Berthold Auerbach

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Berthold Auerbach , actually Moses Baruch Auerbacher , (born February 28, 1812 in Nordstetten (now part of Horb ); died February 8, 1882 in Cannes ) was a German writer .

Berthold Auerbach, portrait with handwriting sample, mid-19th century

Life

Berthold Auerbach was born the ninth child of the dealer Jacob Auerbach and his wife Edel Frank. He attended the first Jewish elementary school in the Kingdom of Württemberg , which opened in Nordstetten in 1822 . He was to become a rabbi , following the example of his grandfather .

Auerbach's birthplace in Nordstetten

In 1825 Auerbach celebrated his bar mitzvah at the age of thirteen and was sent to the Talmud school (Beth-Hamidrash) in Hechingen in the same year . From 1827 the family's financial situation was so difficult that they could not pay any more school fees. Auerbach left Hechingen to attend the rabbinical school in Karlsruhe . Here he lived with his uncle Meier Auerbach and made a lifelong friendship with the distantly related Jacob Auerbach .

In 1830 Auerbach moved to the Obere Gymnasium in Stuttgart . There he was close to the banned student association Amicitia . When he passed the entrance exam the second time in Stuttgart, he was granted a small royal scholarship . In 1832 he began studying law at the University of Tübingen , but switched to philosophy in the next semester . In Tübingen Auerbach became a Kneip member of the banned fraternity Germania in 1832 . As political pressure grew, Auerbach applied for a passport in March 1833 to go to Munich . At that time he was already a member of the outer circle of Germania .

Berthold Auerbach

1833 enrolled him in Munich for the subject philosophy and was equal to his letter of recommendation for Schelling from. On June 23, 1834 at 5 a.m. he was arrested and placed under police supervision as a radical-liberal fraternity member on charges of subversive activities. The University of Munich forcibly enrolled him, but he was allowed to complete his studies in Heidelberg “as a mercy” .

On December 12, 1836 Auerbach was to two months imprisonment sentenced. On January 8, 1837, he began his sentence at the Hohenasperg fortress . Since almost exclusively fraternity members were imprisoned in this prison, it was popularly called the “demagogue hostel”. On March 8, 1837, he was released to Stuttgart. As a previous convict, the way to the rabbinate was closed to him and he inevitably turned to writing.

On October 3, 1838, Auerbach was admitted to the Masonic lodge Zur Aufstieg Morgenröte in Frankfurt am Main, which confirmed to him in a mourning lodge on February 26, 1882 that he had "retained unchangeable loyalty to the Brotherhood until its end".

His translation of the complete works of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza from Latin appeared as early as 1841 .

In 1843 he achieved his breakthrough with his Black Forest village stories , in which he described "an entire village from the first to the last house". The work gave the narrative genre of village history its name and influenced authors such as Honoré de Balzac , Ivan Sergejewitsch Turgenew and Leo Tolstoy , with the latter he was also in personal contact. At the end of his life he was bitter about the increasing anti-Semitism in Germany and stated: “It is a difficult task to be a German and a German writer, and a Jew at that”. Already before he wrote: "But if the Jew wants to stand freely and independently, with the whole content of a peculiar personality, next to her or even against one of her tendencies, then the traces of an only concealed hatred of Jews break out."

Berthold Auerbach, engraving by Veit Froer 1884

In 1847 Auerbach married Auguste Schreiber in Breslau . One of the groomsmen was Gustav Freytag . On March 4, 1848 son August was born. Ludwig Bamberger ironically recalled February 29, 1848, when "immediately after the Paris Revolution became known, the Heidelberg tailors tried to take their human rights back by storming their shops against the clothes dealers." During the riots, the windows in Auerbach's Heidelberg apartment were broken. The milk fever in Auerbach's wife dragged on for the month of March, between March 16 and 20 Auerbach hoped for improvement. On April 3, 1848, he took part in the last negotiations of the pre-parliament . Auguste Auerbach died the following day. Johann Jacoby visited the unfortunate widower on April 10th and Auerbach left Heidelberg on April 15th. Auerbach's inner unrest pushed him into the struggles of the external world. He left his child in Breslau and went to Vienna. “Breslau, November 1848: Since the death of my Auguste, I have not given myself a single hour to the feeling of being. My dearest wish every morning and every evening is that I should die, and if it weren't for my child, I would certainly have fallen on the Viennese barricades. ”In the turmoil of the Viennese Revolution, he was looking for a new meaning in life. Although he did not fight on the barricades, his life was in danger. He fevered with the revolutionaries and specifically defended women.

Auerbach received permission from a Reichstag deputy to go up the Stephansturm zu Messenhauser and watch the battle at Inzersdorf . Messenhauser was to give orders to attack Leopoldstadt, which he refused; because of his indecision, a delegation demanded his resignation. Auerbach interfered probably because he knew the Jewish delegates well.

Oil portrait of German von Bohn (1812–1899), a childhood friend of Auerbach, made in Stuttgart in 1880. Loan from the Schiller National Museum to the Berthold-Auerbach-Museum in Horb-Nordstetten

At the end of the same year Auerbach was again in Vienna for lectures, where he met Friedrich Hebbel and Friedrich von Bodenstedt . Through the two of them he also made the acquaintance of Nina Landesmann, the sister of the writer Heinrich Landesmann . On July 1, 1849, Auerbach married Nina Landesmann in the Moravian ice mine. He had three children with her: Ottilie, Eugen and Rudolf.

From 1849 to 1859 he lived in Dresden, where he edited the dramas Andreas Hofer and Der Wahrspruch . He also published the novel New Life , with which he set a permanent monument to the teacher and school reformer Carl Reinhardt (1797–1858), and the stories Friedrich von Schwaben and Der Brauer von Kulmbach .

In Leipzig , 1858-69, Berthold Auerbach's Deutscher Volkskalender was published annually with contributions by well-known authors, including three stories by Gottfried Keller . The editor had met the Zurich poet in Dresden in 1856 and became friends with him. In 1860, Keller sent him a novella, for which Auerbach found the happy title " The Little Flag of the Seven Upright " . Auerbach also contributed a great deal to Keller's literary fame through reviews of the collection of novels, The People of Seldwyla .

On November 10, 1859, Auerbach took part in the Schiller Festival on Schiller's 100th birthday, and in 1861 gave a lecture on Goethe and the art of storytelling for the best of the Goethe monument at the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin .

In January 1862 he was awarded the House Order of the Dukes of Coburg-Gotha and the Prussian Eagle Order 4th class. When the Franco-German War broke out in 1870 , Auerbach wrote the enthusiastic, annexation-supporting song " In Alsace above the Rhine, there lives a brother mine ". In the autumn of 1881, Auerbach, who was almost seventy years old, contracted severe pneumonia . On the recommendation of his family doctor, he went to Cannes for a longer cure . On December 13th Auerbach moved into his room in Villa Mauvarre, the private clinic of Dr. Tritschler, where he died on February 8, 1882 after a long illness.

At two o'clock in the afternoon on the day of his death he had still dictated: "Bright sunshine, the sound of the sea, tomorrow at this hour I may not breathe anymore ..." Four hours later he was dead. The next day his friend Moritz Lazarus from Nice gave a short eulogy at the coffin. Until all formalities had been dealt with, Auerbach was laid out in the Protestant church in Cannes.

On February 15, 1882, he was buried in the Jewish cemetery of his hometown Nordstetten with great sympathy among the population .

Honors

Exhibition in the Berthold-Auerbach-Museum

Today the Berthold Auerbach Museum is located in Nordstetten and was set up by the Schiller National Museum in Marbach am Neckar .

The city of Horb has been awarding the Berthold Auerbach Literature Prize in his memory since 1982 .

In Berlin, Auerbachstrasse is named in his honor. The renaming to Auerbacher Straße by the National Socialists in 1938 was reversed in 2013.

Monuments

In 1907 a bronze memorial plaque of Heinrich Jassoy was attached to Auerbach's birthplace in Nordstetten . She wore a relief medallion of Auerbach by Anton Händler after a lost original by Auerbach's friend Ernst Rietschel . The memorial plaque was destroyed by the Nazis after 1933.

In 1909 a monument to Berthold Auerbach was erected in the spa gardens in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: a stone stele with a bust of Auerbach, which was created by the Karlsruhe sculptor Hermann Volz . The bust was destroyed by the Nazis after 1933.

After the Second World War, the monument was renovated in a different form in 1951. A rectangular stone stele bears the bronze medallion relief by Berthold Auerbach, which was created by Anton Händler after a lost original by Auerbach's friend Ernst Rietschel.

  • Memorial plaque on Auerbach's birthplace in Nordstetten, 1907, destroyed after 1933.

  • Auerbach monument in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1909, destroyed after 1933.

  • Auerbach monument in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 2007.

  • Medallion relief of the monument.

Works

  • Frederick the Great. His life and work . 1834.
  • Judaism and the latest literature. Essay. 1836.
  • Spinoza. Novel. 1837.
  • The singer festival in Frankfurt am Main. In: europe. 1838, p. 481 ff.
  • Poet and merchant. Novel. 1840. (About Moses Ephraim Kuh )
  • The Brückenweg (viaduct) at Burtscheid near Aachen. In: German family book. 1843, Volume 1, p. 409.
  • Black Forest village stories . Stories. 1843-1854.
  • Oscar. Tragedy. 1844.
  • Der Gevattersmann (calendar). 1844-1848.
  • Scripture and people. Basics of popular literature. 1846.
  • Auerbach's village stories , 1848. ( digitized version )
  • Diary from Vienna. 1849. (digitized version)
  • Andree Hofer. Tragedy. 1850.
  • German evenings. Talk. 1851.
  • New life. Novel. 1852.
  • The election brother. Tragedy in 5 acts. Dresden 1855. (Only printed as a manuscript)
  • Barefoot . Narrative. 1856.
  • Folk calendar. 1858-1868.
  • The truth. Drama in 5 acts. Weber, Leipzig 1859. (Only printed as manuscript)
  • Joseph in the snow. A story. Stuttgart: Cotta 1860. (digitized version)
  • Goethe and the art of storytelling. 1861. (digitized version)
  • At the height. Novel. Cotta'schen Buchhandlung publishing house , Stuttgart 1865.
  • The country house on the Rhine. Novel. 1869.
  • Again us! Commemorative sheets on the history of these days. Cotta'schen Buchhandlung publishing house, Stuttgart 1871.
  • Good hour. Collected folk tales . 2 volumes. Hoffmann, Stuttgart 1872.
  • Walfried. Novel. 1874.
  • A thousand thoughts from the collaborator. Aphorisms. 1876.
  • Three only daughters. Novellas. 1875.
  • After thirty years. New village stories. 1876.
  • Landolin from Reutershöfen. Novel. 1878.
  • The forester. Novel. 1879.
  • Brigitta. Novel. 1880.
  • Barefoot. Cotta, Stuttgart 1870. Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf , edition from 1856 ( digitized version )

Letters

  • Letters to his friend Jakob Auerbach. A biographical monument . With a preliminary remark by Friedrich Spielhagen and the editor [Jakob Auerbach]. 2 volumes. Literary Institute, Frankfurt am Main 1884.

literature

to biography
Books on the work
  • Matthias T. Kill: Berthold Auerbach as a writer . Dissertation. University of Bonn 1924.
  • Walthari Dietz: Weltanschauung and reflection in Berthold Auerbach . Dissertation. University of Würzburg 1925.
  • Hermann Kinder : Poetry and Synthesis. Spread of a German understanding of realism in the middle of the 19th century . Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1973, ISBN 3-7610-0215-7 , pp. 116-135.
  • Moses Isaac Zwick: Berthold Auerbach's socio-political and ethical liberalism . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1933. (also dissertation. Columbia Univ. New York)
  • Peter Mettenleiter: Destruction of the local poetry. Typological study of Gotthelf , Auerbach, Ganghofer . Tübingen Association for Folklore, Tübingen 1974.
  • Peter Zimmermann: The farmer's novel. Antifeudalism - Conservatism - Fascism . Metzler, Stuttgart 1975.
  • Uwe Baur: village history. On the origin and social function of a literary genre in the Vormärz . Fink, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-7705-1544-7 . (Additional habilitation thesis, University of Graz)
  • Bernd Ballmann, Albrecht Regenbogen (Ed.): 150 Years of Black Forest Village Stories by Berthold Auerbach 1843–1993. Documentation and essays on a new narrative form in the Vormärz . Culture and Museum Association, Horb am Neckar 1994.
  • Kerstin Hagemeyer: Jewish life in Dresden. Exhibition on the occasion of the consecration of the new Dresden synagogue on November 9, 2001. Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-910005-27-6 .
  • Rosemarie Schuder : German stepmotherland. Ways to Berthold Auerbach. (= Jewish memoirs. Volume 9). Hentrich & Hentrich, Teetz 2003, ISBN 3-933471-40-0 .
  • Kerstin Sarnecki: Successfully failed. Berthold Auerbach and the limits of Jewish emancipation in the 19th century . (= Oldenburg contributions to Jewish studies. Volume 17). Universitätsverlag, Oldenburg 2006, ISBN 3-8142-2019-6 . (former title The Jewish Self-Image )
  • Hermann Bausinger (ed.): Berthold Auerbach - village stories . (= A small state library. No. 19). Klöpfer and Meyer, Tübingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-940086-70-9 .
  • Jesko Reiling (ed.): Berthold Auerbach (1812–1882). Work and effect . Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8253-6049-8 .
  • Christof Hamann, Michael Scheffel (eds.): Berthold Auerbach. An author in the context of the 19th century. Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier 2013, ISBN 978-3-86821-476-5 .
Essays on the work
  • Jürgen Hein : Berthold Auerbach. A 19th century literary educator. In: Josef Tymister u. a. (Ed.): Contributions to didactics and educational science. Festschrift for Theodor Rutt . Schöningh, Paderborn 1971, ISBN 3-506-70715-9 , pp. 189-202.
  • M. Pazi: Berthold Auerbach - the Jewish author of German village history on the 100th anniversary of his death. In: New German Issues. Volume 29, Issue 1, 1982, pp. 95-109.
  • Nancy Kaiser: Berthold Auerbach. The Dilemma of the Jewish Humanist from Vormärz to Empire. In: German Studies Review. Volume 6, 1983, p. 406.
  • HD Horch: Images of Jews in realistic narrative literature. In: Herbert A. Strauss , Christhard Hoffmann (Hrsg.): Jews and Judaism in literature . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-423-10513-5 , pp. 140–171.
  • Anita Bunyan: Folk Literature and National Identity. On Berthold Auerbach's critical writings. In: Martina Lauster (Ed.): Germany and the European Zeitgeist. Cosmopolitan Dimensions in Vormärz literature . Aisthesis-Verlag, Bielefeld 1994, ISBN 3-925670-83-1 , pp. 63-89.
  • Jonathan Skolnik: Writing Jewish History between Gutzkow and Goethe . Auerbach's Spinoza and the Birth of Modern Jewish Historical Fiction. In: Prooftexts. A Journal of Jewish Literary History. Volume 19, Issue 2, 1999, pp. 101-126.
  • Peter Brugger: Berthold Auerbach - story of a book success. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. February 22, 2012, Humanities.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume II: Artists. Winter, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8253-6813-5 , pp. 18-21.
  2. ↑ Activities
  3. ↑ General Handbook of Freemasonry. Volume 1, 1863, p. 49; Carl Bröcker: The Freemason Lodge of Germany ... 1894. (Reprint: Osnabrück 1984, p. 94)
  4. ↑ In Tolstoy's library, Auerbach's collected works took first place on the first shelf. “It is thanks to this writer that I decided to open a school for my farmers and to be interested in the enlightenment of the people.” Says Tolstoy in: Eugen Schuyler's memories
  5. ↑ Quotation from Mumm 1992: 47
  6. ↑ a b cf. Mumm 1992: 74
  7. ↑ Auerbach 1884, Letters 1: 66
  8. ^ Frank Andert (Red.): Radebeul City Lexicon . Historical manual for the Loessnitz . Published by the Radebeul City Archives. 2nd, slightly changed edition. City archive, Radebeul 2006, ISBN 3-938460-05-9 , p. 165 .
  9. ↑ Hagemeyer, p. 179 (Berthold Auerbach)
  10. ^ Stuttgart: Cotta, 1861.
  11. ^ Image of the tombstone
  12. ↑ tagesspiegel.de
  13. ↑ #Reiling 2012 , pp. 440–441.

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Auerbach, Berthold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Auerbacher, Moses Baruch (real name); Auerbacher, Moyses Baruch; Chauber, Theobald (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1812
PLACE OF BIRTH Nordstetten
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1882
Place of death Cannes