Der Biedermann (Moral Weekly)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Der Biedermann , title page from April 19, 1728

Der Biedermann was a moral weekly in the early days of the Enlightenment . The journal was published in Leipzig from 1727 to 1729 and was written and published by Johann Christoph Gottsched under the pseudonym "Ernst Wahrlieb Biedermann". Already in 1728 and 1729 two collected editions followed in book form.

Author and editor

The author and editor was Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700 to 1766), a German writer , dramaturge , linguist and literary theorist of the Enlightenment .

Johann Christoph Gottsched, painting by Leonhard Schorer, 1744

Gottsched had fled to Leipzig in 1724 in order to avoid forced recruitment by Prussian recruiters. In Leipzig he held lectures at the university from 1725 and very soon became active as a journalist: The first edition of Biedermann appeared on May 1, 1727. The paper was Gottsched's second journalistic project, after he had published the magazine Die Vernutenigen Tadlerinnen from 1725 to 1726 had brought out.

Topics and program

Gottsched himself described Biedermann as a “new moral script”. He wanted, so he wrote in the first issue of May 1727, to show his reader vice "in its natural nakedness" so that he can "hate and avoid" all negative habits. The paper thus follows the tradition of its time, which believes in the improvement of people through education.

Scope and format

The honest man was printed on a simply folded sheet. The fold resulted in four quarto-sized pages

The Biedermann appeared once a week with four pages in quarto format . The models were the first English weeklies by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele and the Patriot from Hamburg, who set the tone for Germany . Der Biedermann also resembled these journals in appearance with the large title, the date line and the quote preceding each number.

Web links

literature

  • Ball, Gabriele: Moral kisses. Gottsched as magazine editor and literary mediator (= The Eighteenth Century. Supplementa, Vol. 7), Göttingen 2000.
  • Gottsched, Johann Christoph: The honest man. A selection , ed. and with an afterword by Marianne Wehr (= Insel-Bücherei, no. 855), Leipzig 1966.
  • Krebs, Roland: Gottscheds enlightening discourse in his Moralische Wochenschrift, Der Biedermann '(1727–1729) , in: Sophia Misia Doms and Bernhard Walcher (ed.), Periodische Erzieh des Menschengeschlechts, Bern 2012, pp. 67–82.

proof

  1. ↑ Article on Gottsched, Johann Christoph von Michael Bernays in: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie
  2. ↑ Biographical sketch of Johann Christoph Gottsched in: Bibliotheca Augustana
  3. ↑ Entry on the keyword Moralische Wochenschriften in: Universal-Lexikon
  4. ↑ Der Biedermann , first sheet (May 1, 1727), see also: Scan of the Bibliotheca Augustana
  5. ↑ Ball, Gabriele: Moral kisses. Gottsched as magazine editor and literary intermediary , Göttingen 2000, GoogleBooks