Christian Friedrich Schwan

Christian Friedrich Schwan (born December 12, 1733 in Prenzlau , † June 29, 1815 in Heidelberg ) was a German publisher and bookseller.

Schwan studied theology in Halle (Saale) and Jena from 1751 to 1753. In 1758 he worked as a proofreader at the Academy in Petersburg. In 1762 he was an auditor in the regiment of General Georg Ludwig von Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf , and in the Prussian service the following year. After stays in Holland and Frankfurt, he married the daughter of the court book dealer Eßlinger from Mannheim in 1765 and took over his bookstore.

The bookstore and the Schwans house became a cultural center of Mannheim, where personalities such as Lessing , Goethe , Schubart , Lenz , Wieland , Herder and Sophie von La Roche frequented. From 1765–1766 he published the weekly moral journal Der Insichtbare , and from 1774–1779 the journal Die Schreibafel . In 1778 he received the title of court chamber councilor.

Schwan had close ties to the Mannheim theater. He recommended Schiller's play Die Räuber to the director of Dalberg , the theater version of which he published in 1782. Schiller's subsequent works, The Fiesco Conspiracy in Genoa (1783) and Kabale und Liebe (1784), were first published by Schwan, in which Schiller saw "the most reliable of his friends in Mannheim". In 1785 Schiller wrote to him asking for the hand of his daughter Anna Margaretha (1766–1796); Schwan politely declined. The daughter later married the son of the pastor and anacreonist Johann Nikolaus Götz (1721–1781), Gottlieb Christian Götz, who had learned from Schwan and continued the bookstore of the father-in-law after his death as heir.

In 1794 Schwan left Mannheim because of the turmoil of the war after the French Revolution and then lived in Heilbronn, Stuttgart and finally in Heidelberg.

In 1764 Schwan published in The Hague under the pseudonym CFS de la Marche Anecdotes russes ou lettres d'un officier allemand , which appeared the following year in German in Frankfurt (fictitious place of printing: Petersburg). A six-volume German-French a. The French-German dictionary was published in Mannheim between 1782 and 1798. Furthermore, Schwan published images of all secular a. ecclesiastical orders (Mannheim 1779ff.) and images of those orders that have their own religious clothing (Mannheim 1791).

Schwan's dictionaries

Nouveau dictionnaire de la langue allemande et françoise , 2 vols., Mannheim 1782–1784 (from it: Nouveau dictionnaire de la langue allemande et françoise. Extrait de son grand dictionnaire , 2 vols., Ludwigsburg 1799–1800)
Nouveau dictionnaire de la langue françoise et allemande , 4 vols. And a supplement vol., Mannheim 1787-1789-1791-1793-1798 (from it: Nouveau dictionnaire de la langue françoise et allemande. Extrait de son grand dictionnaire , 2 vols., Tübingen 1802–1804)
Dictionnaire abrégé et portatif allemand-français à l'usage des commençans et des écoles. Suivi d'un petit vocabulaire français-allemand , Mannheim 1809
Dictionary of the German and French language based on the dictionaries of the French Academy and Adelungic. French-German part , 2 volumes, Offenburg / Frankfurt a. M. 1810; German-French part , 2 volumes, Offenburg / Frankfurt a. M. 1811

literature

E. Hermann .: Schwan, Christian Friedrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 33, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1891, p. 176 f.
FJ Hausmann: Christian Friedrich Schwan and his German-French, French-German dictionary (Mannheim / Ludwigsburg / Tübingen / Offenb. / Frankf. 1782–1811) . In: Lingua et Traditio. History of linguistics and recent philologies. Festschrift for Hans Helmut Christmann for his 65th birthday , ed. by Richard Baum u. a., Tübingen 1994, pp. 801-817
Johann Heinrich Eckardt: Christian Friedrich Schwan and its importance for Mannheim , in Kurpfälzer Jahrbuch , Heidelberg, 1926, pp. 9-18

Individual evidence

↑ E. Hermann in ADB 33 (1891) pp. 176-177
↑ E. Hermann in ADB 33 (1891), pp. 176-177; Willi Mathern: A winter burger with Goethe and Schiller. The tragic story of Schiller's childhood sweetheart from Mannheim and his rival from Winterburg . In: Bad Kreuznach Heimatblätter 3/1978.

personal data
SURNAME	Schwan, Christian Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German publisher and bookseller
DATE OF BIRTH	December 12, 1733
PLACE OF BIRTH	Prenzlau
DATE OF DEATH	June 29, 1815
Place of death	Heidelberg

[1] E. Hermann in ADB 33 (1891) pp. 176-177

[2] E. Hermann in ADB 33 (1891), pp. 176-177; Willi Mathern: A winter burger with Goethe and Schiller. The tragic story of Schiller's childhood sweetheart from Mannheim and his rival from Winterburg . In: Bad Kreuznach Heimatblätter 3/1978.