August Röckel

August Röckel, anonymous photography

Karl August Röckel (born December 1, 1814 in Graz , † June 18, 1876 in Budapest ) was a German conductor and composer . He was the son of Joseph August Röckel and the nephew of Elisabeth Röckel .

Life

Röckel's father Joseph August Röckel was a tenor, choirmaster and theater entrepreneur who sang Florestan in the world premiere of the 2nd version of Fidelio (1806). With him he got to know the theater life in Vienna, Paris and London at an early age and on one of these trips he was an eyewitness to the July Revolution of 1830 .

After completing his musical training under his uncle Johann Nepomuk Hummel , he was Kapellmeister at the Weimar Court Theater from 1839 to 1842 . Here he also composed his opera Farinelli . After that he was briefly music director in Bamberg and came to Dresden in 1843, where he also became music director at the court theater under Richard Wagner . Under the influence of Wagner's music, he decided not to perform his own opera, which he had sent to Dresden. A close friendship developed with Wagner, especially during the phase of the Dresden May uprising .

Röckel was a passionate republican , made friends with Michail Bakunin , among others , and published the people's papers in Dresden as the “mouthpiece” for the republicans, in which Wagner also placed articles, calling for the revolution . After the failed uprising in Dresden, Röckel was captured together with Bakunin and sentenced to death, while Wagner was able to escape to Zurich . The death sentences were later commuted to prison terms. While Bakunin was extradited to Austria and Russia after a year in prison at Königstein Fortress , Röckel had to serve a thirteen-year prison sentence at Königstein Fortress and in Waldheim Prison and was only released in January 1862, the last "May prisoner" to be released.

His wife Caroline and their children lived with his aunt Elisabeth Hummel in Weimar during August Röckel's imprisonment . On May 31, 1849, Franz Liszt held a benefit concert with the court orchestra in favor of Caroline Röckel, which raised a total of 120 Reichstaler.

During this time, Röckel himself received many letters from Wagner in which Wagner made informative statements about the Ring of the Nibelung , which, as background information, illustrate the revolutionary and socially critical character of Wagner's main work. In addition, Röckel wrote the book of Saxony's uprising and the prison in Waldheim while he was in prison . In 1862 both met again in Wiesbaden-Biebrich , where Wagner stayed for about a year to compose Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg .

Röckel left Saxony in 1862, then worked only as a writer and editor, and lived in Frankfurt am Main from 1863. In 1866 he moved to Munich, then later to Vienna. In 1872 he suffered a stroke from which he did not recover. He finally died after a long illness in 1876 with his son in Budapest.

One street is named after him in the villa quarter of the Kleinzschachwitz district of Dresden and in the Graupa district of Pirna .

family

Röckel married on December 1, 1840 in Weimar Caroline Henriette Charlotte Lortzing (actually Elstermann, born June 26, 1809, † June 5, 1871), an adopted daughter of Friedrich Lortzing, the uncle of Albert Lortzing . The couple had three children:

• The daughter Louisabeth Röckel , who became a successful actress.
• The son Eduard Röckel (born March 22, 1843).
• The daughter Caroline Doris Wilhelmine Röckel (born March 18, 1844), at whose baptism Richard Wagner took over the sponsorship.

Richard Wagner's ring letter

On January 25, 1854, Richard Wagner wrote one of his most important letters to the prisoner August Röckel from his exile in Zurich while he was working on his main work The Ring of the Nibelung . In it he criticized the general social conditions and the powerlessness of the individual, and came to the conclusion that one can only open one's eyes to humanity with the help of art :

“[...] and the work of art that I had to design with this in mind is my Nibelungen poem. For me my poem only has the following meaning: [...] We have to learn to die, and to die, in the fullest sense of the word. The fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness, and it is only created where love itself already pales. How did it come about that this highest blessing of all living disappeared from human race so far that it finally invented everything it did, established and founded, only out of fear of the end? My poem shows it. It shows nature in its undistorted truth with all its existing opposites, which in their infinitely manifold encounters also contain what is mutually repulsive. But not that Alberich was repelled by the Rhine daughters - which was quite natural for them - is the decisive source of the disaster. Alberich and his ring could not harm the gods if they were not already susceptible to calamity.

Now where does the seed of this calamity lie? See the first scene between Wotan and Fricka - which finally leads to the scene in Act 2 of The Valkyrie . The firm bond that binds both, arises from the involuntary error of love to extend beyond the necessary change, to guarantee each other, this confrontation with the eternally new and changeable of the world of appearances - brings both connected to the mutual agony of lovelessness. The progression of the whole poem shows the necessity to recognize the change, the manifold, the multiplicity, the eternal novelty of reality and life and to give way to it. Wotan soars to the tragic height of wanting his downfall. This is all we have to learn from human history: to want what is necessary and to do it ourselves. The work of creation of this highest, self-destructive will is the fearless, ever loving human being finally won: Siegfried . - That's all. -

Richard Wagner, around 1860

The power that causes harm, the real poison of love, condenses closer to closer, in the gold stolen and misused from nature, the Nibelung ring: the curse on it is no sooner released than until it is returned to nature, the gold in the Rhine is sunk back. Wotan only learns this at the very end, from the final goal of his tragic career: the power-hungry man overlooked most of what Loge repeated and touchingly pointed out to him at the beginning. At first he only learned - from Fafner's deed - to recognize the power of the curse; Only when the ring had to ruin Siegfried too did he understand that only this restitution of what was stolen would wipe out the calamity, and therefore linked the condition of his own desired destruction to this eradication of an ancient injustice. Experience is everything. Even Siegfried alone (the man alone) is not the perfect “person”. He is only half, only with Brünnhilde does he become a savior; not one can do everything; Much is needed, and the suffering, self-sacrificing woman finally becomes the true, knowing redeemer: Because love is actually "the eternal feminine" itself. - So much for the most general and greatest features. "

In the further course of the long letter, Wagner gives further interpretative aids, especially the relationships between Wotan - Siegfried - Brünnhilde. In conclusion, he explains how important the interaction of text and music in the form of the " leitmotifs " is for him:

“How much, with the whole essence of my poetic intention, only becomes clear through music, I have now seen again. I can no longer look at the musicless poem. In time I think I will be able to tell you about the composition. For now only so much that it has become a tightly intertwined unit: the orchestra hardly brings any beat that has not been developed from previous motifs. "

Works (selection)

• Two songs with accompaniment of Piano Forte on the name day of his beloved aunt, Elisabeth Hummel , composed by A. Röckel , Weimar, November 19, 1834 (Düsseldorf, Goethe Museum, KM 1130)
• Nine piano pieces
• My Germany, what more do you want! for solo and choir, Leipzig: Matthes, 1848
• The organization of the people's armament in Germany, with special reference to Saxony. A memorandum to the German National Assembly in Frankfurt and to all German governments , Dresden: Adler and Dietze, 1848 ( digitized version )
• Saxony's uprising and the Waldheim prison , 2nd edition, Frankfurt am Main: Edelmann, 1865 ( digitized version )

literature

• Letters to August Röckel by Richard Wagner , ed. from La Mara , Leipzig: Breitkopf u. Härtel, 1894
• Hubert Ermisch , From the youth of Dresden music director August Röckel , in: Deutsche Rundschau , vol. 33 (1907), pp. 229–249 ( digitized version )
• Hugo Riemann , Musiklexikon , 8th edition, Berlin-Leipzig: Max Hesses Verlag 1916, p. 936
• Jörg Heyne, Karl August Röckel (1814–1876) - music director and revolutionary. A contribution to the history of Dresden music in the 19th century , Diss., Halle / Saale, 1978
• Jörg Heyne, The Richard Wagner Museum in Graupa near Dresden , Dresden 1982
• Jörg Heyne, Richard Wagner and Karl August Röckel in ideological and artistic debate under the conditions of petty-bourgeois democracy in the post-revolutionary period (1849 to 1876) , Halle-Wittenberg, Univ., Diss. B, 1985
• Jörg Heyne, Karl August Röckel - music director and revolutionary from 1848/49 , in: The Dresden May Uprising of 1849 , ed. from the Dresden History Association (= Dresdner Hefte , Volume 13), Dresden 1995, pp. 77-83
• Karl-Heinz Probst, With Richard Wagner on you and you , in: Mittelbayerische Zeitung , August 28, 2013
• Friedemann Schreiter, August Röckel , in: ders., Waldheim prison. Stories, people and processes from three centuries , Berlin: Christoph Links 2014, pp. 62–68 ( digitized version )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cf. Röckel's remark in his autobiographical sketch: "Linchen [Caroline] lives with my aunt"; Original in Dresden, Sächsisches Staatsarchiv, A. Röckel estate, No. 4
2. ↑ Richard Wagner, All Letters , Volume 6: Letters January 1854 to February 1855 , ed. by Hans-Joachim Bauer and Johannes Forner, Leipzig 1986
3. ↑ Ibid

Web links

• Literature by and about August Röckel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about August Röckel  in the German Digital Library
• August Röckel's estate in the main state archive in Dresden
• Digital Library, Berlin: Richard Wagner; Works, writings and letters