Charles Boner

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Charles Boner (born April 29, 1815 in Bath , † April 9, 1870 in Munich ) was an English poet and travel writer.

life and work

Charles Boner was the second child and the only son of Charles Boner († August 14, 1833 in Twickenham ). He received his lessons first from 1825 to 1827 in Bath and then from 1827 to 1829 in the high school in Tiverton. From 1831 to 1837 he was tutor of the two older sons of the painter John Constable in London . After the death of his mother (1839) he accepted the invitation of Baron August von Dörnberg to live with him in Germany. After he had learned the German language, he accompanied the baron to Regensburg . In this city in 1840 he received the post of educator at the court of Prince Maximilian Karl von Thurn und Taxis in St. Emmeram Castle . He held this position for 20 years and his students appreciated his company. He became a lifelong friend of the art-loving, literature-promoting prince and also made close acquaintance with many of his friends.

Boner's activity now mainly took place in Germany. He indulged in German life with understanding and sympathy, without ceasing to be a true Englishman. When he was in London in 1844, he agreed to write articles for the Literary Gazette ; and he then wrote a number of articles on German poets that earned him more fame than profit. In 1845 he made the acquaintance of Mary Russell Mitford , with whom he led a ten-year literary correspondence.

As a passionate nature lover and hunter, Boner was drawn in to the hunts of the Prince of Thurn and Taxis, Prince Karl zu Leiningen , the Duke of Koburg and others. Above all, he enjoyed hunting chamois in the Bavarian Alps and established his literary reputation with a book about this leisure activity , Chamois hunting in the Mountains of Bavaria and in the Tyrol (London 1853). The second edition of this work was published in 1860 with illustrations by the battle painter Theodor Horschelt , who married Boner's daughter Marie on February 27, 1865. Boner also wrote the book Forest Creatures (1861) on the subject of foraging , a description of the hunted animals in Germany, which the author himself published in German translation as Thiere des Waldes (with pictures by Guido Hammer , Leipzig 1862).

Boner emphasized his poetic disposition through poems which he wrote mainly during his time at the court of the Prince of Thurn und Taxis. They appeared collectively under the title Verses (London 1858) and established his reputation as a poet. In 1855 he had published the drama Cain and in 1857 The New Dance of Death and other Poems . Equally excellent were his translations, in which he translated poems by Franz von Kobell , August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben , Georg Scheurlin and Friedrich von Bodenstedt richly into English and in the original meters. With the same mastery of languages, Boner translated the excellent studies of nature by Hermann Masius (1855) and Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales ( Tales from Denmark , London 1847). The latter appeared with illustrations by Franz Graf von Pocci , who also provided Charles Boner's Book for those who are young, and those who love what is natural and truthful , a children's book, and Boner's Little Tuck (London 1848) with woodcut drawings.

After he had completed his job as an educator, Boner moved to Munich in 1860, where he got in touch with the personalities appointed by King Maximilian II , in particular with Justus von Liebig and Bodenstedt, and did a lively literary activity for the Athenaeum and other magazines in England started. After repeated trips to London and Paris , Boner went to Transylvania in 1863 in order to bring this then little-explored country "to the knowledge of the rest of the world". He recorded the results of his studies in the extensive book Transylvania, its Products and Peoples (London 1865), which the author translated into German ( Land und Menschen in Siebenbürgen , Leipzig 1868, with many views and maps) caused a sensation.

In August 1865 Boner went to Vienna as a special reporter for the Daily News . His journalistic work for this newspaper lasted from the conclusion of the trade treaty between England and Austria to the end of the German War . He has also contributed to the New York Daily Tribune and other English and American newspapers. He also published a Guide for Travelers in the Plain and on the Mountain (2nd edition 1876) in 1866 . In 1867 he traveled to Salzburg to attend a meeting between Napoleon III. and to attend the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph , which meeting he then described very vividly. One of the last significant events of his life was his visit to Trieste , where he attended the funeral of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, about whom he wrote an interesting memorandum.

In 1869 the once so industrious mountaineer and alpine hunter returned to Munich sick and tormented by gout and now lived in the house of his son-in-law Theodor Horschelt. He seemed to be revived, thought of a collection of his English and German poems and a selection of his prosaic writings, worked on a history of the German craftsman's life and contemplated writing a book on German life and beings; there he died after a short illness on April 9, 1870 at the age of almost 55 years in Munich.

After Boner's death there appeared Memoirs and Letters of Charles Boner, with Letters of Mary Russell Mitford to him during ten years, edited by RM Kettle (2 volumes, London 1871).

literature

personal data
SURNAME Boner, Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English poet and travel writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH Bath
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 1870
Place of death Munich