Carl Ludwig Fernow

Karl Ludwig Fernow, drawing by Gerhard von Kügelgen 1802

Carl Ludwig Fernow (born November 19, 1763 in Blumenhagen , † December 4, 1808 in Weimar ) was a German art theorist , Romanist and librarian in Weimar.

Life

Fernow was the youngest son of Gutsknecht Christoph Fernow († 1794) and his wife Dorothea Agnes Bentz († 1771). After an apprenticeship as a pharmacist in Anklam , he began to work in the council pharmacy in Lübeck . Here he met the painter Asmus Carstens , who supported Fernows artistic inclinations. In Ratzeburg , where he taught Ludwig Nauwerck , and Ludwigslust , Fernow made his living with drawing lessons and portraiture, but he also wrote poems and short texts for the theater. He came to Jena and Weimar and heard the lectures of the philosopher Carl Leonhard Reinhold , who decisively supported Fernow and contributed to the fact that he could accompany the writer Jens Immanuel Baggesen on a trip to Switzerland and Italy. A change in the route led to close contacts with the Klagenfurt Circle around Franz Paul von Herbert and Johann Benjamin Erhard , and they even traveled to Northern Italy together at the beginning of 1794. Fernow went to Rome at the end of 1794, where he founded a reading society for the German artists and art scholars working in Rome as early as 1795, who met here in large numbers, and subsequently came into contact with Friedrich Weinbrenner , Johann Gottfried Seume and Wilhelm, among others by Humboldt . Fernow stayed in Italy , especially in Rome, from 1794 to the summer of 1803 , and during this period he supplied the then leading cultural magazine, the Neue Teutsche Merkur , with numerous, highly regarded articles on the history of art and the history of literature. In the period of the Repubblica Romana 1798–1799 he also reported anonymously in the Neusten Weltkunde published by Ernst Ludwig Posselt , the forerunner of the later Allgemeine Zeitung , from revolutionary Rome. In Rome he also met his partner Maria Theresa Fini, with whom he had two sons and who accompanied him to Jena and Weimar in 1803. She died in September 1808.

Memorial plaque on the Jacobskirchhof Weimar

In 1803 Fernow became professor in Jena through the mediation of Karl August Böttiger, where he arrived in September. In 1804 he succeeded Jagemann as librarian to the mother of the ruling Duke of Weimar, Duchess Anna Amalia. So he came into constant contact with Goethe , Schiller and Wieland .

As an art theorist, Fernow had a great ability to represent. In a letter to Goethe , Friedrich Schiller played off Fernow and Hegel, who was superior to him in methodology, against one another: “Try to bring Hegel and Fernow closer together, I think it should be possible to help one through the other. In dealing with Fernow, Hegel has to think of a teaching method to convey his idealism to him, and Fernow has to get out of his flatness. " But it was precisely at this point in time, shortly after his return from Italy, that Fernow came into closer contact with the so-called "Weimar Art Friends", i.e. Goethe and Johann Heinrich Meyer , who recognized his precise knowledge of the history of art and literature in Italy and used it for joint scientific and literary projects wanted to. As his letters clearly show, Fernow, for example, had been planning a handbook of aesthetics since 1795 and, as a detailed table of contents from February 1799 shows, began to work on it. He brought this and many other projects with him to Weimar. Carl Ludwig Fernow wrote about 2000 Italian books in today's Duchess Anna Amalia Library , which he imported from Rome to Weimar in 1803.

In Weimar, in addition to dealing with prominent contemporaries, a close friendship developed with Johanna Schopenhauer , the mother of the young Arthur Schopenhauer who was encouraged to study by Fernow . Fernow regularly visited their sociable circle in the house of Court Councilor Ludecus on Theaterplatz. He published his Italian Language Teaching for Germans (1804) and a handsome series of editions by Italian classical authors (Dante, Petrarca, Tasso, Ariosto). In a three-volume collection of essays, Roman Studies (1806/08), he brought together his most important essays and studies, in revised form, on topics such as artistic beauty, landscape painting or the dialects of Italian and improvisers.

Fernow's biography Life of the artist Asmus Jacob Carstens , a contribution to the history of art of the eighteenth century (1806) , was lively welcomed . In it Fernow emphasizes the self-determination of the artistic creative process. It is necessary for the artist to invent new characters and through them expand the sphere of the ideal of art. His critical study of the sculptor Antonio Canova , who dominated the Roman art scene at the time , which appeared in the first volume of Roman Studies in 1806 , also caused a stir . After participating in Goethe's book Winckelmann and his century (1805) Fernow edited Johann Joachim Winckelmann's collected works together with Heinrich Meyer . It was to be his last project. He died on the night of December 4th to 5th, 1808. Two years later, Johanna Schopenhauer published Carl Ludwig Fernow's Leben , dedicated to the ruling Duke Carl August . Fernow's library bought Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on behalf of the Duke, from which the orphaned sons received an education allowance. From the collection of his copperplate engravings Goethe acquired the most remarkable pieces for himself in 1809, mostly after paintings of the late Renaissance and Mannerism. The collection of drawings by Asmus Carstens, which Fernow had brought across the Alps, had already been in the ducal art collections a few years earlier been purchased.

Fernow was a member of the Amalia Freemason Lodge in Weimar.

Works

• Life of the artist Asmus Jakob Carstens . A contribution to the history of art in the eighteenth century. Leipzig 1806.
• Roman studies. 3 vols. Zurich 1806–1808.
• Johann Joachim Winckelmann's collected works. Walthersche Hofbuchhandlung, Dresden 1808–1825.
• Italian language teaching for Germans. 1804.
• Customs and Cultural Paintings of Rome. With the portrait of Cardinal Ruffo and nine other coppers. Perthes, Gotha 1802 (published anonymously).
• Francesco Petrarca portrayed by CL Fernow. In addition to the life of the poet and detailed output directories . Published by Ludwig Hain. Altenburg & Leipzig 1818.
• Roman letters to Johann Pohrt 1793–1798. Edited by Herbert von Eine and Rudolf Pohrt. Berlin 1944.
• Rome is a world in itself . Letters 1789–1808. 2 vol. Ed. V. Margrit Glaser and Harald Tausch. Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1314-9 .

literature

• Johanna Schopenhauer : Carl Ludwig Fernow's life. 1810.
• Fritz Fink : Carl Ludwig Fernow: The Duchess Anna Amalia's librarian (= contributions to the history of the city of Weimar. 37/38; personalities of classical Weimar. 2). Vimaria-Verlag, Weimar 1934.
• Herbert von Eine : Carl Ludwig Fernow. A study on German classicism (= research on German art history. 3; annual edition of the German Association for Art Research . 1). German Association for Art History, Berlin 1935.
• Irmgard Fernow: Carl Ludwig Fernow as an esthete. A comparison with the "Critique of Judgment". Würzburg 1936 (dissertation).
• Arthur Richter:  Fernow, Karl Ludwig . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 716 f.
• Herbert von Eine:  Fernow, Ludwig. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 98 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Michael Knoche & Harald Tausch (eds.): From Rome to Weimar. Carl Ludwig Fernow. Contributions to the colloquium of the Weimar Classic Foundation, Duchess Anna Amalia Library from July 9th to 10th, 1998 in Weimar. Narr, Tübingen 2000, ISBN 3-8233-5209-1 .
• Harald Tausch: Removal of Antiquity. Carl Ludwig Fernow in the context of art theory around 1800. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2000, ISBN 3-484-18156-7 .
• Gabriele Zanello: Carl Ludwig Fernow, l'origine dei dialetti italiani e il friulano , Metodi e ricerche. New series. 19th year. Issue 1, 2000, pp. 67-86, ISSN  0394-6460 .
• Reinhard Wegner (ed.): Art as science. Carl Ludwig Fernow - a founder of art history. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-525-47501-2 .
• Margrit Glaser: "The source of Italian literature" in Weimar. Italian linguistics and linguistics with Christian Joseph Jagemann and Carl Ludwig Fernow. m-press, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3899756760
• Carl Ludwig Fernow: "Rome is a world in itself". Letters 1789–1808. Edited and commented by Margrit Glaser and Harald Tausch. Wallstein, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1314-9
• Italian library. The Carl Ludwig Fernow collection in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library, Weimar. Edited by Lea Ritter-Santini in collaboration with Katrin Lehmann and Anneke Thiel. Wallstein, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8353-1518-1 (Vol. 1: Introductory Articles, Vol. 2: Catalog)

Web links

Wikisource: Carl Ludwig Fernow  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Carl Ludwig Fernow in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Carl Ludwig Fernow  in the German Digital Library

Footnotes

1. ↑ Friedrich Schiller to Wolfgang von Goethe ( Memento of the original from January 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . November 30, 1803