ETA Hoffmann (Bergengruen)
ETA Hoffmann is a biography by Werner Bergengruen that appeared in Stuttgart in 1939. The narrow ribbon pays homage to the Baltic man from Bergengruen for his compatriot ETA Hoffmann .
content
The life of ETA Hoffmann, which began on January 24, 1776 in Königsberg , is reflected in the chapter headings of the biography:
- Koenigsberg ,
- Glogau and Berlin ,
- The years in Poland ,
- For the second time in Berlin ,
- Bamberg ,
- Dresden and Leipzig as well
- The last time in Berlin .
Hoffmann emerged as a prose author especially in the last years of his life. Before that, the trained lawyer was also successful as a painter, composer and theater maker. For example, he set Goethe's libretto Scherz, List und Rache to music .
Bergengruen presents a number of references between Hoffmann's works and the people who “flowed into them”. In Kater Murr, the reader meets Sophie Doerffer, a sister of Hoffmann's mother, as Aunt Füßchen. The underage Julia Marc from Bamberg, loved by Hoffmann to the chagrin of his wife, also appears in the hangover . In the story Das Majorat , a picture of the Judicial Councilor Voeteri, a brother of the grandmother, is drawn. From the Glogau period, something of the demonic quality of the painter Molinari, who was trained in Rome, found its way into the novella Die Jesuitenkirche in G. A little of the magic of Danzig is captured in the novella The Artus Court. The story Ritter Gluck looks into the abyss of a musician. A Capuchin monastery in Bamberg contributes to the coloring of the devil's elixirs .
Lovable things dominate in the little book: the young Hoffmann avoids the well-attended Kant lecture hall in Königsberg . After the carnival catastrophe , the young lawyer was transferred to Plock as a punishment. The Hoffmann couple named their first daughter Cäcilia - after the patron saint of music. Hoffmann is actually called ETW and not ETA . He "accidentally" turns Wilhelm into an Amadeus - also out of love for the gods of music.
But Hoffmann is also a friend of wine . Hoffmann, of small stature, delicate limbs and yellowish-pale complexion , suffers from stomach ache and headache. Hoffmann sells the old skirt just to be able to eat . And the cannonballs fly: Hoffmann sees himself in the middle of the fray in Dresden when it comes to Napoleon and writes - little impressed by the thunder of cannons - on the Golden Pot . Appointed by the Prussian state on October 1, 1814 as a judge of the chamber court, Hoffmann in Berlin in his last years, despite illness, manages things of pure balance , like Master Martin . The seriously ill died on June 25, 1822 after the worst agony .
literature
- source
- Werner Bergengruen: ETA Hoffmann (= The Little Books of the Ark. 301/302, ZDB -ID 251917-3 ). New edition. Peter Schifferli Verlags AG "Die Arche", Zurich 1960.
- Secondary literature
- Frank-Lothar Kroll (ed.): Word and poetry as a place of refuge in difficult times. Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-7861-1816-7 .
- Gero von Wilpert : Goethe-Lexikon (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 407). Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-40701-9 .
Web links
- Goethe : Jokes, cunning and revenge, Singspiel. Libretto 1784: Setting: ETA Hoffmann around 1801