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Hans Küng (photo from 2012)
Photo: Franziska Kraufmann / dpa
Hans Küng had one weakness, at least.
This is probably what everyone experienced who questioned the now deceased great theologian of the Catholic Church personally.
It was revealed in his words, unmistakably.
But sometimes it was so exaggerated that it was funny and almost charming again.
And it was also evident in his surroundings: out there in the garden - did he really put up a bust of himself there?
Küng's vanity was so proverbial that there was a joke in different versions.
One goes like this: One day three cardinals are standing at the door of Küng's house in Tübingen.
He opens the door and they say to him: "It has been decided: you will be Pope!" Kiing hesitated for a moment.
Then he says: "Thank you, no, then I'm no longer infallible."
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The infallibility of the Pope - Küng has attacked this Roman Catholic dogma again and again for decades: sharp-tongued and always with the best theological, ecclesiastical and exegetical arguments.
For many years no one could seriously hold a candle to him in his field, theology.
To experience Küng, even in very old years, jumping back and forth briefly between Greek, Latin and Hebrew, sometimes quickly throwing a crystal-clear treatise on Paul, then on Kant, sometimes a papal anecdote from the fifth century, sometimes here he shook an encounter from the Second Vatican Council up his sleeve, which he not only noticed in passing, but literally helped to shape - all of this could take your breath away.
Hero's story of rise and fall
In addition to his knowledge and intelligence, there was the tremendous courage to publicly fight for a lifetime against church beliefs and traditions about which he could only shake his head.
And Kiing didn't leave it at that, he kept holding his head out whenever necessary.
For him it was notoriously a heroic story of rise and fall and rise and fall.
Get up again and again, never give up.
Born in 1928 in Sursee, Switzerland, Hans Küng was initially a kind of theological prodigy.
Ordained a priest at the age of 26 and already a professor of theology in Tübingen at the age of 32, he experienced a high point of his life from 1962 to 1965: He was one of Pope Johannes XXIII's.
appointed official theologians of the Second Vatican Council, which went down in history as the reform assembly of the Roman Catholic bishops.
Even then, Küng dared to tackle the most controversial topics in Catholic theology;
Topics that still cause tinder in the world church today: an end to compulsory celibacy, women's ordination, more democracy in the church - and of course a serious ecumenical movement that is not only satisfied with compromises.
In 1979 Küng's license to teach was revoked
A special relationship developed between Küng and Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI.
At the council, both of them, so young they were then, were admired and laughed at as "teenage theologians".
For a few years they taught together in Tübingen, before Ratzinger became a competitor for Küng, eventually an opponent and almost an enemy.
Over many years they were to shape their church in very different ways: one at the top, the other almost at the bottom, albeit with a proper resonance space.
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While Ratzinger became more and more reactionary and conformist with his rise in the church hierarchy, Küng radicalized himself in his own way: he said what he wanted - and Rome reliably displeased that.
Important theologians and bishops held hands over him for a long time because they admired his brilliance in thought and language.
But then in 1978 came the election of Pope John Paul II, who initiated an unprecedented rollback in the Church.
In 1979 Küng's license to teach was revoked.
Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome from 1982 and thus the Church's highest guardian of faith, did almost nothing for his old professor colleague, at least nothing that would have become public.
Küng resigned himself to his expulsion from official theology - the University of Tübingen created him a post as a professor of ecumenical theology independent of the faculty.
Here, and even more so in his presidency in the "Global Ethic Foundation" in Tübingen from 1995, he published like a world champion.
The Pope as a servant, that was Kung's vision
The list of his publications is simply unmanageable.
The impact of his writings was and is immense.
Even the British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Küng in 2000 on the Neckar.
The idea of the "Global Ethic" project, no peace without peace between religions, is as simple as it is true.
And far-sighted.
Because that was long before 9/11, long before the persecution of Muslims by Hindus or Jews by Muslims, to indicate only a few of the worldwide religious conflicts.
As old men, Küng and Ratzinger met in the papal summer residence Castel Gandolfo in 2005, when Ratzinger had just become Pope.
One can hardly speak of a reconciliation, but at least afterwards Kiing cursed his dearest enemy no longer quite so vehemently.
"I have no evidence, but I have good reasons why I am convinced that my life will not just go into nowhere, just as the cosmos cannot come from nowhere."
Hans Küng
During the Benedictine years, in his spacious and bright office in Tübingen, he didn't say much good about the Pope and his readiness for reforms in the church.
"We can't always wait for the next one, we have to see what we can achieve now." Yet he never wanted to abolish the papacy.
He had "always pleaded for an evangelically-oriented papacy as a service that had an ecumenical function," said Küng, almost mildly with age.
The Pope as a servant or spokesman for the unity of all Christianity in all its diversity and in all its denominations, that was Kung's vision.
Now he has died, the steadfast questioner, the stubborn, brilliant theologian.
Many important minds from the great reform years in the Church of Rome preceded him in recent years: Cardinal Karl Lehmann, Johann Baptist Metz, Ernesto Cardenal, to name just a few, most recently, a few days ago, the cheeky and clever Uta Ranke- Heinemann.
At a meeting in Tübingen in 2010, when I was 83 at the time, Küng said: “I have no evidence, but there are very good reasons why I am convinced that my life does not just go into nowhere, just like the cosmos does not come out of nowhere can come.
But that I am dying into a first-last reality that we call God. "
That is to be wished for him.
Paul says: “We are now looking through a mirror in a dark picture;
but then face to face. «Hans Küng will now have the answer to all his questions.