Alfred Rochat

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alfred Rochat (born April 17, 1833 in Vevey , † March 13, 1910 in Bex ) was a Swiss Romance philologist . He became known through his friendship with Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and through his collaboration on the Elberfeld Bible .

Life

Rochat was the son of the free church pastor Charles Rochat (1791 / 92–1838) and his English-born wife Ann Eliza nee. Dorville († 1837). Already at the age of five orphans, he spent his school days in Tübingen , where he came into contact with the earliest beginnings of the German Brethren movement (he lived in the same house as Peter Nippel, tutor of the Graffenried family from 1848–1851 and founder of the Tübingen Brethren). 1853 Rochat began in Zurich , a philology studies , which he in 1855 with the promotion graduated. From 1856 to 1872 he worked as a private lecturer in French language and literature at the University of Zurich ; His research focus was on the literature of the Middle Ages and on Romance dialects such as Provençal and Old Ladin .

At the end of the 1850s Rochat met the aspiring poet Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and became friends with him. Together they began to translate Theodor Mommsen's Roman history into French, but this failed because of difficulties with the publisher Hachette in Paris . Meyer frequented Rochat's house until the early 1860s and discussed his poetic plans with him; the publication of the twenty ballads by a Swiss (1864) took place u. a. at Rochat's persuasion. Rochat introduced Meyer, who had turned to the Christian faith again after a skeptical phase of several years, with the Zurich Brethren Congregation and other free church groups.

In 1872 Rochat gave up his position as a lecturer (on which he was not financially dependent) and retired into private life. He moved to Stuttgart and rejoined the Brethren Church there. At the end of the 1870s he met Rudolf Brockhaus , who was doing his military service in Stuttgart. The Elberfeld Bible was published by Brockhaus' father Carl's publishing house in 1871 , and Rochat offered him the opportunity to take part in the necessary revision of the Old Testament ( Emil Dönges took over the New Testament , while Rudolf Brockhaus himself worked on both wills). The “carefully checked” second complete edition of the Elberfeld Bible appeared in 1891; further editions followed in 1898, 1901 and 1905.

Rochat's friendship with Conrad Ferdinand Meyer cooled down during this time, as their interests had diverged too far. They still sent each other their publications - Meyer used the Altladinische Gedicht in Oberengadin dialect edited by Rochat (1874) as the source for his novel Jürg Jenatsch (1876), Rochat made Meyer a suggestion to correct the content of his novella Der Heilige in 1880 - but Meyer had no understanding of Rochat's more moral than aesthetic approach to literature; In a letter to his sister Betsy on April 20, 1880, he counted Rochat among the “aesthetically uneducated” whose judgments were “downright hair-raising”.

After Meyer's death in 1898, his biographer Adolf Frey also asked Rochat for memories of the poet. Rochat sent him some information by letter on January 6, 1899, which Frey adopted almost verbatim in his biography.

Publications

Books

  • About a previously unknown Percheval li Galois. A literary-historical treatise . Dissertation Zurich 1855
  • Three Swiss poets of the 13th century . Heidelberg 1856.
  • Bertran de Born . Étude sur un poète du douzième siècle . Vevey 1859.
  • An old Ladin poem in the Upper Engadine dialect . Zurich 1874.

Essays

  • "About the source of the German Alexanderlied ". In: Germania 1 (1856), pp. 273-290.
  • " Wolfram von Eschenbach and Chrestiens de Troyes ". In: Germania 3 (1858), pp. 81-120.
  • "The German Parzival , the Conte del Graal and Chrestien's Continuers". In: Germania 4 (1859), pp. 414-420.
  • "Étude sur le vers décasyllabe dans la poésie française au moyen âge". In: Yearbook for Romance and English literatures 11 (1869), pp. 65–93.

Sources and literature

  • Adolf Frey: Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. His life and his works. Cotta, Stuttgart 1900. pp. 134-136.
  • Adolf Frey (Ed.): Letters from Conrad Ferdinand Meyers. Along with his reviews and essays. Haessel , Leipzig 1908. Vol. 2, p. 95.
  • Ernst Eylenstein: “Carl Brockhaus. A contribution to the history of the development of darbysm in Germany ”. In: Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 56, NF 9 (1927), pp. 275-312, here 287, 292f.
  • The University of Zurich 1833–1933 and its predecessors. Festschrift for the centenary. Published by the education rate of the Canton of Zurich. Edited by Ernst Gagliardi, Hans Nabholz and Jean Strohl. Verlag der Erziehungsdirektion, Zurich 1938. P. 491, 719, 987.
  • Maria Nils: Betsy, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's sister. Huber, Frauenfeld / Leipzig 1943. pp. 98, 100.
  • David A. Jackson: Conrad Ferdinand Meyer with self-testimonies and photo documents. rowohlt's monographs 238. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1975. pp. 50, 86.
  • Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: Complete Works. Historical-critical edition. Provided by Hans Zeller and Alfred Zäch. Benteli, Bern 1958–1996. Vol. 6, pp. 437, 459; Vol. 13, p. 291; Vol. 15, pp. 771f.
  • CF Meyer's correspondence. Historical-critical edition. Edited by Hans Zeller. Vol. 3: Conrad Ferdinand Meyer - Friedrich von Wyß and Georg von Wyß. Letters 1855 to 1897. Benteli, Bern 2004. p. 307.

Web links