Christian Wagner (writer)

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The poet's look out of the window (1915)

Christian Friedrich Wagner (born August 5, 1835 in Warmbronn ; † February 15, 1918 there ) was a German writer and smallholder .

life and work

Wagner's birthplace in Warmbronn

Christian Wagner spent his childhood and youth in humble circumstances in Warmbronn, where his father was a farmer and carpenter. After his confirmation in 1849 he worked in his parents' farm and livestock industry and in winter as a lumberjack. By the end of the 1850s, he became a passionate butterfly collector, set up a herbarium and began to read intensively. He felt himself to be a "weirdo" because he never sold his cattle to the butcher. Wagner was interested in the ruins in his home environment and wrote his first poem in 1860, for his mother. Influenced by Schiller's dramas, he wrote his play in 1865: Abi-Melech .

First marriage

In November 1865 Christian Wagner married Anna Maria Glatzle from Warmbronn and moved into a “small room and chamber” in their parents' house. After his father died in December 1866, he took over his indebted farm. Shortly afterwards, on the day his first child Christian Albert was born, his mother died (January 15, 1867) and after three weeks the child died too. He wrote a first collection of poems songs of suffering , later published in the Sunday aisles . The next two children, Caroline Friederike (1868) and Karoline Luise (1869), also died a few months after their birth.

In the period from the end of August 1868 to April 1869 he worked on the construction of the railway line, which was supposed to pass directly in the neighborhood. He wrote poetry during work breaks.

On November 24, 1870, his wife died giving birth to their son Gottlieb, who was only nine months old.

Second marriage

Just four months later, on March 19, 1871, Christian Wagner married his cousin Christiane Catharina Kienle, known as Nane . Son Christian was born on January 3, 1872 († September 8, 1949) and daughter Amalie Friederike († January 25, 1952) on March 3, 1874.

The living conditions of the family were extremely cramped: the basic foodstuffs could be obtained on the farm; however, debts had to be incurred for the remaining expenses for clothes, household items and taxes: by 1892 he signed more than twenty promissory notes and therefore also hired himself as a day laborer and woodcutter (until 1885).

Christian Wagner's wife Nane trained as a qualified midwife in the spring of 1878 . Daughter Pauline was born on October 2, 1879 († June 3, 1966). He was “encouraged” and encouraged in his writing undertakings from the Warmbronn pastor Karl Rau and some local teachers. In the spring he bought an orchard and a small shed.

Beginning success

In winter 1884 Wagner took advantage of the free time to view his poetic experiments and put his manuscript storytellers, Brahmin and seers together, which appeared in the spring of 1885 in a Stuttgart publishing after seeing the production costs had taken the book. In this work he saw himself as Bramine, who “walks through the hallways with care and respect for all living things,” but he assured that he had never read Buddhist scriptures. The self-financed 1,000 copies of the first edition were sold quickly, the publisher printed the second edition under the new title Sonntagsgang 1887, and in the same year the third edition expanded to include more fairy tales and ballads . Karl Gerok and Gustav Hauff wrote positive reviews . In August of the same year daughter Luise Christiane († July 8, 1950) was born.

Since 1889, many enthusiastic readers from near and far have visited him in his village. Wagner's wife Nane returned half paralyzed from another spa treatment in Wildbad in 1890 after suffering from spinal cord inflammation since the winter of 1887. Christian Wagner recognized for himself that "for the budding poet even reading other poets' works is harmful"; up to this point he had u. a. read intensively the poems of Schiller , Goethe , Lessing , Uhland , Geibel , Lenau and Lord Byron .

In 1889 and 1891 he received honorary gifts of 100 gold marks from the Stuttgart branch of the Weimar German Schiller Foundation ; The entrepreneur Gustav Siegle from Stuttgart and other enthusiastic readers also helped him by donating money, sometimes regularly. In mid-February 1892, his wife Nane fell mentally deranged and died on April 25, 1892.

Recognition and travel

Christian Wagner, painting by Emilie Weißer, was created between October 1894 and February 1895 in Stuttgart

The German Schiller Foundation in Weimar continued its regular financial support through honorary gifts, initiated by Richard Weltrich and Paul Heyse . Wagner put together the first part of his autobiography From my life . In 1893 the consecration gifts with idylls, myths and epigrams, epic pictures and mixed poems appeared, the following year New Faith , which was unsuccessful. In 1894 Wagner wrote the second part of From My Life . Time and again he got into great financial hardship, for example due to the loss of cattle, but time and again he also received help from those who worshiped him. Emilie Weißer , a painter from Stuttgart, supported him until 1913.

At the beginning of 1895, after reading the consecration gifts , Bruno Wille announced reviews and his visit to Warmbronn. Through him the first contacts arose with the Friedrichshagener poet circle , but also with Gustav Landauer and the painter Fidus . Otto Güntter , the co-founder of the Schiller National Museum in Marbach am Neckar , bought a portrait of Wagner's Emilie Weißer as a private person in order to support him. (He donated it to the museum in 1934).

In the summer of 1895 Wagner traveled to Lake Lucerne and Lake Maggiore . He made reading tours in the Württemberg and Hohenlohe regions. After receiving other foundations, including the promise of the Schiller Foundation to support him for another three years with 300 marks each, he went back to Northern Italy at the end of March 1896 , this time to Como , Milan , Genoa , to the sea. On the way he visited the Italian writer Ada Negri , "the champion for the liberation of the lowest classes". In the summer of the same year he traveled to Munich and visited the Pinakotheken there , the Glyptothek and the Schack Gallery and got to know the Schiller biographer Richard Weltrich personally; his large monograph on Christian Wagner was published in 1898. On June 1, 1897, the German Teachers Association for Natural History appointed Wagner an honorary member. Gustav Landauer visited the poet for the first time in Warmbronn in 1899.

While signing (April 21, 1907)

Thanks to the continued payments by the Schiller Foundation, Wagner was able to repay his interest-bearing debts by 1900. Ernest Seillière's extensive essay on Wagner was published in Paris , which honors him extensively. And again and again he was on long lecture tours: He visited Wilhelm Schussen in Schwäbisch Gmünd , the in-laws of Dr. Owlglass in Ulm for several weeks. Then in August 1904 the first big trip to Italy: he traveled to Naples , Capri , Pompeii , Rome and Florence within four weeks.

Late sheaves

Christian Wagner's 70th birthday on August 5, 1905 was not only a big event in Warmbronn. He received over a hundred appreciative congratulations from near and far, including from Wilhelm Klemm and Caesar Flaischlen , and numerous birthday articles appeared in the press. In 1909 the volume of poetry Späte Garben came out and in the spring of the same year he first met Hermann Hesse in Stuttgart . In November 1909 ten of his songs from A Bouquet of Flowers, set by Karl Bleyle, were premiered in Stuttgart .

In January 1910, the German Schiller Foundation converted the previously granted annual pension of 500 marks into a lifelong pension. Fritz Mauthner congratulated him on his 75th birthday and in April 1911 he went on another trip to Italy with his daughter Luise, which took him back to Rome and Naples via Schaffhausen and the Gotthard . On June 12, 1912, the Women's Association awarded him the honorary award of 2,000 marks to honor Rhenish poets . Italy in Songs was self-published . Bruno Frank , along with many others, gave the work an enthusiastic review. In 1913 the selection of poems made by Hermann Hesse appeared with his foreword, in the same year the 5th edition of the bouquet and Wagner's autobiographical notes Aus der Heimat ( self-published) .

Wagner's grave in Warmbronn

In August 1915 he was made an honorary citizen of Warmbronn. His position on war poetry was clear, as can be seen from a letter to Hermann Hesse: After he had already been "approached about war songs" several times, he continued: "We [poets] do not recognize the heroism of nitroglycerine!" As the poet friend and conscientious objector Gusto Gräser should be expelled from Germany, he stood up for him. The later Dadaist Johannes Baader visited him in Warmbronn in 1916 and then gave enthusiastic lectures about Wagner. Otto Güntter prepared a first edition of the work that was to be subsidized by the Swabian Schillerverein ; it was to appear in 1918.

Christian Wagner died on February 15, 1918. Otto Güntter acquired the written estate for the Schiller Museum in Marbach .

effect

Memorial plaque on Wagner's birthplace in Warmbronn

Christian Wagner is one of the literary outsiders of the late 19th century. His predominantly lyrical work, shaped by a natural philosophy of the protection of all living things, cannot be assigned to any school or school. As an autodidact without any higher education, Wagner created a work that is based on high ethical values. A large part of his poetry belongs to the permanent inventory of German literature.

During his lifetime the author received considerable support, for example from Gustav Landauer , Bruno Wille , Kurt Tucholsky and above all from Hermann Hesse , who published a selection of Wagner's poems in 1913. The Friedrichshagener Julius Hart devoted Wagner in 1899 a detailed essay. After his death, Albrecht Schaeffer , Theodor Heuss , Werner Kraft , Albrecht Goes , Wulf Kirsten , Hermann Lenz , HAP Grieshaber and Peter Handke stood up for him.

In 1913, Christian Wagner said in his answer to a survey by Georg-Müller-Verlag about the relationship between writer, publisher and audience: “It was somewhat difficult for me to leave out about this subject, into the everyday tastes of the public without judgment and, at times, their own Publishers to think my way around, and since I, as an autodidact, cannot show any regular connections, they may be all the more reliable for that very reason. Safer in that I am not influenced by any school. What I wrote was inspiration. - I got? - or possessed the ability of the bloodhound to follow strangers, the soil told me its story, which is extremely interesting, with historical fidelity. ... The academically trained writer took offense many times. ... As an old man, I was jostled like this by an immature boy like this: 'So, you are the farmer who writes poetry? But if every farmer wanted to write poetry - what then? ' He obviously meant that I should apologize to him for this insolence; I didn't do that, just said: This danger will hardly occur, since there will always be more sparrows than larks. "

Testimonies

“There are poets who victoriously resist all journalists' efforts to gain fame. Christian Wagner is one of those. How much did we care about him, how much did we tell our friends about him, publicly and privately, and how little was it. ” (1919)
“... he felt the deep bond between animals, humans and plants, stone and star. And he loved all of it. ... He was pious without dogma. ... He was a farmer, though; he knew nature, but the little straw was no cause for him, 'Duliöh!' to scream or to let a brightly painted mind shine. He was an introspective artist and well worth our all reading and admiring him. " (1919)
“There won't be many miracles like the third and last stanzas of the poem 'Syringen' in German”. (1922)
"Only a pedant may ... reckon with mistakes or blame an error in the education addict, the mindful will feel the artistic seriousness, the intellectual rigor, the bold and wonderful pictoriality in the individual again and again." (1943)
"He, too, is to be assigned to the outsiders who dare to blink, to unexpectedly open their eyes, from which suddenly a landscape or even just a flower still life emerges like a tender astonishment and spreads." (1964)
"A Sunday poet like there are Sunday painters, but Sunday painter of the rank of Henri Rousseau in France, Grandma Moses in America." (1965)
"The whole work has an immediate freshness, boldness, an elementary force, a defiance that struggles against melancholy: they ensure that a dozen 'poets from the guild' do not come close to Christian Wagner from afar." (1973)
“For Wagner, as for so many others, reason was not a mask, not a mere person-pretense; he was permeated by it as by a way of life and for this very reason was able to switch so freely in his poetry: the mystical in him is nothing but the victorious perception of a liberated, thoroughly sensible person. " (1978)

Christian Wagner Society

The Christian Wagner Society e. V. , based in Leonberg-Warmbronn , was founded in 1972 with the following objectives: "To promote knowledge of the life and work of the poet Christian Wagner", "New edition of his writings" and to preserve the Christian Wagner House , which was sacrificed when a supermarket was built should fall. The poet's renovated house was finally ready to move into in 1983: It now houses the Christian Wagner Museum with a permanent exhibition on the poet, set up by the German Literature Archive in Marbach , with a lecture room for concerts, lectures, author readings and workshop discussions, which is organized by the association for the year is used extensively. The association has 254 members (as of November 2013).

The society has published or initiated numerous publications: The Warmbronn writings with authors such as Hermann Lenz , Frei Otto , Karl Mickel , Tuvia Rübner and the new editions of Christian Wagner's most important works.

The company has been awarding the Christian Wagner Prize since 1992 .

Commemoration

The Christian Wagner fountain by Frei Otto

In Warmbronn there is a Christian Wagner poet trail with eleven stations. Furthermore , the fountain designed by Frei Otto in the center of the village is named after him, with the Wagner quote “There are enough suns” as an inscription.

Works

  • 1877 Glemseck Castle, romantic legend
  • 1885 storytellers, Bramine and seers , since the second edition: Sunday walks (NA ISBN 3-921829-03-8 )
  • 1887 Further fairy tales and ballads , part of the further editions of the Sunday walks
  • 1890 ballads and flower songs , additional third addition to the Sunday courses
  • 1893 consecration gifts , poems (NA ISBN 3-921829-15-1 )
  • 1894 New Faith , Poems and Prose (NA ISBN 3-921829-10-0 )
  • 1897 New seals , poems (NA in: ISBN 3-921829-15-1 )
  • 1904 About servitude and servitude (an essay in which Wagner deals with vulgarity, above and below, below and above .)
  • 1906 A bouquet of flowers , poems
  • 1909 Late sheaves , poems (NA in: ISBN 3-921829-15-1 )
  • 1912 Italy in chants
  • 1913 From home. A Swabian book , autobiographical texts
  • 1913 poems , selected and introduced by Hermann Hesse (new edition with an afterword by Peter Handke , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / Main 1980)
  • 1913 The relationship of the rural poet to his environment , in: Writers, publishers and the public. A survey. Ten-year catalog Georg Müller Verlag Munich
  • 1915 loner. Little stories from my youth , (NA ISBN 3-921829-02-X )
  • 1918 Otto Güntter (ed.): Collected seals by Christian Wagner , Strecker and Schröder, Stuttgart 1918
  • Friedrich Pfäfflin (ed.): Christian Wagner / Hermann Hesse. An exchange of letters 1909-1915 , Deutsche Schillergesellschaft, Marbach a. N. 1977
  • Ulrich Keicher (Ed.): Poems , With a foreword by Albrecht Goes and drawings by Gunter Böhmer , Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 3-8062-0119-6
  • Harald Hepfer (Ed.): From my life - autobiography of the farmer and poet zu Warmbronn , Keicher, Warmbronn 1992, ISBN 3-932843-76-2 (from this the quotations above in the description of his life)
  • Jürgen Schweier (ed.): Blooming cherry tree - The most beautiful poems , Schweier Verlag, Kirchheim / Teck 1995, ISBN 3-921829-33-X
  • Ulrich Keicher (Hrsg.): Christian Wagner: A world from a nameless. Vol. 1 Das Dichterische Werk / Vol. 2 Testimonials and Reception , Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89244-661-X

literature

  • Bruno Wille: Two village poets. ( Johanna Ambrosius and Christian Wagner) . In: The magazine for literature , vol. 64 (1895), issue 10 of March 9, 1895, col. 295-303.
  • Richard Weltrich: Christian Wagner, the farmer and poet from Warmbronn. An aesthetic-critical and socio-ethical study , Strecker & Moser, Stuttgart 1898.
  • Christian Wagner special issue for the 100th birthday of the poet . In: Württemberg. Monthly in the service of people and homeland , 1935, pp. 329–376.
  • Ernest Seillière: Le Paysan Poète de la Souabe . In: Revue des Deux Mondes , Paris 1901 (Bilingual new edition: Harald Hepfer (Ed.): Christian Wagner - The peasant poet from Swabia . Annual journal of the Christian Wagner Society, Warmbronn 1990, ISBN 3-932843-88- 6 ).
  • Huguette Herrmann and Friedrich Pfäfflin (eds.): Christian Wagner from Warmbronn - A Chronicle . Marbacher Magazin 6/1977, German Schiller Society, Marbach a. N. 1977.
  • Peter Handke: In the Beyond the Senses - An experiment on the farmer poet Christian Wagner . In: Peter Handke : The end of strolling . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / Main 1980, ISBN 3-518-37179-7
  • Harald Hepfer and Friedrich Pfäfflin (eds.): The poet Christian Wagner , with an article by Peter Härtling , Marbacher Magazin 28/1983, Deutsche Schillergesellschaft , Marbach a. N. 1990, ISBN 3-928882-11-2 .
  • Harald Hepfer, Ulrich Keicher, Jürgen Schweier (eds.): There are enough suns. Birthday book for Christian Wagner . Contributions by forty writers on Christian Wagner's 150th birthday. Jürgen Schweier Verlag, Kirchheim / Teck 1985.
  • Harald Hepfer (Ed.): The poet Christian Wagner - On his 170th birthday on August 5, 2005. Catalog of the permanent exhibition in the Christian-Wagner-Haus Warmbronn , with a foreword by Thomas Scheuffelen, Christian-Wagner-Gesellschaft e. V. Warmbronn 2005, ISBN 3-938743-03-4 .
  • Peter Härtling: Christian Wagner's future - our past? Lecture at the scientific conference of the Christian Wagner Society: The rediscovery of an author. Warmbronn 2007, ISBN 978-3-938743-36-2 .

Film portrait

Web links

Commons : Christian Wagner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Christian Wagner  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Wagner, Christian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wagner, Christian Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and smallholder
DATE OF BIRTH August 5, 1835
PLACE OF BIRTH Warmbronn
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1918
Place of death Warmbronn