doctrine.” Fourth and finally, whether he would concede that he had made
statements that were “offensive, repugnant, or extremely inappropriate,”
for example, that “witches should be burned,” or the view that “if a son
does not believe in Jesus, his father might just as well break his neck, and
that if the father himself does not believe, he might just as well slit his own
throat.”
Adler himself published a piece in which he followed and commented
upon the development of the case,Papers Related to My Suspension and Dis-
missal, but in the view of the ecclesiastical authorities he had replied unsatis-
factorily to their questions and was deemed unsuited to continue in office.
Despite the fact that no fewer than one hundred fifteen of his parishioners
petitioned in favor of their pastor, he was suspended in January 1844 and
finally dismissed—albeit honorably and with his pension—in August 1845,
though the case, which included more than seventy documents, was not
formally closed until June 1851. As a result of the intercession of Mynster,
in particular, the charge was changed from “mental illness” to “monoma-
nia.” As a sort of supplemental explanation for his dismissal, it was noted
that in 1843, on returning from a lengthy journey abroad, a younger
brother, Johan Adler, had been diagnosed as schizophrenic and hospitalized
in an insane asylum in Slesvig. (He would drag out a miserable existence
there for the next fifty-seven years.) Shortly after Johan’s hospitalization he
had been visited by a sister, but when she, too, demonstrated that she was
in “a completely demented state,” her visit was prolonged by almost a year.
Mental health was not the Adler family’s strong suit.
Adolph Peter Adler did, however, possess sufficient common sense to
sail over to Copenhagen in the latter part of June 1845 in order to meet
with Mynster, to whom he had sent a declaration a couple of weeks earlier
to the effect that he now completely acknowledged that “the unusual,
strange, offensive, aphoristic, and abrupt form in which the ideas are ex-
pressed at many points in my sermons and studies may reasonably have
aroused the misgivings of the high authorities.” This statement displays a
certain accommodation, but no recantation of the alleged revelation, so the
battle was lost.
After his dismissal, Adler dedicated himself to his literary activities. He
traveled to Italy in 1847–48 and wrote a charming book on his experiences
there. He returned to Hasle, but in 1853 he moved to Copenhagen where
he remained until his death in 1869. Throughout his life, however, he re-
tained his love of the rocky island of Bornholm and its culture, and in 1856
he published anAttempt at a Dictionary of the Bornholm Dialect.
romina
(Romina)
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