Reche, Johann Wilhelm

Reche, Johann Wilhelm the main representative of the Kantian rationalism in the Lutheran Church of the Rhine countries, was born Nov. 3, 1764, at Lennep. In 1786 he became pastor of the newly organized Lutheran church at Huckeswagen, and in 1796 pastor at Mulheim-on-the-Rhine, where, during the Revolution, he published a translation of Marcus Aurelius's philosophical treatise Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτὸν (1797), in order to show how a man should become a stoic. After the taking of the Rhine countries by Prussia, he became a member of the consistory of Cologne, which in 1826 was dissolved. In 1830 he retired from the ministry to his country-seat at Wesseling, between Cologne and Bonn, being dissatisfied with the new religious movement of his time, and died as an angry philosopher Jan. 9, 1835. He published some hymns, which, though of little value, are, however, found in some of the modernized German hymn-books. He also published a collection of sermons in two volumes, which are enumerated in Zuchold, Bibliotheca Theologica, 2, 1035 (comp. also Koch, Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes, 6, 259). (B. P.)