Carl Wilhelm Frölich

Carl Wilhelm Frölich (also: Froelich ; * December 1759 in Landsberg ad Warthe , † May 23, 1828 in Charlottenburg near Berlin) was a German writer , socialist utopian , enlightener , democrat and reformer .

Life

Carl Wilhelm Frölich was born in December 1759 in what was then Neumark in Brandenburg . From the spring of 1778 he studied law at the University of Halle. After completing his studies, Frölich worked as a senior customs officer in Magdeburg; from 1789 he was employed as secret secretary in the Berlin general post office. In May 1789 he married the twenty-year-old Henriette Rauthe .

After Frölich tried unsuccessfully in Scharfenbrück from 1792 to 1814 to give the lease a prosperous development despite major war damage, he moved back to Berlin with his family. Here he built a reading cabinet and took over a lending library .

Carl Wilhelm Frölich died impoverished on May 23, 1828 in Charlottenburg near Berlin.

Major works

About people and their circumstances

Title page of the book About Man and His Conditions

The main work of Frölich, the work About the people and their conditions , appeared anonymously in 1792.

The German scholar and writer Georg Forster wrote about Frölich's first book on July 19, 1793 to his wife from Paris: “Another great pleasure yesterday gave me a good German book ... It is one of the rare products of our time, the work of a young, very right thinking and sensitive people. I want to know who he is and what his name is. ” The author did not admit his work until ten years later.

Frontispiece of the book On Man and His Conditions (engraving by Carl Christian Glaßbach )

This manifesto of the happy existence of man consists of ten conversations of different lengths between Erast, who is concerned about bringing up his children, and Philemon, from whom the author speaks. Four considerations are inserted between the dialogues. Erastus represents as a member of the middle class , a natural law considers as bourgeois justification of different ownership: that nature have the gifts distributed unevenly. Philemon takes the opposite point of view and calls for substantial changes in social ownership. The educational discussions reveal the dichotomy between the nature of man seeking happiness and peace and the real circumstances (in which he currently lives).

Thierarznei book for the farmer and economist

With the Thierarznei book for the farmer and economist (Verlag GC Nauck, Berlin 1801, 2 volumes / first and second part) Frölich makes a contribution to enlightenment in the countryside, theoretically in the forewords and practical in the instructions. He wanted to help free the peasants from superstition and intellectual immaturity and to lead them to insightful action within their work.

Painting according to nature

Foreword to the book Paintings According to Nature , page 1

Frölich's paintings after nature (Verlag JF Unger, Berlin 1802) are a literary collection of essays with which the author clarifies and complements the basic ideas of his main work. Here, too, Frölich primarily applies the principle of active education in practical instruction as well as in theoretical suggestions and discussions.

Statement and effect

The main pillars of Frölich's thought structure are the protest against a social order of exploitation , the demand for a change in social conditions and the building of a society free from oppression that guarantees a happy and peaceful life for all people.

Frölich's socialist utopianism culminates in the “abolition” of private property , in that he demands that children should not be educated to be good citizens, but rather to be educated to be good people, regardless of their material living conditions. Any social theory that did not assume that property relations could only be reshaped in a revolutionary way had to remain utopian .

For Frölich, education and clarification is not teaching from the outside, but rather awakening one's own freedom, self-confidence, self-activity and understanding.

Works

• About people and their circumstances. Frankesche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1792 (new edition 1960 by Akademie-Verlag Berlin, edited and introduced by Gerhard Steiner)

literature

• Gerhard Steiner: The dream of human happiness - life and literary effectiveness of Carl Wilhelm and Henriette Frölich. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1959
• JJ Moschkowskaja: "Two forgotten German utopias of the 18th century". In: Journal of History. Issue 3/1954, pp. 401-427.

Web links

• Literature by and about Carl Wilhelm Frölich in the catalog of the German National Library