poet and thinker

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Poet and Thinker is a standing phrase that denotes the combination of art and science in one person or group. Usually the Germans are referred to as the people of poets and thinkers and Germany as the land of poets and thinkers . Occasionally - for example in tourist contexts - there is also talk of a certain city ​​of poets and thinkers , including Weimar , Jena or Tübingen .

Word history

The phrase is a twin formula . Its author is unknown, but it was coined in the early 19th century and is a "formulaic description" for the Germans. The common phraseological reference works trace their origin back to the writer Johann Karl August Musäus , who wrote in a preliminary report to Mr. David Runkel, thinker and sexton ... about his folk tales of the Germans (1782–1786): “What would be the enthusiastic people of our thinkers, poets , Schweber, seer without the happy influences of the imagination? ”Musäus had already used the phrase“ thinker and poet ” in his Physiognomische Reisen , which Saul Ascher also used in his polemic Germanomanie (1815); he wrote about "the thinkers and poets who raised Germany's culture to a high level of education in the eighteenth century". At the turn of the 19th century, according to Wolfgang Mieder, Jean Paul established the reversal of this formula to “poets and thinkers”, but still without reference to the Germans.

Reference to the Germans in the 19th century

Various people have been credited with coining the use of the formula in connection with the Germans, including the literary historian Wolfgang Menzel , who began his survey of German literature in 1828 as follows:

“The Germans don't do much, but they write all the more. When a citizen of the coming centuries looks back at the present point in German history, he will think of more books than people. [...] He will say we slept and dreamed in books. [...] The intelligent German people love to think and write, and they always have time to write. "

Others have seen the origin in the dedication of the work Ernest Maltravers or the Eleusinia (1837) by Edward Bulwer : "To the great German people, a race of thinkers and of critics".

The French writer Madame de Staël spoke of the Germans as the poetic and thinking people in her book De l'Allemagne , which appeared in England in 1813 after it was banned in France in 1810 :

“Since the distinguished men of Germany are not gathered in one and the same city, they hardly see each other at all and are only in contact with each other through their writings. ... The German writers are only concerned with theories, with learning, with literary and philosophical investigations, and that was nothing to fear for the mighty of this world. "

The claim that is sometimes made that de Staël shaped the turn of poets and thinkers cannot be substantiated.

The romanticizing image of Germany by intellectual elites unrelated to politics spread throughout the Mediterranean, while it was accepted with pride in the German-speaking area, for example at Klopstock in his German Republic of Scholars . The linguist Hans-Georg Müller sees the phrase as "mostly used by Germans in an arrogant manner".

The German scholar Günter Schäfer-Hartmann related the emergence of this turn to the intellectual history of the 19th century: It is related to the idea, represented by Jacob Grimm , among others , that there is a folk spirit that shapes the people into a poetic collective and thus, apart from the “art poetry” of courtly tradition, produce a “natural poetry” that is “peculiar to the German people”. Schäfer-Hartmann also locates Robert Prutz in this discourse , who wrote in his essay The Political Poetry of the Germans in 1845:

“The German people are not a people of action [...]. We are the wise woman of world history, the great ideologues who teach the nations philosophy and poetry and art and, in short, in all things that do not require getting up from your chair to do them; we also conquer the world, but not with swords, but with doctrines and poems. "

Nostalgia in the 20th and 21st centuries

In the 20th century, the phrase was increasingly used as a reminder and reminder of the great age of the Classical and Romantic periods . For example, wrote Thomas Mann in his published 1945 collection of essays nobility of spirit over Adelbert von Chamisso , this has become the beginning of the 19th century "from a French boy, a German poet": "A German poet: this was something in those days in the world. The word of the people of poets and thinkers stood in its full validity. [...] To be a German almost meant being a poet. But even more: being a poet almost meant being a German. ”In 1956, Friedrich Dürrenmatt addressed“ To the Swiss and the Germans ”:“ We are no longer a people of shepherds, any more than you are a people the poet and thinker. "

"People of judges and executioners" and other variations

The phrase has been modified many times. A well-known example is the satirist Karl Kraus , who in The Last Days of Mankind let the “nagger” (his literary alter ego ) speak of the “people of judges and executioners”: “German education is not a content, but a decorative home to whom the people of judges and executioners adorned their emptiness. " Wolfgang Mieder was able to prove this anti-quote for the first time in a poem by Oscar Blumenthal in 1904, while Friedrich Nietzsche had already written in 1882/83" I am going to ruin as a judge and executioner ". According to Mieder, the modification with reference to the Nazi regime has become an "independent" devilish word ". Bertolt Brecht, for example, took up these terms in a poem: "The poets and thinkers / Holt in Germany the executioner." And Erwin Chargaff stated in 1962: "The people of judges and executioners gave way to the people of guards and butchers." Wolfgang Mieder has compiled a number of references to the starting formula in literary and journalistic texts, some of which have referred to the PISA shock .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Wolfgang Frühwald among others: Are we still the people of poets and thinkers? Winter, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-8253-1556-8 .
  2. ↑ Weimar - classic city of poets and thinkers. @ Urlaubsland-thueringen.de, accessed on May 29, 2020
  3. ↑ City of Poets and Thinkers: Travel to Jena @ merkur.de, accessed on May 29, 2020
  4. ^ Tübingen: City of Poets and Thinkers @ dw.com, accessed on May 29, 2020
  5. ^ A b Hans-Georg Müller: Adleraug und Luchsenohr: German twin formulas and their use. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009, p. 158 f.
  6. ↑ Margit Raders: You may use me. On the topicality of quotations from Goethe. In: Csaba Földes (ed.): Res humanae proverbiorum et sententiarum. Ad honorem Wolfgangi bodice. Gunter Narr, Tübingen 2004, pp. 267–278, here p. 268.
  7. ↑ The great lexicon of proverbial sayings. Freiburg 1991, p. 318 f .; Duden phrases. 2008, p. 827; Georg Büchmann : Winged words. Berlin 1961, p. 162.
  8. ↑ With the reference that the expression goes back to Musäus, quoted from Gottfried Honnefelder, Anne-Katrin Leenen: Intellectual property: protective right or exploitation title? (= Library of Property. Vol. 5). Springer, Heidelberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-540-77749-6 , chapter The “people of poets and thinkers” without protection of their intellectual property? Pp. 47–56 (preview) .
  9. ^ Johann Karl August Musäus : Physiognomische Reisen. 3rd issue, 1779, p. 101 .
  10. ↑ Saul Ascher: The Germanomania. Sketch for a time painting. Achenwall, Berlin 1815, p. 18 f. Friedrich Kainz establishes the connection with the “people of poets and thinkers” ; ders .: classic and romantic. In: Friedrich Maurer , Heinz Rupp (Ed.): Deutsche Wortgeschichte. Vol. 2. De Gruyter, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-11-003619-3 , p. 338 .
  11. ↑ Wolfgang Mieder : "Entflügelte Words". Modified quotations in literature, media and caricatures (= cultural motivational studies. Vol. 16). Praesens, Vienna 2016, pp. 416–431, here p. 416 with evidence of the use in his Aesthetic Views 1808 on p. 417.
  12. ↑ See for example Günter Schäfer-Hartmann: History of literature as true history: Reception of the Middle Ages in German literary historiography of the 19th century and political instrumentalization of the Middle Ages by Prussia. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009, p. 134 ; Torsten Unger: Goethe's critic: Prince servant and idiot reptile. Sutton, Erfurt 2012, p. 114 .
  13. ^ Wolfgang Menzel: The German literature. 2nd, increased edition (first 1828). Hallberg, Stuttgart 1836, p. 3 f.
  14. ↑ dedication ; Georg Büchmann represented this interpretation in his classic Geflügelte Words (19th edition, 1898, p. 311 ) and later Friedrich Kainz : Klassik und Romantik. In: Friedrich Maurer , Heinz Rupp (Ed.): Deutsche Wortgeschichte. Vol. 2. De Gruyter, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-11-003619-3 , p. 338 .
  15. ^ Germaine de Staël: Germany. Translated from the French. 1. Volume, Reutlingen 1815, p. 111 f.
  16. ↑ Wolfgang Mieder : "Entflügelte Words". Modified quotations in literature, media and caricatures (= cultural motivational studies. Vol. 16). Praesens, Vienna 2016, pp. 416–431, here p. 427.
  17. ↑ Hanna Milling: The foreign in the mirror of the self: Germany since the fall of the wall from the point of view of French, Italian and Spanish Germany experts. Berlin 2010, p. 88.
  18. ↑ Klopstock's Republic of Scholars (with classification) in Literatur-Live.de , accessed on January 11, 2014.
  19. ↑ Quotations and train of thought after Günter Schäfer-Hartmann: History of literature as true history: Reception of the Middle Ages in German literary historiography of the 19th century and political instrumentalization of the Middle Ages by Prussia. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009, also dissertation, University of Kassel, 2008, pp. 133–135 .
  20. ↑ Walter Boehlich : Are we still a people of poets and thinkers? In: Die Zeit , February 14, 1964; Hans Meyer : The word of the poets and thinkers. In: Die Zeit , April 10, 1964.
  21. ↑ Quoted from Heinrich Detering et al. (Hrsg.): Große Frankfurter Ausgabe. Thomas Mann: Essays I, 1893-1914. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 250 f. First with Thomas Mann: Chamisso. In: ders .: nobility of the spirit. Sixteen attempts to the problem of humanity. Bermann, Stockholm 1945, pp. 26–48. This passage is cited as a reference for the use of poets and thinkers in Hans-Georg Müller: Adleraug und Luchsenohr: German twin formulas and their use. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2009, p. 159 .
  22. ↑ Wolfgang Mieder : "Entflügelte Words". Modified quotations in literature, media and caricatures (= cultural motivational studies. Vol. 16). Praesens, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-7069-0863-4 , chapter “The people of poets and thinkers”, pp. 416–431, here p. 420.
  23. ↑ z. B. "Land of poets and hobbyists", "Land of poets and drinkers", "Land of poets and twilight", "Land of poets and stinkers"
  24. ^ Karl Kraus: Die last Tage der Menschheit, Vienna - Leipzig, 1919 p. 173 , in the Internet Archive .
  25. ↑ With contextualization, quoted from Joachim W. Storck: Karl Kraus - an antipode of identities. In: Ariane Huml, Monika Rappenecker (eds.): Jewish intellectuals in the 20th century. Literature and cultural history studies. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003, pp. 99–118, here p. 107 f.
  26. ↑ Oscar Blumenthal: Klingende Arrows, Berlin, 1904, page 8.
  27. ↑ Wolfgang Mieder : "Entflügelte Words". Modified quotations in literature, media and caricatures (= cultural motivational studies. Vol. 16). Praesens, Vienna 2016, pp. 416–431, here p. 416. Ibid, p. 418 f., Mieder also refers to the first use of the “people of judges and executioners” by Kraus in Die Fackel , January 31, 1908, P. 11, out.
  28. ↑ Wolfgang Mieder : "Entflügelte Words". Modified quotations in literature, media and caricatures (= cultural motivational studies. Vol. 16). Praesens, Vienna 2016, pp. 416–431, here p. 420.
  29. ↑ Wolfgang Mieder : "Entflügelte Words". Modified quotations in literature, media and caricatures (= cultural motivational studies. Vol. 16). Praesens, Vienna 2016, pp. 416–431, passim, on PISA p. 428.