August Mayer (poet)

Beginning of August Mayer's poem “Abschied”, 1812.

August Mayer (born October 26, 1792 in Neckarbischofsheim or Heilbronn , † November 1812 in the Battle of the Beresina ) was a German poet of the Swabian Romanticism.

The young man “richly gifted for poetry and music” studied law in Tübingen and was able to publish some poems before he lost his young life in Napoleon's Russian campaign as an “arbitrarily recruited soldier”.

Life

origin

Georg August Hartmann Mayer was born on October 26, 1792, the fourth of eight children in Neckarbischofsheim or Heilbronn . His father was the lawyer Friedrich Christoph Mayer (1762–1841). He took up a position as a consultant (legal advisor) in Neckarbischofsheim in 1785 and married Johanna Henriette Mayer, born in Stuttgart, in the same year. Hartmann (1762-1841). In 1797 the family moved to Heilbronn, 1803 to Kochendorf and 1808 back to Heilbronn.

The mother belonged to the extensive Hartmann family in Stuttgart. She was the oldest child of Johann Georg Hartmann. He and her brother August Hartmann worked in Stuttgart as high Württemberg officials. They lived with their families in Hartmann's house at Fritz-Elsas-Strasse 49 in Stuttgart, which was known as a hospitable house and often hosted prominent personalities from cultural and public life. Henriette Mayer's other brothers included the industrial pioneer Ludwig Hartmann in Heidenheim an der Brenz , the doctor and paleontologist Friedrich Hartmann, and the painter Ferdinand Hartmann , who became director of the Dresden Art Academy.

August's parents were both artistically gifted: his father is said to have had a talent for painting and drawing, his mother “was very musical” and was valued “as a good singer at church singing”. August Mayer probably inherited his parents' artistic “vein”, as did his two older brothers, the poet Karl Mayer and the painter Louis Mayer . For his siblings see also Friedrich Christoph Mayer, family .

education

Grandparents' house where August Mayer lived in Stuttgart, before 1874.

House in which August Mayer lived during his studies in Tübingen (in the middle: Hölderlinturm), 2015.

August attended the illustrious grammar school in Stuttgart until 1809 . During this time, like his brother Karl, he lived in his grandparents' house, Hartmann's house. In September 1809 he moved to the University of Tübingen to study law there. His brother Karl Mayer had also studied law there from 1803 to 1807 and made friends with poets of the later Swabian Romantic Circle, especially Ludwig Uhland and Justinus Kerner .

Uhland willingly took care of suitable accommodation for his friend's brother in advance. August's circle of friends in Tübingen included mainly Gustav Schwab , then Ernst Osiander, Carl Wilhelm Pauli from Lübeck , August Pauly from Maulbronn , August Köstlin , Karl Hochstetter and David Assing ("Assur"). The "older Tübingen Circle of Friends" with August's brother Karl Mayer, Ludwig Uhland and Justinus Kerner joined them.

Holderlin

August Mayer lived in Tübingen directly on the Neckar at Bursagasse 6 in one of the two residential wings that were attached to the later so-called Hölderlin Tower. The house, he wrote in May 1810, “is lonely on the Neckar and gives me material (especially in the current May period) for a thousand pleasant reflections. This remoteness and loneliness, which make it so worthwhile to me, and in part also the trouble of the entrance, make it less sought after and cheaper by others. ”August Mayer pardoned the mentally confused Friedrich Hölderlin , who had lived on the first floor of the tower since 1807, every now and then a visit. In January 1811 he reported to his brother Karl about Hölderlin:

“Poor Holderlin also wants to publish an almanac and fills up a lot of paper every day. Today he gave me a whole fascicle to read through, from which I want to write down a few things for you. "

August found some of Hölderlin's verses, which he passed on to his brother, to be “beautiful” or “touching”, others to be “funny”.

almanac

Title page of the almanac.

Even before August began studying in Tübingen, Uhland had come to know and appreciate some of August's poems in early 1809. He wrote to his friend Karl Mayer:

“… I thank you especially for the copied poems [by August Mayer]. They reveal not only a talent for poetry, but also a technical skill. I am also convinced that the power over language is not so much a consequence of practice as it is an expression of the power of the poetic mind. What I was happy about the sonnets was that even if your brother (August) may have given the impetus to this form of reading, they are by no means just playing around with the external form, but really with grasping the inner form of the sonnet. "

August was involved by Uhland in the preparations for the Poetic Almanac planned by Kerner, which was to become a kind of founding document of the Swabian Romanticism. In February 1811, Kerner was well advanced with the compilation of the almanac. In addition to own poems, the almanac should contain works by Ludwig Uhland, Gustav Schwab, Karl Mayer and others who mostly knew each other from Tübingen, but also by some north German poets such as August Varnhagen , Adelbert von Chamisso and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué . Five of August's poems should also be included in the almanac.

In April 1811, August, like his brother Karl and Uhland, participated in the fair copy of the handwritten collection of poems that Kerner had put together. In May he wrote to Karl: “Yesterday we and Uhland launched the almanac manuscript, wonderfully furnished with waving flags.” On the occasion, August gave a taste of his musical talent and played Uhland's setting of his poem “ The good Comrade ”. In September, August, who was barracked in Stuttgart after being drafted, was allowed to experience the appearance of the almanac before he had to go into the field.

soldier

August's grandfather Georg Hartmann died on June 9, 1811. August's parents drove to Stuttgart for the funeral. There they received the notification that August had been called up to the soldiers on September 1, 1811:

“He was among the so-called dignitary sons of students designated by King Friedrich von Württemberg , whom the king had designated as soldiers for the Russian campaign to be expected under Napoleon, and in a list presented to him on orders, it was said, with a pencil painted. What a hard blow of fate for the delicately organized, gentle and artistically gifted youth and for our whole family! "

August was assigned to the Infantry Regiment No. 2 Duke Wilhelm and barracked in the Stuttgart legion barracks at the end of Königstrasse. As an officer candidate, he was well received by his superiors. Despite all odds, he found time to play the piano. He got to know the later court conductor Konradin Kreutzer and was able to make music with some like-minded people, including Fräulein Danzi and daughter , the daughter of Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg , who played his self-composed variations "very well". At the end of September he was able to enjoy a freshly printed copy of the almanac that his brother Karl sent him. Twice, in October and at Christmas, he was given leave to visit his family in Heilbronn.

Crossing the Berezina, 1866.

On March 11th, 1812, the long march to Russia began under the supreme command of the Crown Prince, later King Wilhelm I. As long as he was traveling in Germany, August Mayer used every opportunity to disperse, he visited sights, met interesting people, could indulge in the piano here and there and attend a theater or concert. He wrote to his parents from Thuringia:

“The fine-sounding language gives the sex that is really beautiful here in this country all the more attractive. You are very lovely and well-behaved, but I do not like to get involved with the siren people. "

Little is known about the further march and possible combat missions. In any case, August Mayer had in the meantime been promoted from sergeant to lieutenant. His regiment arrived in Moscow in September with the rest of Napoleon's troops. From there he wrote the last letter that reached his parents on September 19th.

End of life

After Napoleon withdrew his strongly shrunk main army from Moscow in October, August marched with his regiment via Smolensk to the Berezina . He probably fell in the Battle of the Berezina , which took place from November 26th to 28th, 1812, maybe he froze to death or drowned.

In 1892 Rudolf Krauss wrote in the Swabian Merkur : “August Mayer did not return. How many a song is unsung, how many a melody has gone to the grave with him! His lot was already fulfilled when - June 1813 - the "German poet forest" and in it his poem "Abschied" appeared - a kind of legacy of the departing. "

August Mayer was only 20 years old, all promising hopes had vanished into nothing, his life, like that of 12,000 other Württemberg people, had senselessly fallen victim to the madness of the French emperor and the Württemberg king. The friends and family, who "did not receive even the tiresome consolation of notification of the manner in which the beloved died," were overwhelmed with grief.

In contrast to Uhland, Kerner and Schwab, the standard-bearers of the Swabian Romanticism, August Mayer (also because of his narrow oeuvre) was not granted a lasting echo. He thus shared the fate of his brother Karl, who was well known in his day but was soon forgotten.

Childhood love

Emilie Reinbeck, watercolor by her sister Mariette Zöppritz, undated.

August Mayer's cousin Emilie Hartmann (married Emilie Reinbeck) suffered from a stubborn intermittent fever since childhood . Until the 19th century, the disease, which now only occurs in the tropics, was also widespread in Germany. In the hope that a change in the air could relieve or cure her sickness, the family sent her to her aunt Henriette Mayer in Heilbronn to relax in 1811. August, who studied in Tübingen, also spent his holidays at his parents' house, where he met Emilie, with whom he had befriended in Stuttgart when he attended high school and lived in the house of their grandfather, Johann Georg Hartmann. During Emilie's stay in Heilbronn, the friendship is said to have turned into a childhood love between 16- or 17-year-old Emilie and August, who is one year older. The Stuttgart journalist Irene Ferchl writes:

“Because of her sickness, Emilie is often sent to rest, for example to the Mayer relatives in Heilbronn, whose eldest son August became her childhood sweetheart. ... In the family and in the circle of friends there was great sadness over the death of the 20-year-old and you can imagine that Emilie, if she loved him, would be deeply affected. "

In any case, Emilie cured her intermittent fever once and for all in Heilbronn:

“Then she saw unripe apples and felt such an irresistible urge to eat them that she secretly took a good number of them into her bed and feasted on the forbidden fruit to her heart's content, and behold, the fever was banished as if by magic and it was completely restored . "

In the literature and in relevant letters there is neither a confirmation nor a hint about the alleged childhood love. In his five love poems, which appeared in the Poetic Almanac in 1811, August addresses an imaginary lover, including the poem “Abschied”, which was written in 1812 before he left for Russia, but these omissions do not allow any concrete conclusions. The poem “Entzauberung”, probably written in May 1811, which he announced to his brother Karl as “a sonnet made by me in Stuttgart”, leaves the uninitiated completely perplexed:

What is missing oh! what is lacking in the precious picture?

The eye's soul is missing, the look so mild

Hardly whispered the highest bliss to me,

And now gloomily towards me.

In his letters from the front, August mentioned his cousin twice:

“I'd really like to hear a word from Stuttgart and the houses of both uncles; Dear Emilie would certainly do me this favor. ”
(Letter of April 1, 1812 to his parents)

"Dear Emilie recently delighted me with a letter that I consider valuable and dear."
(Letter of May 8, 1812 to his parents)

Perhaps, if at all, the alleged childhood love was just a youthful crush. Perhaps August and Emilie also kept their love a secret in order to protect themselves from rumors that, in their Biedermeier environment, could have damaged Emilie's reputation above all.

Poems

The lyric work of the poet, torn from life at a young age, is not very extensive. Eleven of his poems were printed, five of them during his lifetime. The Württemberg State Library in Stuttgart also keeps 23 pages with “Poems from the estate”.

After his conscription to the military on September 1, 1811, August Mayer experienced the appearance of Kerner's "Poetical Almanac for the Year 1812", which came out in September 1811 and contained five love poems from 1808 and 1809. Barracked in Stuttgart, he wrote to his parents or his brother Karl in Heilbronn on November 12, 1811: "Much is said about our almanac here (in Stuttgart)."

Soon Kerner and his co-editors were planning the next almanac, which came out in 1813 under the title “Deutscher Dichterwald” and contained August Mayer's poem “Abschied”, the melancholy song of a soldier going to war who left his beloved at home got to. Gustav Schwab sent a poem after his friend's farewell poem, also in the Dichterwald: “To August Mayer. Answer to his departure ”. On August 16, 1812, Ludwig Uhland wrote in a letter to August: “Unfortunately! This time we only have one thing from you: Farewell, which all girls here have long since written off. ”It is not known whether Uhland's letter reached the recipient. In 1867 Karl Mayer reprinted ten poems by his brother in his Uhlandbuch, including those that had already appeared in the Almanach and in the Dichterwald.

Prints

• August Mayer: [Five poems]. In: Justinus Kerner (editor): Poetischer Almanach for the year 1812. Obtained from Justinus Kerner Heidelberg: Gottlieb Braun, 1811, pdf .
• August Mayer: Farewell. In: #Kerner 1813 , pp. 91–92.
• August Mayer: The slumber. In: Rheinblüthen: Taschenbuch on the year 1825 , volume 4, Karlsruhe 1825, pages 350–351.
• August Mayer: [Ten Poems]. In: #Mayer 1867 .

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list

The table gives an overview of the printed poems and their sources.

time	poem	#Mayer 1812	#Mayer 1813	#Mayer 1825	#Mayer 1867
	Harbingers	73			112
1809, January	Comfort in memory	134			112-113
	The singer of his songs	166-167			113
1808, December	Poetry and music	181			114
1809, March	Degrees of bliss	182			114
	After-feeling of love				115
	To them				115
	Verses in the castle Woman loyalty				116
1811, May (?)	Disenchantment				179
1812	farewell		91-92		247-248
	The slumber			350-351

literature

General

• Hartmanns book [1]. Family tree. Cannstatt 1878, page 4, 2.
• Hartmanns book [2]. Continuation and addition of the family books from 1878, 1885 and 1892 . Cannstatt 1898, pp. 54-57, 20-25.
• Hartmanns book [3]. Cannstatt 1913, page 13, 4.
• Karl Mayer : Ludwig Uhland, his friends and contemporaries: Memories, Volume 1. 1807–1813. Stuttgart: Krabbe, 1867, online , pages 108-109, 112-116, 132-134, passim : 164-273.
• Adolf Rümelin: In memory of someone missing. In: Special supplement to the State Gazette for Württemberg , 1893, pages 3–17.

Resources

• Irene Ferchl : Reading wreaths and salons. Stuttgart's literary society in the 19th century. Bad Boll 2007, here pages 10–18, online .
• Karl Goedeke : Outline of the history of German poetry from the sources, Volume 3. Dresden 1881, page 345, online .
• Karl Goedeke : Outline of the history of German poetry from the sources, Volume 7: Time of the World War, 7th book, 2nd section. Dresden 1900, page 229, online .
• Friedrich Holderlin. In: Helmut Hornbogen: Tübingen poet houses. Literary stories from Swabia. A guide. Tübingen 1999, pages 79-88.
• Justinus Kerner (editor): German poet forest. By Justinus Kerner, Friedrich Baron de La Motte Fouqué, Ludwig Uhland and others. Tübingen: JF Heerbrandt'sche Buchhandlung, 1813, online .
• Karl Klüpfel : Gustav Schwab. His life and work. Leipzig 1858, pages 29, 33.
• Hertha Koenig ; Tilman Krause (editor): Emilie Reinbeck. Novel about Swabian romanticism. Bielefeld 2008.
• Rudolf Krauss : Swabian Literature History. 2. The Württemberg literature in the nineteenth century. Freiburg im Breisgau 1899, pages 22–26.
• Karl Mayer : Album Swabian Poets, Volume 3: Karl Mayer. Tubingen 1864.
• Georg Reinbeck : Outline of Life [by Emilie Reinbeck]. In: Gustav Schwab : Commemorative speech for Mrs. Emilie Reinbeck, b. Hartmann. Stuttgart 1846.
• Gustav Schwab : To August Mayer. Answer to his departure. In: #Kerner 1813 , page 259, online .

Archives

• Württemberg State Library Stuttgart
  • Cod. Poet. Et phil. 4 ° 150: August Mayer, poems from the estate (including the printed poems).
  • Cod. 2 ° 770, XIV, numbers 1, 2, 4a, 4b: Letters from Gustav Schwab to August Mayer from 1811 and 1812.

Footnotes

1. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , page 112.
2. ↑ First names are given in italics.
3. ↑ #Hartmannsbuch 2 , pages 20-25, #Hartmannsbuch 1 , page 2, #Hartmannsbuch 3 , page 4, Wikipedia article: Friedrich Christoph Mayer , August von Hartmann (Council of State) .
4. ↑ Wikipedia article: Friedrich Christoph Mayer .
5. ↑ #Hartmannsbuch 2 , page 21. - Karl Mayer wrote about her: “My equally loving and intelligent mother was well versed in singing in her younger years, so that when Göthe first came to Stuttgart (1779) she gave him some of his songs in his father's house, as well as was allowed to sing a new song "auf Werther's death" with the piano. "( #Mayer 1864 , page 3)
6. ↑ #Hartmannsbuch 2 , page 54.
7. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , pp. 132, 134.
8. ↑ General German biography .
9. ↑ August Pauly (1793-1812) was the son of a Maulbronn professor and died of nerve fever on July 12, 1812, a few months before August Mayer lost his life in Russia ( # Klüpfel 1858 , page 34).
10. ↑ #Mayer 1864 , pages 10–11, #Mayer 1867 , page 229, #Hartmannsbuch 2 , page 54, # Klüpfel 1858 , pages 29–35.
11. ↑ #Hornbogen 1999 , page 84.
12. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , pp. 175–176.
13. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , page 109.
14. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , pp. 172, 173, 178-179, 190, 196.
15. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , page 185.
16. ↑ #Letters , number 4a.
17. ↑ The legionary barracks stood on the site of today's Wilhelmsbau.
18. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , pp. 189–191.
19. ↑ # Rümelin 1893 , page 8.
20. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , page 227.
21. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , pp. 255, 269, 270.
22. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , page 272.
23. ↑ #Hartmannbuch 2 , page 57.
24. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , page 185.
25. ↑ #Reinbeck 1846 , page 13.
26. ↑ This is how Hertha Koenig sees it in her novel about Emilie Reinbeck ( #Koenig 2008 ).
27. ↑ #Ferchl 2007 , page 10.
28. ↑ #Reinbeck 1846 , pp. 13-14.
29. ↑ #Mayer 1812 .
30. ↑ #Mayer 1813 .
31. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , page 179.
32. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , page 238.
33. ↑ #Mayer 1867 , page 238.
34. ↑ #Mayer 1812 .
35. ↑ #Mayer 1813 .
36. ↑ #Kerner 1813 , page 247.
37. ↑ #Mayer 1867 .