Christian Reuter (writer)

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Christian Reuter (* 9. October 1665 [baptism] in Kütten ; † after 1712) was a German writer of the baroque .

Life

Christian Reuter was born in Kütten in 1665 as the eighth of nine children. His family was originally well respected on his mother's side: A great-grandfather had been mayor in Zörbig near Halle . The paternal line can be traced back to the beginning of the 16th century, but the farm lost some of its prosperity during the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War . The baptism on October 9th is documented. After the early death of his father Stephan Reuter in 1683, both the management of the property and the upbringing fell to the mother alone, with all of her children except Christian, who was allowed to attend school, also had to help with the management.

At the age of 20, Reuter was still attending the cathedral grammar school in Merseburg . In 1688, after being granted a scholarship, he succeeded in studying law at the University of Leipzig . In the meantime, he received temporary support from the Zörbig magistrate, who promised him an office after graduation. In Leipzig, however, he spent less time attending lectures than visiting restaurants and theater performances. This explains why he extended his studies to 20 semesters.

Molière's comedies were often performed, and after Wolfram Krömer these and the Commedia dell'arte had an influence on Reuter's later own work. But Christian Weise's dramas also influenced his work.

In 1693 Reuter became friends with his fellow student Johann Grel, with whom he shared a love of the theater and inns, including drinking bouts and brawls. A year later they moved to the “Zum Roten Löwen” inn. The thirst for revenge against his landlady Anna Rosine Müller, which she unceremoniously put on the street after long arguments about outstanding payments, and their literary implementation gave the first impetus for his further poetic work (see the following section).

In 1700 Reuter went to Dresden, where the Saxon Chamberlain von Seyfferditz made him his secretary and where he wrote one last comedy, Count Ehrenfried , centered around the caricature of a real count known at the Dresden court.

But he did not stay in Dresden long. In 1703 his name appears on a list of poets at the court of Friedrich I in Berlin, where he made his way as an occasional poet. Reuter was last named on August 11, 1712 in a church document: He had a son baptized in the Berlin palace community.

The Low German poet Fritz Reuter was his great-great-grandson.

The bitch feud

In the style of Molière's The Ridiculous Precious , Reuter created a play that the entire Müller family was supposed to make ridiculous. In October 1695 his first comedy L'honnéte femme or The Honest Woman at Pliszine appeared under the pseudonym Hilarius. In addition to the main character, Frau Schlampampe, here the landlady of the restaurant “Zum göldenen Maulaffen”, the hero Schelmuffsky played a role, behind which the boastful and boastful son of the landlady Müller hides.

Even their death cannot stop Reuters attacks. After 1696 he continued to write despite legal complaints from the Müller family, despite being banned from writing, in detention and being expelled from the university. A drama even appears that addresses the landlady's illness and death: The honest woman Schlampampe illness and death ; after that, the Last Denck- und Ehren-Mahl of Honest Frau Schlampampe, who was Weyland, and the opera Seigneur Schelmuffsky appeared .

Schelmuffsky

Schelmuffsky is modeled on the eldest son of the landlady Anna Rosine Müller from Leipzig and the first-person narrator of the novel of the same name in the form of a travelogue. The German studies are not entirely conclusive whether it is a picaresque novel , an adventure novel or a Münchhausiade . The narrator is a kind of camera that reproduces impressions unfiltered. In this way he characterizes himself without being aware of it, essentially reporting about eating, drinking and throwing up. At the same time, he exposes courtly forms and festivities, gallantry and the excessive exaggeration customary at the time in the increasingly popular travelogues to ridicule. The "rat episode" and the constant repetition of the idioms "der Tebel hohlmer", "ey sapperment" and "that I was a good guy and that something big had to be behind me" are decisive for the progress of the plot.

The first part appeared in two versions in 1696 and 1697, the second part in 1697. The book was reprinted in 1750, but this edition soon got on the papal index , although the grotesque scene of the papal audience had previously fallen victim to censorship.

effect

Christian Reuter was only known as a writer at the Berlin court around 1703. There he was noticed by German research as an occasional poet without a level. All other works appeared under different pseudonyms, so that Reuter's authorship first had to be identified.

The German studies deny any contemporary effect of the Schelmuffsky novel, whereby it must be taken into account that historical editions were sometimes extremely small and the Schelmuffsky was placed on the papal index. Apart from a limited local interest, no further reception can be proven during Reuter's lifetime.

In the 18th century, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg owned one of the few surviving Schelmuffsky editions and Gottfried August Bürger took the excessive exaggerations as a template for his Münchhausen stories. At the suggestion of the Brothers Grimm , the first complete reprint of the work was made in 1817, so that the Romantics around Clemens Brentano could “get carried away” by it. The latter formulated as early as 1811 in his joking treatise The Philistine before, in and after the story as a thesis: “There is no more severe test of philistinism than not understanding, not admiring the incomprehensibly rich and perfect invention, and the extremely skillful execution in Lord von Schelmuffsky's journey by sea and land. Anyone who reads this book without being carried away in any way is a Philistine and is sure to appear in it. "

It was not until 1884 that the Leipzig Germanist Friedrich Zarncke succeeded in defining the person Christian Reuter as the author of various works and in compiling biographical data about him.

On his trip to Scandinavia in the summer of 1930, Walter Benjamin described himself on a postcard to Gretel Karpus as "Schelmuffsky's descendant".

In the 20th century Günter Grass paid tribute to the Schelmuffsky novel several times, namely in his first novel The Tin Drum and in the novel The Shepherd .

Honors

In 1937, in honor of Reuter, the Kütten community had a memorial stone erected in the middle of the village near the church on Christian-Reuter-Platz. There is also Schelmuffsky Street in the village. The local Heimatverein takes care of Reuter's memory and sells a herbal schnapps under the name "Schelmuffsky's Reise-Elixir".

Works

  • 1695: L'honnête femme or The Honest Woman in Plissine ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • 1696: Life, sickness and death of the honest Mrs. Schlampampe
  • undated (1696?): Le jouvenceau charming seigneur Schelmuffsky
  • 1696/97: Schelmuffsky's very curious and very dangerous travelogue on water and land ( text from the Gutenberg project )
  • 1697: Last memory and honor meal of the honest Mrs. Schlampampe, who was weyland
  • 1700: Count Ehrenfried, in a pleasure game ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • 1708: Passion Thoughts (oratorio, music by Johann Theile )
  • 1965 and 1980: Christian Reuter's works in one volume. Edited by Günter Jäckel. Construction, Berlin

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Christian Reuter  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfram Krömer: The Italian Commedia dell'arte. Scientific Book Society Darmstadt, Darmstadt 1976, page 88
  2. ↑ On Reuter's biographical data and the Schlampampe dramas, see the afterword by Ilse-Marie Barth in Christian Reuter: Schelmuffsky, Reclam, Stuttgart 1997, pages 195 - 206, from which the spelling of the dramas was also taken.
  3. ↑ Clemens Brentano: The Philistine before, in and after the story. Amusing treatise . Berlin 1811; S. [2].
  4. ^ Gretel Adorno / Walter Benjamin: Correspondence 1930-1940. Frankfurt a. M. 2019. p. 9.
  5. ↑ Kütten, community Petersberg im Saalekreis ( memento of January 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) and Olaf Velte in the Frankfurter Rundschau of May 5, 2012 under the web links, both last accessed on June 27, 2013
  6. ↑ also with Google Books: https://books.google.de/books?id=YBhVAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA10&dq=schelmuffsky&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwicut6h8L7lAhUGyaQKHd4cCDIQ6AEIKuffDA#v=false&sky
personal data
SURNAME Reuter, Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer of the baroque
DATE OF BIRTH baptized October 9, 1665
PLACE OF BIRTH Kütten
DATE OF DEATH after 1712
Place of death unsure: Berlin