August Bohse

August Bohse (born April 2, 1661 in Halle (Saale) ; † August 11, 1742 in Liegnitz ) was a lawyer, professor of rhetoric and as a writer of novels and letter writers - under the better known pseudonym Talander - the most important representative of the first generation of German “gallant Authors ” .

Life

Bohse's father Gottfried was assessor at the Schöppenstuhl in Halle. He sent his son to the town's high school. Before studying, Zedler's Universal Lexicon noted a trip that Bohse took with his father in a legal matter to Vienna before the Reichshofrat there.

In 1679 he enrolled in Leipzig. The subjects of the basic philosophical studies should become and remain the central ones for him. He interrupted his advanced law studies when the plague broke out in order to continue in Jena. A position as court master (private teacher) with one of Hesler's followed in a further attempt to avoid the plague. Bohse finally finished his studies in Leipzig after the epidemic ended.

From 1685 to 1688 he gave introductions to the fundamentals of law studies and letter-style seminars in Hamburg, an activity for which his publications - novels and letter holders - were the best publicity. Writing and teaching he financed himself in the same way for two more years in Berlin and Dresden and then in Halle, where his father finally called him back.

The death of his father allowed him to move to Leipzig, the city that was the most "gallant" of the places of study, in the year he returned to Halle. His rhetoric seminars were very popular and, six months later, gave him the appointment of a secretary at the Weißenfelser Hof under Johann Adolf von Sachsen-Weißenfels . Bohse's novels, mainly written in the Asian genre , were already close to opera. His work in Weißenfels was mainly the production of texts for the court opera. Since it did not necessarily require his presence, the sovereign allowed him to move to Jena. Bohse supplied the sovereign from a distance and meanwhile continued his law studies.

August Bohse was temporarily reading rhetoric and letter art at the law faculty in Erfurt before he received his doctorate. In 1700 he received his doctorate in Jena, he continued his teaching activities there before he was finally appointed professor at the Knight's Academy in Liegnitz in 1708 - the position he held until his death.

Bohse was married to Susanne Helene, the daughter of Hallens chamberlain Paul Christian Reichhelm. The marriage produced a daughter.

Literary work

While the opera texts mainly stayed in Weißenfels, his novels and letter holders made him fame in the entire area of ​​the German cities networked with the university towns of Halle, Jena and Leipzig (Ulm, Augsburg, Nuremberg in the south, Hamburg and Rostock in the north, Dresden and Breslau in the east ).

The majority of the novels appeared in the Asian genre , which only became more clearly geared towards the female bourgeois audience as it progressed. Scandalous titles that reached into politics were added - Amor at court set standards here.

The novels can be seen as Bohse's central production - novels led to gallant conduits , modern style, contemporary letters and compliments (openings for conversations) and their subjects extended to poetry and above all to opera . Several of his novels were reworked into operas, followed by operatic material or contained entire opera librettos in the text.

The course of study accompanied the letter holder and rhetoric manuals, which he published under his pseudonym, when this was already closely associated with his real name.

His translations from French were of immense influence. He edited the maxims of La Rochefoucauld and added his own. In the spring of 1700 -  Fénelon's Telemach appeared in its two volumes in 1699/1700 in the Netherlands - he submitted his translation of this novel, which was to become the classic of the modern heroic novel. Ten years later he offered the first preface to the German translation of the stories from Thousand and One Nights from the French to Galland . With each of these works, Bohse demonstrated a feeling for the development of the market and the direction that the belles lettres took as a recognized subject of education before the development of German national literature began in the 1730s .

His influence on the second wave of gallant authors that began in 1700 with Christian Friedrich Hunold was immense, but divided . They all initially chose "Greek names" as pseudonyms that were linked to his own pseudonym. However, with his pseudonym “Menantes”, Hunold already avoided the Asian genre. Novels with “local subjects” that staged the autobiographical game with the reputation of their authors more strongly became modern. In Hunold's last work, the Satyrical Novel from 1706, the students who learned their love confessions from Talander novels by heart were already mocked. True gallant heroes freely dispose of this art. Johann Leonhard Rost entered the market alias Meletaon in 1708 with specific references to Talander's novels. In Selamintes Foolish Cupid of 1713, however, Talander's style could already be criticized quite openly in its metaphorical illustration that was now too lush. A more direct, terse style based on French esprit became modern. At this point, Talander had left the market, which was becoming increasingly scandalous. His novels of the 1680s and 1690s found editions well into the first half of the 18th century without his further intervention.

Literature (selection)

• Ernst Schubert: August Bohse, called Talander. A contribution to the history of the gallant time in Germany (= Breslau contributions to the history of literature; 27). Wroclaw 1911
• Hermann Tiemann : The heroically gallant novels of August Bohse. Dissertation, University of Kiel 1932.
• Otto Heinlein: August Bohse-Talander as a novelist of the gallant time . Bochum 1939 (also dissertation, University of Greifswald 1939)
• Lieselotte Brögelmann: Studies on the narrative style in the "idealistic" novel from 1643-1733 with special consideration of August Bohse . Dissertation, University of Greifswald 1939
• Willi Flemming:  Bohse, August. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 2, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1955, ISBN 3-428-00183-4 , p. 422 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Elizabeth Brewer: The Novel of Entertainment during the Gallant Era. A Study of the Novels of August Bohse . Lang, Bern 1983, ISBN 3-261-03241-3
• Gerhard Dünnhaupt : August Bohse . In: Personal bibliographies on Baroque prints , vol. 1. Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-7772-9013-0 , pp. 712-757 (list of works and references)
• Olaf Simons: Marteau's Europe or the novel before it became literature: an examination of the German and English books on offer from 1710-1720 . Rodopi, Amsterdam 2001, ISBN 90-420-1226-9
• Florian Gelzer: Imitation, plagiarism and style. On the novel between the Baroque and the Enlightenment using the example of August Bohse's “Amazons from the Monastery” (1685/96) . In: Daphnis 1-2 (2005), pp. 255-286

Web links

Wikisource: August Bohse  - Sources and full texts

• Publications by and about August Bohse in VD 17 .
• Literature by and about August Bohse in the catalog of the German National Library
• Digitized prints by August Bohse in the catalog of the Herzog August Library
• About Bohse's Amiable European Constantine
• Works by and about Bohse in the general catalog GBV

Individual evidence

1. ^ Bose or Bohse, August. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Supplement 4, Leipzig 1754, column 276 f.