GORRES, gerlres, JOHANN JOSEF (1776-1848). A German scholar and publicist. He was born at Coblenz, January 25, 1776; studied at the University of Bonn, and being of a. very ardent temperament, threw himself into the revolu tionary movement which then agitated Rhenish Prussia. He first dreamed of uniting the Rhenish provinces with France in pursuance of his ideal of a union of all civilized countries, and advo cated these ideas in two ephemeral newspapers. He, however, soon learned to detest Napoleon, and, despairing of the cause of liberty, from 1800 to 1806 taught physics at Coblenz; then was tutor at Heidelberg. In 1808 he returned to Cob lenz, and for two years (1814-16) edited another newspaper, the Rheinischer Merkus, the most im portant political journal published in Germany at that time, which breathed the most ardent German patriotism. But before long his opinions underwent another radical change, and, compelled to flee because his political views were not accept able to the Government, he took up a mystic and symbolic kind of religion in the same enthusiastic way. He had always been a Roman Catholic;
now he became an Ultramontanist. In 1826 he was appointed professor of history in the University of Munich, and the next twenty years were the most productive of his life, during which he poured forth a mass of brilliant polemic papers on questions of the day. He died at Munich, January 27, 1843. His principal pub lication is Die christliche Mystik (1836-42), which, though doubtless intended to set forth only views acceptable to the Roman Catholic Church, as a matter of fact was regarded with so much aversion that it required all the King of Bava ria's influence to prevent its being put on the Index. His numerous political writings were collected (1854-60), and also his letters (1858 74). In English have appeared: Germany and the Revolution (1820) ; The Stigmata : a History of Various Cases (a part of his Mystik, 1883).
Consult his biography by Galland (2d ed., Frei burg, 1876).