The Horen (Schiller)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
The hearing

description German literary magazine
publishing company Cotta'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Tübingen
First edition 1795
attitude 1797
editor Friedrich Schiller

The Horen was a literary magazine published by Friedrich Schiller from 1795 to 1797 . It appeared monthly in the Cotta'sche publishing bookstore in Tübingen .

Due to the collaboration of leading representatives of culture in Germany, it is considered a founding element of the Weimar Classicism and had a great influence on German intellectual history.

history

In 1794 the publisher Johann Friedrich Cotta planned a political daily newspaper. But Schiller, who had become more and more alien to politics in view of the events of the French Revolution , wanted a journal for world citizens devoted to philosophy and art. Schiller and Cotta agreed on two projects: On the one hand, a political magazine, “Die Europäische Annalen”, which, as the “ Allgemeine Zeitung ”, became the most important newspaper of the 19th century, although Schiller had withdrawn after a short time.

On the other hand, the contract for "Die Horen" was signed. Schiller was able to win not only Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , but also Johann Gottlieb Fichte , Wilhelm von Humboldt and Karl Ludwig von Woltmann and others as employees . The publication was discontinued in 1797, but "Die Horen" remained the model for demanding magazine projects. It is not uncommon to find comparisons or allusions to Schiller's journal in journals.

Goethe's fairy tale first appeared in "Den Horen" in 1795 .

Announcement "Die Horen"

In his announcement for the magazine “Die Horen”, published in 1794, Friedrich Schiller explained the intentions he was pursuing with his upcoming magazine. In doing so, he tries to gain attention only through a deliberate separation from the topics of the social and political situation that are probably typical for this time -

"... It should be dedicated to entertainment ... In the midst of this political turmoil, it should close a close, confidential circle for muses and Charitin women ..."

in order to then bring the topic back to society.

Schiller describes society as what it is fundamentally completely self-evident, an organ of the masses, in which he grants his magazine a special status, because it finally reflects on traditional ideals, the higher interests, the purely human, which is beyond doubt . The magazine should devote pure passion-free entertainment to the reader without addressing current issues, the current political or secular situation.

Nevertheless, Schiller does not want to distance himself completely from reality; he wants to try to discuss the past on the basis of history, which is a very typical topic for the Enlightenment, and the future on the basis of philosophy, in order to bring true humanity to light. Schiller deliberately neglects the present in order to avoid an opinion-heated dialogue.

Schiller is of the opinion that if people reflect on the ideals present in (ancient) philosophy and history, this automatically brings about a change in society. Schiller thus pursues the intention to bring these ideals closer to the reader again, to lead him away from the thought of the masses and to direct interest to his own situation as an individual in society:

"But the more the limited interest of the present tensions, restricts and subjugates the minds ... the greater the need to set them free again."

Schiller would like to see this change take place first, in order to make social, scientific and political revolutions possible. He tries to present the magazine as a union of the “beautiful” and the learned world and thus to combine art and science in a “circle”. It becomes very clear that the magazine wants to stand out clearly from topics that could be of interest to the individual.

Meaning of the name

The Horen are as daughters of Zeus and Themis figures of Greek mythology. They are the goddesses of the seasons, the beautiful and the order. Kindly they watch over human work and, as Homer reports in the Iliad, watch over the gates of heaven by pushing the thick clouds away or forward under the roar of thunder. Goethe with his Propylaea and also the Romantics with their magazine Athenäum are not only programmatically but also mythologically in the tradition of Schiller's Horen. With the title of his journal, Goethe already leads the audience through the guarded gate into the entrance hall of the sanctuary. The Atheneum magazine finally shows with its name that it understands the Greek temple itself as the gathering moment.

On the title page of Kleist's Phöbus (1808), the Apollowagen is directed by the Horen.

The assumption of a reference to this very picture is obvious when Goethe writes in his Faust II: Listen! Listen to the storm of the Horen! / There is a sound for the ears of the spirit / The new day is already born. / Rock gates creak with a rattle, / Phöbus' wheels roll with a clatter, / What a din the light brings!

Kurt Morawietz's literary magazine “ Die Horen ”, which has been published quarterly since 1955, first in Hanover and later in Bremerhaven and Göttingen, is based on the great model.

Reasons for publication

For Friedrich Schiller, economic reasons also played a role in the publication. The poet wanted and had to finally create a secure annual income. At that time Goethe earned ten times as much as he did. The ideal goal of this ambitious project was to unite the cultural nation of Germany, which had no capital, through a main magazine and intellectual centralization. The great authors of the time and the extensive public as a whole were to form that culture nation. Schiller dreamed of a cultural union of Germans in a literary association.

Programmatic demands and consequences

The magazine saw itself as an open association of the beautiful and learned world, which wanted to reach the educated lay public as well as the academics. The hearing combined the fine arts and the sciences in a process of mutual formation. The magazine only contained articles that were of general interest and provided more than entertainment. Contributions that could divide the audience or even tear the cultural nation apart were avoided. This meant that political and religious topics were largely taboo, as they were otherwise taken up by the journals.

In the Horen there were many contributions from the field of historical studies , future developments in philosophy were also lively discussed, but the present was left out, as mentioned above. Because it was feared that contemporary history would carry the image of the impure party spirit (impure = disorder, particularism) into a world where purity (= impartiality) was considered a law. Although political issues were not specifically addressed, the magazine contained anti-revolutionary accents resulting from the task of promoting “true humanity”.

Historical-philosophical ideal

Dream of refined humanity and pure humanism. The high status of art is that of bringing together the form and the inner content as a mediator of truth and beauty (concept of aesthetic education ).

Philosophy of humanity

Freedom from the political and ideal space under the sign of truth and beauty; "Freedom from political to aesthetic concept".

Napoleon once said: “Politics is the fate of itself.” The hearing, for its part, is the “world-preserving order from which all good flows”. As goddesses, they are anti-revolutionary and full of beautiful humanity. But they also show the flight of the spirits from the temporal to the temporal order as the mortgage of the German classical period.

swell

  1. ↑ Cf. Friedrich Schiller: Die Horen, a monthly publication, written by a society and published by Schiller, December 10, 1794

Web links

Wikisource: complete table of contents  - sources and full texts