August Thieme (poet)

Gotthard Christian August Thieme (born February 26, 1780 in Allstedt ; † June 13, 1860 there ) was a German poet.

Life

He came from the Ernestine office of Allstedt and belonged to the Weimar circle of poets and initially succeeded in Russia and Finland as a poet, dramatist and essayist, before retiring in his hometown of Allstedt, as one of the “silent ones in the country”, he produced an extensive lyric work. Regardless of the prevailing idyllic tone of his late poetry, Thieme, who was certified by a reviewer in 1808 as “really old-classical solidity”, was also open to formal experiments; for example in the poem Der Dampfer (1847).

Thieme was born as the third son of the deacon Gottfried Thieme in Allstedt. After attending the rectorate school in Allstedt and the monastery school Roßleben , he studied philosophy and theology from 1798 to 1801 at the University of Halle and in Jena , where he was also a member of the Latin Society. On Herder's advice , in 1801 he went as a private tutor to the von Daehnschen estates near Friedrichsham in Finland, was a senior teacher at the Katharinenschule in Petersburg from 1803 to 1804 and there married his cousin Luise Wahl. From 1805 to 1811 he was appointed by the University of Dorpat as school inspector of the Finnish governorate for Wiborg and Kexholm. In 1811, due to his mother's illness, he and his family returned to Thuringia , where he initially took over the diaconate of Lobeda for a short time and later (1813) that of Ilmenau . In 1817 he was appointed a licentiate in theology by the University of Jena . In 1822, when Thieme - after he had given to understand in his sermons that he was "called to preach for the people" and not "for the dignitaries" - should be transferred for "improper" behavior against the Weimar Consistory and therefore decided to give up the pastor's profession in order to devote himself entirely to the writing profession, he received a call as a deacon in his native town of Allstedt , which he followed. After the death of his wife Luise (1843) he married (1845) his student Julie von Broizem. He died there on the night of June 12th to 13th, 1860.

Services

Thieme experienced his "heyday" in his St. Petersburg years, where he and Schiller's brother-in-law, Baron Wilhelm von Wolzüge , who was then the Duke of Weimar ambassador in St. Petersburg, the circumnavigator Adam Johann von Krusenstern and the astronomer Friedrich Theodor von Schubert had a literary and formed scientific circles.

Other visitors to these evenings included a. Heinrich Friedrich von Storch, who died in 1835 as Vice President of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences , and the poets Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay , Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger and August von Kotzebue . Thieme also had a lively correspondence with these and other great intellectuals of his time.

At that time Thieme was one of the outstanding employees of the magazine Ruthenia published by the “German poets in the north” ; he also wrote Finnish grammar and school pedagogical programs; He also dealt dramatically with several subjects from Russian history . One of these plays, Peter the First at Pultava , was performed at the German theater in Petersburg, but soon afterwards banned and confiscated. An anonymous reviewer wrote about his 600 verse poem Finland (1808) in the October issue of Ruthenia : “If the author, who, by the way, has already shown himself most gloriously in these pages, would still be quite unknown; through this only work he would herald himself as a new genius of poetry and eloquence. The flight of his imagination soars into Finland's climes with a truly ingenious swing; always pondering and painting, seizing everything with the strongest feelings that a poetic spirit is only able to grasp and depict in a poetry painting landscape. Like a forest stream, now storming, and soon again flowing pleasantly, pours into it; so flows the stream of his speech. We think the author deserves not only respect and admiration, but also the crown because he is the first to show how Finland could also be sung poetically and sublime. "

In the same year Thieme tried in an essay on the mythology of the ancient Finns to “get an overview of the whole from the great chaos of the runes” in the hope that “a young Ovid would take over the individual to a beautiful whole unite and warm up these Nordic late blooms with southern imagination ”- a program that Elias Lönnrot carried out in 1835 with his compilation of the Finnish national epic Kalevala .

After his return to Germany, Thieme became friends with the Weimar Legion Council and satirist Johannes Daniel Falk , who was only prevented by his death from the publication of Thieme’s poems, which he had planned as early as 1819. He also had contact with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , who used to visit Bergrat Johann Karl Wilhelm Voigt , who was also a friend of Thieme, often in Ilmenau. On May 8, 1822, Weimar Chancellor Friedrich von Müller mentions a conversation with Goethe "about religious subjects, prompted by Thiemen's history".

During his middle and old age he devoted himself - at times in conversation with Lorenz Oken  - to the study of the natural sciences and found, as Alfred von Wolhaben writes in his foreword to the 2nd edition of the poems (Naumburg 1855), “in an idyllic and blissful Family life full of quiet poetic activity, only known to his next acquaintance, a substitute for the more brilliant career he had completed in Russia. ”But“ the poet's mastery in the lyric field ”was by no means missed by Thiemes' contemporaries. Karl Müller recognized them accordingly in the Halleschen Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung in 1849 in his review of the 1st edition of the poems (Berlin 1848) and interpreted Thiemes restraint as a poetic program: “He [is] a poet for the huts in the full sense of the word , not for the palace like Göthe. We do not at all know how to compare him with other poets; but each of these three poets stands in the highest degree independently, each has a preference over the other: Göthe possesses the plasticity of the idea, Schiller the mastery of form, Thieme the immediacy, over which, like over the green nature, an inexpressible peace hovers . "

Thieme himself formulates his poetic-political-pedagogical credo in a letter to Alfred v. Wolzug from January 17, 1848: “I don't speak dithyrambic, not libertine, not church-colored, not crockery, not à la Herwegh, not à la Lichnowsky, I don't paint the devil on the wall through Blutigmund, I don't tell about epilepsy in Madrid and Naples - I am trying to fill the enormous gap between the intelligences; I practice the teaching of the equations and, where possible, make a cheerful poem out of the whole cursed politics! "

Works

science

• Grammar of the Finnish language , unpublished, probably Wiborg 1804
• "About the residence of the old Finns", in: Ruthenia 1807, Vol. 2, May, pp. 34–40
• "Mythologie der alten Finnnen", in: Ruthenia 1808, Vol. 1, March, pp. 230-232, April, pp. 257-271
• "Finnish Proverbs", in: Ruthenia 1810, Vol. 1, February, pp. 85-94
• "The derivation of the Saima lake", in: Ruthenia 1810, Vol. 1, March, pp. 171-177
• School programs

Essays

• Addition to the Wiburg school program: Finland , St. Petersburg 1808. [Facsimile in: August Thieme: Finland , Aue Foundation, Helsinki 2012]
• Essays in Ruthenia (1807, Vol. 3, November, pp. 209-218: "Blätter aus Meine Schreibafel"; 1810, Vol. 2, Mai, pp. 19–31: "Blätter aus Meine Schreibafel"; 1811, Vol. 1, March, pp. 214–223: "Two letters about satyrs")
• To Doctor August Wilhelm Tappe and Fraulein Henriette von Dannenberg in Wiborg at their wedding [...] , St. Petersburg 1807
• "When the actor G. played Macbeth in St. Petersburg in 1809 [...]", in: Taschenbuch für Theater und Theater Freunde , St. Petersburg 1814, pp. 200–203
• "To Friedrich Albert Gebhard, when he played Macbeth and the squire in quick succession at the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg", 1809, in: Esthonia , April 1, 1829, No. 23, pp. 182-183
• Essays in Roehr's preacher's library
• Articles in the critical journal von Alt , Hamburg
• Three sermons and two from the Ilmenau Church , Ilmenau 1822
• The irony of the theological catheter , Altenburg 1830

Dramas

• Rurik one-act drama (in: Ruthenia 1807, Vol. 3, December issue, pp. 255–280)
• Russia's peace celebration , Petersburg (in: Ruthenia 1807, Vol. 2, August-Heft, pp. 257-271)
• Peter the First at Pultawa , Petersburg (in: Ruthenia 1808, Vol. 1, January issue, pp. 1–33; February issue, pp. 88–106)

Poems

• Finland . On the occasion of the public examination of the district schools in Wiburg and Kexholm in Jul. 1808, Saint Petersburg undated [1808], 23 p. [Facsimile in August Thieme, Finland , Aue Foundation, Helsinki 2012]
• Gedichte, in Ruthenia (1807, Vol. 2, September, pp. 1–2; 1808, Vol. 1, June, pp. 81–83; 1809, Vol. 3 September, pp. 1–4; October, p. 79–81; 1810, Vol. 1, April, pp. 249–263)
• Poems, in Nordischer Almanach for 1809 , or: Nordisches Taschenbuch für 1809 (Ed. Friedrich Bernhard Albers), Riga 1809, pp. 135–137, 141–142, 145–149, 159–162, 165–166, 175 -176, 182-183, 185-188
• Poems, in Vega. A poetic paperback for the north (edited by Ulrich von Schlippenbach), Mitau 1809, pp. 42–43, 92–93, 100–104, 115–116, 122, 125–126
• Waldsträuße , Weimar 1819 [this first collection of Thiemes poems was not published because of the death of the editor, Johannes Falk]
• Poems , foreword by Alfred von Woliehen, Berlin 1848 [also contains the "Preface to the Waldsträußer by Dr. August Thieme" by Johannes Falk]
• New poems , Merseburg 1850
• Poems , edited by Alfred von Wolhaben, Naumburg (Saale) 1855

literature

• Ludwig Freiherr von Wolhaben, Memoirs, Otto Wiegand, Leipzig 1851, page 306 and 307
• Alfred Freiherr von Wolhaben, foreword to: "Poems" by August Thieme, 2nd edition, Louis Garcke, Naumburg 1855.
• Johannes Falk, Preface [1818] to: "Waldsträuße" by August Thieme, Merseburg 1849.
• Album of the students at Kloster-Roßleben since May 17, 1786, Fromman, Jena 1836, page 11 (No. 93).
• Johann Wolfgang Goethe, commemorative edition: Goethe's Conversations, Part 2, Zurich and Stuttgart, 2nd edition 1966, p. 194.
• The learned Teutschland, or lexicon of the now living German writers. By Georg Christoph Hamberger and Johann Georg Meusel, 16 vol., Lemgo 1812, p. 16: " THIEME (August) M. der Phil. School inspector and director of the school in Wiburg and Kexholm in Finland: born in Niederröblingen in .. . §§. Should be well known through writings. Qu. By which? - Finland; a program. St. Petersburg 1808. 4. Addition to the Wiburg school program: Finland. Ibid. ... 8. "
• Ruthenia, or German monthly journal in Russia (formerly Sankt Petersburg monthly for entertainment and instruction), 14 vols., Riga 1807-1811 [Thiemes contributions in the copy of the Bavarian State Library in Munich under the shelfmarks Per. 176 t-1807, -1808, - 1809, -1810, -1811].
• Anonymous, "Comments on a rural poem by Thieme, titled 'Finland'", in: Ruthenia , 1808, Vol. 3, October, pp. 149–160.
• L. Hausius, Pastor Dr. August Thieme. The poet von Allstedt, in: Heimat-Jahrbuch fd Reg.-Bez. Merseburg 3 (1928), pp. 93f.
• Ewald Rudolf Stier, The Words of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 3. Transl. from the second German edition, Philadelphia etc. 1859, p. 92, note 1 [reference to "August Thieme's Ilmenauer Sermons, p. 35"]. German: Ewald Rudolf Stier, Die Reden des Herr Jesu, 7 vols., 2nd A., Barmen 1853.
• Critical Preacher Library, ed. by Johann Friedrich Roehr, Neustadt ad Orla 1836ff.
• Karl Müller, review of: August Thieme, Gedichte 1849, in: Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, issue 260, November 1849 (part 1); Issue 261, November 1849 (resolution).
• NN, German poets in the north; from the papers of a traveler, in: Blätter für literary entertainment, Jhrg. 1830 (December 3), No. 337, Leipzig. [The review - mentioned by Karl Müller and cited as follows - refers to Johann Gottfried Seumes' report, published in 1806 under the title Mein Sommer 1805 , about his trip to the north, on which he also Ludwig Heinrich v. Nicolay (1737–1820) visited Monrepos near Vyborg, who drew his attention to August Thieme "as an excellent poet talent", but remarked that "this genius poet is also completely lost". In the text edition (e.g. Reclam, Leipzig 1987, p. 105) of Seumes Mein Sommer 1805 this reference to Thieme is missing!].
• Ingrid Bigler-Marschall, article "Thieme, (Gottlob Karl) August", in: Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon. Third, completely revised edition of the Biographical-Bibliographical Handbook founded by Wilhelm Kosch, Volume 22, Zurich and Munich 2002, Spp. 326-327.
• Oskar Thieme, August Thieme and his clash with the Weimar church regiment around 1822. Based on files and family papers , in: Herbergen der Christenheit. Yearbook of German Church History, Berlin 1959, p. 128ff.
• Wulf Kirsten, Burned Poems [about August Thieme], in: "The moment takes what years give". The reconstruction of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library's book collection. On behalf of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar / Duchess Anna Amalia Library ed. by Claudia Kleinbub, Katja Lorenz and Johannes Mange, Göttingen 2007, pp. 111–114. ISBN 978-3-525-20851-9 .
• Robert Schweitzer (Ed.), Two Hundred Years of German Enthusiasm for Finland. On the development of the German image of Finland since August Thiemes "Finland" -Poem from 1808, (series of publications of the Finland Institute, vol. 11), Berlin 2010. ISBN 978-3-8305-1746-7 .
• Wulf Kirsten, Unjustifiably forgotten - August Thieme: "The poor Oebster", Thüringer Allgemeine (Thuringian Anthology), June 27, 2015.

Web links

• August Thieme website , including texts by August Thieme