Carl Goehring

Carl Goehring , also Karl Goehring or Carl Göhring (* before 1843 - after 1869) was a German author and editor as well as a publicist and historiographer who was particularly active in Leipzig in the middle of the 19th century . His books have been published by the Leipzig publishing houses Teubner , Dyk, Schäfer, Meißner, Minde, Naumburg, Wigand and Fleischer.

Goehring's national educational narrative style

In the middle of the 19th century Goehring continued a narrative form that was coined by the writer Joachim Heinrich Campe at the end of the 18th century. The typical Campe " enlightenment specific philanthropic - literary design form" is also found in many plants Göhring. He used this type of narrative and design as a national educational tool. The majority of his publications focused on the target group of the ' German ' youth from the middle of the 19th century .

The glorification of the German national

In Goehring's repeatedly published work Columbus. The discovery of America for Germany's youth told that is method Campe much to find. Goehring's work can be seen as a contemporary update of Campe's discovery of America . Goehring has adapted Campe's story to the style of the “ patriotic moral storytelling” and transformed it into his own version of national pedagogical story.

The Campean method becomes clear, for example, in the introduction of the father figure as a mentor , who tells his children about contemporary history in stories in a special educational discourse , partly in an instructive, partly in an entertaining manner . In Goehring's case, this perspective merged with the glorification of the German national , a tendency that was popular at the time of publication in the 1860s . Christoph Columbus was glorified as a German man by Goehring, although he was a native Italian and was on a Spanish mission. Goehring named precisely the character traits of the idealized Columbus as “genuinely German”, which made him a hero in the story . The whole thing was preceded by Goehring's idea that the German “ national character ” belonged to the whole world, since this was the ideal national educational model . With this attitude Goehring presented Christoph Columbus as a “German” character, since “everything excellent in the world is German”. The focus on German nationality and its positive understanding becomes clear in the following excerpt from Goehring's Columbus :

“So gather around me, Auguste, Cölestin, Anna, Rudolph, Bruno, and whatever your other names may be, all of you brave boys and girls from wide, beautiful Germany, and let me tell you a story! […] Come here, you German boys and girls, I want to tell you about a man! And do you know what it means, the word man? It is certainly of great importance. […] I know you too well to not believe that you would like to hear from a German man. Yes, the one I'm telling you about is also a German. Not that he was born in Germany, not that he carried out his deeds in Germany, but because he belonged to all countries and peoples at the same time, to the whole world, including Germany. Yes, and if we will consider his spiritual nature, his profundity, the insurmountable strength of his conviction, the rockiness of his will, the inexhaustibility of his perseverance, his heroism and his level-headedness, we will think that he must have been born and grown up in Germany. Because all of those character traits are genuinely German. And indeed, he stands there, the man of my story, that he seems to be the most faithful image of the most excellent heroes of our beautiful fatherland and that every German heart involuntarily chains itself to him as if it were related to his own. "

Similar to Campe's narrative , Goehring Columbus emphasized the German character throughout the narrative. Goehring also took on the special function of the narrative voice that Campe used. The father of the family as the narrator was particularly emphasized during the narration when he made comments on the events and experiences of Columbus. In a similar vein was the travels of Alexander von Humboldt in Göhring Alexander von Humboldt: Travel in the Aequinoctialländern of America says. Again the fatherly narrator invited to listen to an exciting and instructive story. Similar to Columbus, Humboldt was portrayed by Goehring as a strong, admirable man who should serve as a role model for the German youthful audience.

Cultural comparisons

Goehring often made connections between distant cultures and German culture. In Cortez he made a lot of efforts to bring the world of the Aztecs and Maya closer to his young audience by comparing their culture with cultures known to young readers. For example, he told of the conquest and destruction of the city of Tenochtitlán and compared it to Rome . In doing so, he tried to move the city and the world of the Aztecs into an area known to his young readers, which became even clearer when he compared the Aztec idolatry with the idolatry of the ancient Germans.

"Here the worship of gods seems to have been different from that in the northern countries, because the ruins contain an incredible number of free-standing idols, which suggest a forest worship service, as it was also used by the ancient Germans."

He also accuses the Spaniards , who are destructive , for the loss of Aztec images. Instead Goehring showed drawings by the artist Catherwood , for example of the well-known Mayan stele in Copan . This happened without reference to the artist, but with an expression of Goehring's own opinion, firstly with regard to the drawings and secondly with regard to the virtuosity and craft of the Maya and Aztecs.

“The Spaniards destroyed all the idols there, so we would certainly not have had any knowledge of the artistic form of these formations, had it not been for some of these strange images in the southernmost part of the Mexican Empire under the ruins of the destroyed temples and recently would have been discovered by inquisitive archaeologists. I am showing you, dear children, such an idol as it has been found in the ruins of Copan in what is now the Republic of Guatemala, in fairly good condition. In this you certainly admire no less the inventive spirit than the artistry of those Indians, whom the Spaniards regarded as raw savages, or at least treated as such. "

Publications

• Poland under Russian rule: travels and moral descriptions from the most recent times. (3 volumes). (1843). Leipzig: Fleischer, Friedrich. (Volumes 1 and 3 also published (1843) in Leipzig: Teubner)
• Warsaw: a Russian capital. (2 volumes). (1844). Leipzig: Wigand.
• The Pietist: A Religious Timeline in Sixteen Tracts / by Jean Paul. Found in his estate (1845). Grimma: -Comptoir.
• History of the Polish people from their origins to the present. (4 volumes). (1846-1847). Leipzig: Naumburg.
• History of the Polish people from their origins to the present . (4 volumes). (1847). Leipzig: Meissner. (2nd edition of the first 2 volumes in 1851)
• Schleswig-Holstein: National novel. (Volume 1 & 2, Volume 3 & 4). (1847). Leipzig: C. Berger's bookstore.
• Germany's battlefields, or the history of all the great German battles: from Hermann the Cheruscan to our time / based on the best sources. by C. Goehring. (3 volumes). (1848). Leipzig: Teubner. (2nd edition 1861; 3rd edition 1868)
• Columbus: the discovery of America; with 8 color. Steel engravings and a kte. of West Indies. (2nd Edition). (1849). Leipzig: Teubner. (3rd edition in 1859; 4th edition in 1863, 5th edition in 1872)
• Journal: World events: Encyclopedia of the present in words and pictures. (1855-56). Leipzig: Shepherd.
• History of Germany in the lifetimes of its emperors . (2 volumes). (1855). Leipzig: Shepherd.
• Ulrich von Hutten, the champion for German freedom, in his life and work for the German people and the more mature youth / presented. by C [arl] Göhring. With 7 steel engravings (after Jagemann [von] H. Winkles) (1862). Leipzig: Teubner.
• Loyola, the first Jesuit and his foundation: Roman. (4 volumes). (1864-65). Leipzig.
• Cortez: the conquest of Mexico; Continuation. from 'Columbus'; Germany's brave youth told . (1866). Leipzig: Dyk.
• Travels in the equinoctial countries of America: Alexander von Humboldt / For Germany's youth arr. by Karl Goerhring. With numerous Illustr. in woodcuts u. Stone dr. [by H. Krüger]. (1867). Leipzig: Dyk.
• The wars of Prussia against Austria from 1740 to 1866, namely the first and second Silesian, the seven-year war and the seven-day war: portrayed in a popular way in their natural context. (2 volumes). (1867). Leipzig: Minde.
• The heroes of the German war of liberation and its history: told by sources to the youth and the people. (1869). Leipzig: Teubner.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n} Sebastian Schmideler: Historical aspects of the reception of the Middle Ages in children's and youth literature . In: Bennewitz, I. & A. Schindler (eds.): Middle Ages in Children's and Young People's Books: Files from the Bamberg Conference 2010 . University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2012, p. 42-45 .
2. ^ Carl Goehring: Columbus. The discovery of America for Germany's youth told. Teubner, Leipzig 1863, p. 1 f .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Anke Birkenmaier: Versions of Montezuma. Latin America in the historical imagination of the 19th century. With the complete manuscript of Oswald Spengler's “Montezuma. A tragedy ”(1897) . deGruyter, Berlin and New York 2011, p. 24-25 .