Alexander Ivanovich heart

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Alexander Heart by Sergei Lvovich Levitsky, 1860
БСЭ1. Автограф. Автографы. 8.svg

Alexander Herzen ( pseudonym Iskander, Russian Александр Иванович Герцен , scientific. Transliteration Aleksandr Ivanovich Gercen ; born March 25 . Jul / 6. April  1812 greg. In Moscow , † January 9 jul. / 21st January  1870 greg. In Paris ) was a Russian philosopher , writer and publicist .

Life

Origin and youth

Alexander hearts by Hermann Scherenberg

Hearts was the son of Henriette Wilhelmina Luise Haag from Stuttgart and the Russian nobleman Iwan Alexejewitsch Jakowlew. His parents did not enter into a legal marriage, and so their son was named Hearts because he was a child of the heart. In 1812 his family left Moscow with Alexander as a baby to start negotiations with the Tsar in Saint Petersburg on behalf of Napoleon .

Two nannies, a Russian and an Alsatian, raised hearts. He soon got access to his father's library and read mainly French literature there for hours every day. At the age of 15 he received religious instruction from an Orthodox priest, and he sometimes accompanied his mother on her visits to an Evangelical Lutheran Church .

In spite of its young age, Herzen found the Decembrist uprising in 1825 a formative experience. A short time afterwards he came into contact with NP Ogaryov , who was to be one of the closest friends of his life.

Study time

Against the will of his father, who initially wanted to put Herz into civil service , he entered the physics and mathematics faculty of Moscow University in 1829 . He soon found access to an opposition student group. Outstanding events during his student days were the outbreak of cholera in Moscow and Alexander von Humboldt's visit to Moscow University. He completed his studies in 1833 with an astronomical dissertation, for which he received a silver medal as an award.

Intellectual circles in Russia

Heart from Witberg 1836

On the night of July 20, 1834, Herzen was arrested. Exactly 9 months later he was convicted of alleged criticism of the Tsar and exiled to Vyatka . He was only allowed to return to Vladimir in 1838 and then to Moscow in 1840. Prior to this, in 1838, Herzen had secretly kidnapped his distant relative Natalia Alexandrovna Sakharjina from Moscow and eventually married.

After his exile, Herzen entered the civil service. He soon became a member of the Stankewitsch circle and got in touch with WG Belinski , MA Bakunin , TN Granowski and others. He also met again with Ogaryov. The philosophy of Hegel , on which Herzen wrote several essays in the following years, had an outstanding influence on this group .

From the Stankewitsch circle, groups of Westerners , including hearts, were formed on the one hand, and Slavophiles on the other, both of whom pushed for reforms in the Russian state.

Emigration and journalism

Herzens father died on May 6, 1846, and the intellectual circles in which Herz had moved also gradually dissolved. Hearts no longer held much in his homeland, and after he had laboriously obtained a passport, he left Russia with his family for Europe on January 21, 1847.

First he made a big trip to Europe, which he u. a. led to Königsberg , Berlin , Cologne , Brussels and finally to Paris . There he experienced the bloody suppression of an uprising in June 1848 after the February Revolution . He spent the following period in Geneva , then in Nice , where he made the acquaintance of Garibaldi . Soon afterwards, several strokes of fate overtook hearts: First his mother and his youngest son died in a shipwreck in 1851, then his wife Natalja died on May 2, 1852 of complications from pneumonia .

From August 1852, Herzen stayed in London , where he met representatives of political emigration such as Louis Blanc , Gottfried Kinkel , Lajos Kossuth and Giuseppe Mazzini . The educator of his children was Malwida von Meysenbug . Herz now became more politically active, was committed to the understanding of the democratic movements in Russia and Poland, founded the Free Russian Press in 1853 , where writings were printed in Russian without censorship. From 1855 he published the almanac Poljarnaja Zvezda ("The Polar Star") , two years later he founded the magazine Kolokol ("The Bell"), which appeared between 1857 and 1867.

Heart by Nikolai Nikolajewitsch Ge , ca.1867

Herzens journalistic influence on the Russian public diminished abruptly when he welcomed the uprising of Poland in 1863 as a signal for the uprising of the entire Slavic world. Heart withdrew from the public, bitter from personal blows of fate and political failure. After 1863 he lived mostly in Geneva or Brussels and finally died during a stay in Paris on January 21, 1870.

He is the namesake of the State Pedagogical Heart University St. Petersburg , one of the largest pedagogical universities in Russia. In addition, the Nunataks Gercena in the Antarctic bear his name.

Works

  • Who is guilty ? [Roman], (Original title: Kto vinovat? ) 1847 partly read online ; Reprint: In: Classic pages . European University Publishing House, Bremen 2010, ISBN 978-3-86741-184-4
  • Russia's social conditions, Hamburg 1854 read online
  • From the memoir of a Russian:
  • The Russian conspiracy and the uprising of December 14, 1825 - a reply to the writing of Baron Modest Andrejewitsch von Korff : The accession of Emperor Nicholas I ..., Hamburg 1858 read online
  • Erzählungen , Hamburg 1858 read online
  • My life: memoirs and reflections . 3 volumes. (Original title: Byloe i dumy ) Edited by Eberhard Reissner. Translated from Russian by Hertha von Schulz. Construction-Verlag Berlin 1962/1963.
  • The failed revolution . Memories from the 19th century (original title: Byloe i dumy translated by Herta von Schulz), Insel-Taschenbuch 1097 , Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-458-32797-5
  • Letters from the West , translated from Russian by Friedrich Kapp and Alfred Kurella, with an essay by Isaiah Berlin, Nördlingen: Greno 1989, ISBN 978-3-89190-253-0 , Die Andere Bibliothek series .

literature

  • Nadja Bontadina: Alexander Hearts and Switzerland. The relationship of the Russian publicist and aristocrat to the only republic in Europe of his time. Bern u. a .: Lang 1999. (= Slavica Helvetica; 62) ISBN 3-906762-28-9
  • Ulrike Höffler-Preißmann: The technique of the literary portrait in Alexander Herzens Byloe i dumy. Mainz: Liber-Verlag 1982. (= Mainzer Slavic publications; 2) ISBN 3-88308-035-7
  • Raisa Orlova-Kopeleva: When the bell stopped . Alexander Herzen's last year of life. Karin Kramer Verlag , Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-87956-190-7
  • Monica Partridge: Alexander Herzen collected studies. Nottingham: Astra Press 1988, ISBN 0-946134-11-1
  • Vera Piroschkow: Alexander hearts. The collapse of a utopia. Munich: Pustet 1961.
  • Ulrike Preißmann: Alexander Hearts and Italy. Mainz: Liber-Verl. 1989. (= Mainzer Slavic publications; 13) ISBN 3-88308-052-7
  • Eberhard Reissner: Alexander Hearts in Germany. Berlin: Akad.-Verl. 1963 (= publications of the Institute for Slavic Studies; 26)
  • Clemens Tonsern: Alexander Herzen as a socialist thinker in a European context. Philosophical foundations and designs beyond Russian peasant socialism. Hamburg: Dr. Kovač 2011. ISBN 978-3-8300-5772-7
  • Marie Wiedemann: Hearts and the Kolokol. Berlin: Univ. Diss. 1935.
  • Judith E. Zimmerman: Midpassage. Alexander Hearts and European revolution, 1847–1852. Pittsburgh, Pa .: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press 1989. (= Series in Russian and East European studies; 10) ISBN 0-8229-3827-8
  • Edward Hallett Carr: Romantics of the Revolution. A 19th century Russian family novel ISBN 3-8218-4542-2
  • Malwida von Meysenbug : Memoirs of an Idealist . Published by Renate Wiggershaus, Ulrike Helmer Verlag, Königstein / Taunus, 1998, ISBN 3-89741-007-9 .

Web links

Wikisource: Alexander Iwanowitsch Herzen  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Alexander Hearts  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Hearts, Alexander Ivanovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Герцен, Александр Иванович (Russian); Iskander (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian philosopher, writer, publicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1812
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1870
Place of death Paris