across the Rhine without wetting his feet. In this "deized" state, the person of Christ, the hierarchy, dogmas and precepts of the Church, and even moral laws, lost all significance for him.

HERMAN HAUPT.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Monumenta Boica, xl. 415-421, Munich, 1870; H. Haupt, Die religiösen Sekten in Franken vor der Reformation, pp. 6 sqq., Würzburg, 1882.

KUEHL, kül, ERNST RICHARD THEODOR: German Protestant; b. at Visbuhr (near Köslin, 100 m. w. of Danzig) Apr. 29, 1861. He studied in Berlin (1878-82; Ph.D., Halle, 1882), and, after a year in Italy (1882-83), was inspector of the Sedlnitzkysches Johannaeum in Breslau 1883-87. In 1887 he became associate professor of New-Testament exegesis in Breslau, and in 1893 went to Marburg as full professor of the same subject. Since 1895 he has been professor of New-Testament exegesis at Königsberg. He has written: Die Massorah und die Septuaginta im Jeremia (Halle, 1882); Die Gemeindeordung in den Pastoralbriefen (Berlin, 1885); Die Briefe Petri und Judä (in H. A. W. Meyer's Kritisch-exegetischer Handkommentar über das Neue Testament, Göttingen, 1887); Die Heilsbedeutung des Todes Christi (Berlin, 1890); Zur paulinischen Theodicee (1897); Rechtfertigung auf Grund des Glaubens und Gericht nach den Werken bei Paulus (Königsberg, 1904); Ueber II Kor. v. 1-10, ein Beitrag zum Hellenismus bei Paulus (1904); Stellung des Jakobusbriefes zum alttestamentlichen Gesetz und zur paulinischen Rechtfertigungslehre (1905); Erläuternde Umschreibung der paulinischen Briefe unter Beibehaltung der Briefform, i. (1905); and Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu (1908).