Adolf von Wilbrandt

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Adolf von Wilbrandt 1882 Signature Adolf von Wilbrandt (cropped) .jpg
Adolf von Wilbrandt 1911

Adolf Johann Albrecht Frierich Enoch von Wilbrandt (born August 24, 1837 in Rostock ; † June 10, 1911 there ) was a German writer and director of the Burgtheater in Vienna .

Life

Adolf von Wilbrandt, the fifth of nine children of Professor Christian Wilbrandt , began studying law in his hometown , but soon switched to history and philology and continued his studies in Berlin and Munich . After his doctorate as Dr. phil. he worked in the editorial department of the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten , the forerunner of the Süddeutsche Zeitung .

After extensive travels, he moved to Vienna in 1871, where he married the Imperial and Royal Hofburg actress Auguste Baudius two years later . On November 10, 1881, he was appointed director of the Burgtheater in Vienna as the successor to Franz von Dingelstedt , a position he held until his return to Rostock in 1887. His wife stayed in Vienna on his return. As early as 1884 Wilbrandt was raised to the personal, non-hereditary nobility by the award of the Maximilian Order by the Bavarian King Ludwig II and has since been called von Wilbrandt , but he did not use the title of nobility in any of his subsequent publications.

Services

A. Wilbrandt's grave in today's Lindenpark

Wilbrandt wrote time-critical key novels from the Munich circle of poets, historical tragedies and poems. In 1877 he was awarded one of three Schiller prizes donated by the German Kaiser Wilhelm I for his dramatic work .

Wilbrandt also worked as a translator , including translating several plays by Sophocles ( King Oedipus and others) that he performed in Vienna, as well as works by William Shakespeare .

With Fridolin's secret marriage , he probably published the first “gay” novel in German literature in 1875, even if it is not a masterpiece and stylistically often resembles the retelling of a tabloid theater performance. At least it's the first gay novel with a happy ending . The American Clara Bell translated the novel in 1884, making Fridolin's mystical marriage the first literary document of male love in America. The model for the figure of the bisexual Fridolin is the Rostock art historian Friedrich Eggers , who came to Vienna with Wilbrandt. In his autobiographical work From Twenty to Thirty , Wilbrandt's friend Theodor Fontane wrote that Eggers had “freely drawn from life” in his “charming story”. Wilbrandt is concerned about an undefined male-female identity:

Which therefore seek their complement - since every sex strives for its spiritual complement - both to the right and to the left, both in the man and in the woman; whose magnetic needle points soon to the north pole of masculinity, soon to the south pole of femininity. Which one ... unfortunately has to be called tragic phenomena: because they seek their complement, but they do not find it. Are you looking for the man? Only the female half of her soul seeks the man. The other half don't; she has the man in herself. Are you looking for the woman? Only this other half of her soul searches for the woman. They cannot complement each other because they are already complemented. You are married to yourself. You live with yourself in a secret marriage.

Quote

Give a person all the gifts of the earth and take away the ability of enthusiasm, and you condemn him to eternal death.

Awards and honors

Works (selection)

Letters

  • 5 letters from Adolf Wilbrandt to Dethloff Carl Hinstorff September 22, 1874 to December 23, 1875
  • 25 letters and cards from Adolf Wilbrandt to various recipients June 24, 1863 to March 11, 1910

literature

  • Constantin von Wurzbach : Wilbrandt, Adolf . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 56th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1888, pp. 102-109 ( digitized version ).
  • Victor Klemperer: Adolf Wilbrandt. A study of his works. Stuttgart u. a. 1907.
  • Eduard Scharrer-Santen: Adolf Wilbrandt as a playwright. Sachs, Munich / Leipzig 1912 (also dissertation Munich 1912).
  • Franz Horch: The Burgtheater under Laube and Wilbrandt. Österreichischer Bundesverlag, Vienna 1925.
  • Karl Jacobs: The dramatic poem of Adolf Wilbrandt in contemporary history and critical representation. Cologne, Univ., Diss., 1929.
  • Robert Wilbrandt: My father Adolf Wilbrandt. Austrian business publisher Payer, Vienna / Berlin / Zurich 1937.
  • James Steakley and Wolfram Setz: Epilogue. In: Adolf Wilbrandt, Fridolin's secret marriage. Swarm of men, Hamburg 2010. ISBN 978-3-939542-52-0 .
  • Stefan Siebert [Ed.]: Adolf Wilbrandt: a literary life between Rostock and Vienna. University Library, Rostock 2013. ISBN 978-3-86009-146-3 (= publications of the University Library Rostock , Volume 141; for the exhibition from May 27 to August 26, 2011 in the Rostock University Library , Michaeliskloster).

Web links

Commons : Adolf von Wilbrandt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Adolf von Wilbrandt  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the entry of Adolf Wilbrandt's matriculation in the Rostock matriculation portal
  2. ↑ a b Andreas Brunner , Hannes Sulzenbacher : Schwules Wien, travel guide through the Danube metropolis , Promedia, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-85371-131-6 , p. 40 f.
  3. ↑ Theodor Fontane: From twenty to thirty , F. Fontane, Berlin 1898, p. 188
  4. ↑ Klaus Müller : "But in my heart a voice spoke so loud ..." Homosexual autobiographies and medical pathographies in the 19th century. Foreword by Rüdiger Lautmann . Series: Homosexuality and Literature, 4th Verlag Rosa Winkel ( Männerschwarm ), 1991 ISBN 3921495202 (also Diss. Phil. University of Münster , 1990)
  5. ^ Fritz Reuter Literature Archive Berlin
  6. ^ Fritz Reuter Literature Archive Berlin
personal data
SURNAME Wilbrandt, Adolf von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wilbrandt, Adolf Johann Albrecht Frierich Enoch von (full name); Wilbrandt, Adolph von; Palm, Hugo (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, director of the Vienna Burgtheater
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH Rostock
DATE OF DEATH June 10, 1911
Place of death Rostock