Edmund Hoefer

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Edmund Hoefer

Edmund Franz Andreas Hoefer (born October 15, 1819 in Greifswald , † May 22, 1882 in Cannstatt ) was a German novelist and literary critic .

biography

Edmund Hoefer came from an old family of scholars, including his brother, the linguist and Indo-Europeanist Albert Hoefer, and their common ancestor, the pastor Johann Cyriacus Höfer . He was the son of the City Court Director Carl Andreas Hoefer (1781-1853) and Christiane Sophie Waldeck († 1834), a sister-in-law of the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauß . After receiving his school-leaving certificate in 1839, Hoefer studied philology and history at the universities of Greifswald, Heidelberg and Berlin , which was followed in 1842 by a shorter period of military service.

Even during his high school days, when he had already written 84 poems similar to ballads, and especially during his student years, Hoefer showed himself to be inclined to be a writer. So it was a matter of course for him that he would not pursue a university or school career, but instead devoted himself more to his poems and novels. Not accepted in society because of his unregulated life, Hoefer surrounded himself with friends such as the Ziemssen family at the Boltenhagen manor, who tolerated his inclination and nature. In addition, in Greifswald he always had to look after his father, who was ailing after the early death of his mother and who was not allowed to know anything about his literary ambitions, and while he passed the time reading aloud. In the meantime, for this reason, Hoefer had some novels and stories published under a pseudonym in the Morgenblatt für educated stands of the Cotta'sche Verlagbuchhandlung in Tübingen . This brought him lasting success and the special recognition of the publishing director personally and thus ultimately the acceptance of his work by his father. In the same way he got in touch with the publisher Adolph Krabbe in Stuttgart, with whom Hoefer also had a number of publications published.

After his father died in 1853 and is now free from family constraints, Edmund Hoefer finally settled in the Stuttgart area. Now, at the request of his father and at the suggestion of August Boeckh , he tried again at a purely scientific work on Greek colonies in Sicily, which he initially submitted as a dissertation to the University of Greifswald . But after this was rejected by Friedrich Wilhelm Barthold , Hoefer submitted it to Jena and he finally received his doctorate here in 1854. In the future, however, he remained true to his actual genre and his new home and in the same year founded the journal Hausblätter together with Friedrich Wilhelm Hackländer , to which many respected writers of the time contributed. Furthermore, Hoefer was active as a recognized and objective literary critic, especially of " beautiful literature ". Here in Stuttgart he found his most successful time and associated with the most influential artists of that day such as Johann Georg Fischer , Ferdinand Freiligrath , Karl Gerok , Karl Mayer , Emma von Suckow and others. Finally he edited the library for our women . From 1881, however, his health was increasingly impaired and died after a long illness on May 22, 1882 in Cannstatt near Stuttgart.

Edmund Hoefer was married to Elise Therese von Rodbertus (1827–1895), daughter of the landowner Christian von Rodbertus in Gransebieth , a cousin of the Prussian minister Johann Karl Rodbertus . With her he had a daughter and a son.

Writing

His early ballads were later followed by lyric poems and love songs and finally the first short stories. Often people and events from his life were incorporated. For example, in the character of the city judge Michael Wohlgemuth in his novel “ Ein Findling ” , he glorified the person and environment of his father or memories from the many conversations with his various friends. He later published his first stories together under the title: " From the people ". With his novel " Norien, Memories of an Old Woman ", he decisively refuted the opinion that his talent was only sufficient for the small space of the novel. However, he was not spared the fact that his talent was initially not properly recognized and appreciated due to a series of productions that was too fast and a certain superficiality associated with it.

Hoefer's advantages lay in his energetic and lively characteristics, in his abundance of life and the atmospheric portrayal of landscapes and domestic surroundings of his characters. A truly poetic streak was revealed in the portrayal of defiant, brittle, closed, but genuine and warm-hearted North German natures, as well as in the lively reproduction of widespread family relationships and hereditary family peculiarities. In his older books " Aus dem Volk ", " Schwanwiek ", " Norien " and others, but also in individual parts of the newer novels, Hoefer clearly rises above the dozen counters. Even his less excellent productions are usually characterized by an excellent description of mostly true events. Even the University of Greifswald proudly mentioned its former student, whose dissertation it had rejected two years earlier, as part of its 400th anniversary celebration in 1856. One of his main works at a later age was undoubtedly the novel about “ Goethe and Charlotte von Stein ”, on the basis of which contemporaries considered him to be more qualified than the pedantic literary critic and Goethe expert Heinrich Düntzer . Numerous letters published by influential contemporary witnesses about his various works, as excerpts from them in the ADB , bear witness to the broad recognition of his life's work.

Publications (selection)

  • The mistress of Dernot . In: The Gazebo . Issue 11-19, 1867.
  • From the people (Stuttgart 1852)
  • Poems (Berlin 1853);
  • From old and new times (Stuttgart 1854);
  • Tales of an old drum (Stuttgart 1855)
  • Moving Life (1856);
  • Norien, Memories of an Old Woman (Stuttgart 1858, 2 volumes)
  • Past days (Prague 1859).
  • German Hearts (Prague 1860);
  • On German soil (Stuttgart 1860, 2 volumes);
  • The Notable Daughter (1861);
  • A story from then (Prague 1861);
  • The ancients von Ruhneck (Stuttgart 1862);
  • In Sünden (Vienna 1863);
  • Under foreign rule (Stuttgart. 1863, 3 volumes);
  • Altermann Ryke (Berlin 1865, 4 volumes);
  • Narrative writings , (Stuttgart 1865, 12 volumes)
  • New Stories (Breslau 1867, 2 volumes);
  • Kleines Leben (1873, 3 volumes);
  • To the left hand (Leipzig 1874);
  • Loyalty wins (Stuttgart 1874);
  • Stories from home (Jena 1874, 2 volumes);
  • Silent stories (Jena. 1874, 3 volumes);
  • The Begging Princess (Bremen 1876);
  • All kinds of ghosts (Stuttgart 1876);
  • German literary history for women (Stuttgart 1876)
  • As the People Speaks , a collection of proverbs (1876)
  • Five New Stories (1877);
  • Dark Windows (1877);
  • Goethe and Charlotte von Stein (Stuttgart 1878).
  • The Junker (1878, 3 volumes); the Low German narrative
  • Pap Kuhn: 'ne story' ut de oll plattdütsch Tid (1878);
  • In the last hour (1881, 2 volumes).
  • Selected writings (Jena 1882, 14 volumes, posthumously).
  • Rolof, the recruit . In: German Novellenschatz . Edited by Paul Heyse and Hermann Kurz. Vol. 12, 2nd ed. Berlin, [1910], pp. 233-295. In: Weitin, Thomas (Ed.): Fully digitized corpus. The German Novellenschatz . Darmstadt / Konstanz, 2016. ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Edmund Hoefer  - Sources and full texts
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personal data
SURNAME Hoefer, Edmund
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Höfer, Edmund Franz Andreas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German novelist and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH October 15, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Greifswald
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1882
Place of death Cannstatt