David Ferdinand Koreff

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Ferdinand Koreff (drawing by Wilhelm Hensel )

David Ferdinand Koreff (after his baptism in 1816 Johann (es) Ferdinand Koreff ; * February 1, 1783 in Breslau , † May 15, 1851 in Paris ) was a German writer , natural philosophy doctor and member of various literary groups .

Life

Education

Koreff came from an upper-class Jewish family. His father Joachim Salomon Koreff (1732–1805) was a doctor in Breslau and had known the famous Franz Anton Mesmer , whose ideas about animal magnetism were to have a strong influence on his son. From 1802 Koreff studied medicine at the University of Halle . There, under the influence of Schelling, he turned to the "natural philosophical" direction of medicine, which was then shaped by the writings of Franz von Baader . From 1803 he completed his clinical studies in Berlin, where he joined the romantic North Star Alliance around Adelbert von Chamisso and Varnhagen von Ense . He found access to literary salons in Berlin and also joined the Serapion brothers , the literary circle of friends around ETA Hoffmann . In his collection of novels, Die Serapionsbrüder , Koreff is portrayed as the witty and mystical chatterer Vinzenz.

Paris

After completing his studies, he moved to Paris and began to practice there, especially with members of the German colony there. At the same time he pursued numerous literary projects. His most important literary work was his lyric poems (1815). This includes the “prayer of a magnetizer”, which expresses his poetic-cosmic understanding of medicine, according to which a prescription and a sonnet are only “different outflows of a divinity”:

High from your blissful distance
Descend, bright stars,
Lower yourselves into the structure of man.
How you err on the walk
And yet never get confused
Billowing in the blue of the sky!

He wrote the libretto for the opera Aucassin and Nicolette , an adaptation of the old French story Aucassin et Nicolette , which was performed in Berlin in 1822. He also worked as a translator and translated poems by Tibullus and elegies of Sulpicia into German.

Confidante of Hardenberg in Berlin

At the Congress of Vienna he was introduced to the Prussian Chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg by Wilhelm von Humboldt , whose family doctor he was through his acquaintance with Humboldt's wife Caroline . He managed to win their trust. Hardenberg first got him a professorship at the University of Berlin . His opponents pointed out that as a Jew he was not entitled to such a position, whereupon the Chancellor personally arranged for Koreff to be baptized in the Lutheran Church . He also made him his personal physician and personal confidante.

When Koreff managed to cure Hardenberg of a serious illness in 1817, his position was completely consolidated. He received the lecture for scientific and artistic questions in the Chancellery and was particularly concerned with the personnel expansion of the Humboldt University in Berlin and the development of the newly founded University of Bonn in 1818 . So he managed to win August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ernst Moritz Arndt as professors. Koreff was now at the height of his career and at the center of Berlin society and literary Germany: He provided Ludwig Tieck and Jean Paul with impressive pensions, made Gaspare Spontini known in Berlin and counted Alexander von Humboldt and Hegel among his interlocutors. In 1818 Koreff was elected a member of the Leopoldina and a member of the Academy of Charitable Sciences in Erfurt .

Through him Hardenberg developed an increased interest in mesmerism , as Koreff practiced it and ascribed sensational successes to this technique - especially in the treatment of the mentally ill . As evidence of such a miraculous healing, he introduced a medium named Friederike Hähnel to Hardenberg's house, where she impressed the aging Chancellor not only with her vision, but above all with her beauty. For this reason she should be added to the Princess Charlotte as a companion. However, this lady turned out to be an explosive device for Hardenberg's marriage.

In 1822 Hardenberg lost his position of trust, in the absence of which he had sent a work by Benzenberg to Benjamin Constant in Paris, which was published there under his and Constant’s name with the provocative title Du triomphe inévitable et prochain des principes constitutionnels en Prusse (“About the inevitable and imminent triumph of constitutional principles in Prussia ”). This pamphlet found no friendly readers either with Tsar Alexander , Emperor Franz , or Metternich or Gentz , and it was assumed that the publication in which Hardenberg was once again portrayed as a champion of parliamentarism was published on his initiative . Hardenberg's denial also found no faith, since Koreff was a confidante of Hardenberg and Constant was married to a cousin of Hardenberg. Hardenberg's position was badly damaged by this affair and Koreff's Berlin career came to an end.

It is not true that Hardenberg's affair with Friederike Hähnel, which the old prince had made his lover and married to a Baron von Kimsky (allegedly a player) as a camouflage, was responsible for Koreff's fall. The Hahnel remained in her arms through Hardenberg's separation from his wife and his lover in her arms until his death. Previously (by Codizill of April 20, 1822) Hardenberg had given her a pension for life. In addition, she was said to have thoroughly plundered the dying Chancellor, who carried 100,000 thalers as travel budget on his last trip to Verona, together with her husband. After a noisy conversion to the Catholic faith, she concluded her days in Rome.

Last years in Paris

After the end of his Berlin ambitions in 1822, Koreff moved to Paris again. His circle of friends in the French capital included the painter Eugène Delacroix , the philosopher Victor Cousin , the musician Giacomo Meyerbeer and important writers such as Stendhal , Prosper Mérimée , Alfred de Musset , Victor Hugo and Heinrich Heine , whose doctor he was. He was also the doctor of Marie Duplessis , who became immortal as the model for the Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils and Verdi's La traviata . He appeared to the French as a strange, eccentrically dressed German, as the "Hoffmanneske doctor" ( le médicin hoffmannique ), to which a red loden wig he wore probably contributed.

Due to a scandal over excessive fee claims (the Lady Lincoln case) he lost his position in the elegant world in 1838 and in his last years treated the members of the Parisian middle class with his magnetic cures, which were slowly going out of fashion. He died utterly impoverished.

As a mediator between the leading French and German literary groups, Koreff was an important figure. Among other things, he suggested the French edition of ETA Hoffmann's works . All in all, he was the prime example of the fluctuation between the Poles that is characteristic of many romantics: scientist and man of letters, doctor and charlatan, Jew and Christian, German and French.

Fonts

  • Contributions under the pseudonym Anthropos to Musenalmanach. Ed. by Adelbert von Chamisso and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, 1804–1806
  • Albii Tibulli carmina libri tres. Translation; Paris 1810
  • The Sulpicia's elegies and some elegiac fragments of others. Translation; Paris 1810
  • Réflexions sur la nouvelle machine a plonger, appelée Triton, inventée par M. Frédéric Drieberg. Paris 1811
  • Don Tacagno, comic Singspiel in 2 acts. Music by Friedrich Johann von Drieberg , 1812
  • The entry of the emperor. Vienna 1814
  • Lyric poems. Paris 1815
  • Chant for the birth of His Majesty the King of Prussia on August 3rd, 1815. Paris 1815
  • De regionibus Italiae aëre pernicioso contaminatis. Berlin 1817. German: About the bad air regions of Italy. Berlin 1821
  • German word from Prussia to the Rhinelander. In response to the writing: Handover of the address of the city of Coblenz and the landscape to Sr. Majesty the King in public. Audience with Sr. Durchl. The Prince State Chancellor on January 12, 1818 1818
  • About the phenomena of life and about the laws according to which it reveals itself in the human organism. A sketch as an introduction to the lectures on human physiology. Berlin 1820
  • About the bad air regions of Italy. An investigation. Berlin 1821. Digitized
  • Du triomphe inévitable et prochain des principes constitutionnels en Prusse. With Benjamin Constant . Paris 1821. Digitized
  • Aucassin and Nicolette, or: Love from the good old days. Opera in 4 acts. Text by Koreff. Music by Georg Abraham Schneider. Berlin 1822. Digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fnbn-resolving.de%2Furn%2Fresolver.pl%3Furn%3Durn%3Anbn%3Ade%3Abvb%3A12-bsb00053156-8~GB%3D~IA% 3D ~ MDZ% 3D% 0A ~ SZ% 3D ~ double-sided% 3D ~ LT% 3D ~ PUR% 3D

literature

  • Nicole Edelman, Luis Montiel, Jean-Pierre Peter: Histoire sommaire de la maladie et du somnambulisme de Lady Lincoln. Tallandier, Paris, 2009
  • Werner E. Gerabek : Koreff, David Ferdinand. In: Werner E. Gerabek, Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 782.
  • Klaus Günzel: The German Romantics. Artemis, Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-7608-1119-1 , pp. 169-172
  • Gerhard Jaeckel: The Charité. The history of a world center of medicine from 1710 to the present. Berlin 1986, pp. 186-95
  • Ingeborg Köhler: "One of Hoffmann's pioneers in France. Doctor Koreff". In: Messages from the ETA Hoffmann Society. 26, pp. 69-72 (1980).
  • Sol Liptzin: Koreff, David Ferdinand. In: Encyclopedia Judaica , 2nd ed. 2007, Vol. 12, pp. 306-307
  • Marietta Martin: Le docteur Koreff (1783-1851). Un aventurier intellectuel under the restoration et la monarchie de juillet. Paris 1925. Reprint: Slatkine Reprints, Geneva 1977
  • Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski: David Ferdinand Koreff, brother of Serapion, magnetizer, privy councilor and poet. The life novel of a forgotten man. Paetel, Berlin 1928
  • Hans Sohni:  Koreff, David Ferdinand. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 582 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Peter Gerrit Thielen: Karl August von Hardenberg. Grote, Cologne & Berlin 1967
  • Karl August Varnhagen von Ense : Biographical Portraits. From the estate; along with letters from Koreff, Clemens Brentano, wife von Fouqué, Henri Campan and Scholz. Leipzig 1871. Reprint: Lang, Bern 1971. pp. 1–33

Web links

Commons : David Ferdinand Koreff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Günzel Romantiker 1995, p. 170
  2. see also undated letter from Koreff to JPF Deleuze (pp. 393–466), published in 1825.
  3. Günzel: Romantiker 1995, p. 171
  4. Günzel Romantiker 1995, p. 169
  5. ^ Thielen: Hardenberg. 1967, p. 342
  6. Günzel Romantics, p. 171
  7. ^ Member entry by Johann David Ferdinand Koreff at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on July 22, 2016.
  8. Charlotte Sophie, b. Schönemann, Hardenberg's third wife, whom he married in 1807.
  9. ^ Thielen: Hardenberg. 1967, pp. 332f
  10. ^ Günter de Bruyn : Die Somnambule or Des Staatskanzlers Tod , S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2015
  11. ^ Thielen: Hardenberg. 1967, pp. 332f
  12. a b Friedrich Meusel: Friedrich August Ludwig von der Marwitz: a Brandenburg nobleman in the age of the Wars of Liberation, 1908, vol. 1, p. 679
  13. Roland Schiffter: "... I've always acted smarter ... than the Philistine doctors ..." romantic medicine in Bettina von Arnim's everyday life - and elsewhere. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3307-8 , p. 39f
  14. ^ Thielen: Hardenberg. 1967, pp. 333, 471