Ernst Ludwig Great

Ernst Ludwig Große at the age of 30 (1834)

Ernst Ludwig Große , also Ernst Ludwig Grosse (born August 2, 1802 in Osterode am Harz , † April 1, 1871 in Paris ) was a German poet and legal scholar . He campaigned for the preservation of freedom of the press and freedom of expression in Germany and was a speaker at the Hambach Festival of 1832.

Life

Origin and first attempts as a poet

Ludwig Ernst Große was born on August 2, 1802 in Osterode (Harz) as the son of the court usher and former teacher Christian Wilhelm Große and his wife Johanna Maria Juliane Große (née Mannstaedt). Pushed by his father to become a tailor, he first tried to delve into mathematics so that he could later serve as an artilleryman . At the request of his mother's brother, however, he moved to Hanover in 1819 to attend the local high school. In his uncle's house he fell in love with his cousin Caroline, who was six years older than him, and fathered a child with her. Unmarried, both moved out in February 1821.

Große hoped to receive help from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Weimar . He enclosed with his petition a tragedy called Bertha , which was written in just 14 days , but was rejected and sent on to Leipzig with some travel money and recommendations. Since staying there proved unsuccessful, he returned to Weimar and found accommodation with the writer, philanthropist and “orphan father” Johannes Daniel Falk , the founder of the “Society of Friends in Need”. At Falk's instigation, he studied law in Göttingen , where he met Johann Peter Eckermann and lived with him. In order to earn a living for himself and his family, he began to work as a writer. His childhood friend Wilhelm Hahn put through the printing of the tragedy Count Gordo in his father's bookstore , which Große dedicated to Goethe and Jean Paul . It was premiered at the theater in Hanover. Großer Frau, who received support from Eckermann during his student days, got asylum and accommodation from Grand Duchess Luise at Falk's instigation . In November 1822 Great continued his studies in Leipzig, even to his poet friend Heinrich Wilhelm Stieglitz to follow the due burschenschaftlicher activities from the University of Gottingen relegated had been. Together with him he published the collection of poems, Poems for the Best of the Greeks , in the spring of 1823 . In the autumn he traveled with Stieglitz to Jean Paul in Bayreuth, Ludwig Uhland in Stuttgart and Johann Heinrich Voss in Heidelberg. Back in Leipzig he could have completed his doctorate, but his biographer Hecker points out a number of inconsistencies.

Persecuted as an opposition journalist and speaker in Hambach

In 1824, Große took over correction work for the publisher Heinrich Brockhaus and became a journalist. On October 24, 1824, after the birth of the second child, he married his cousin Caroline Mannstaedt, with whom he will have seven more children. In the following years the family lived in Leipzig and Dresden, where Ludwig Tieck tried to turn Caroline Große into a soubrette . However, two appearances mediated by Tieck in Coburg and Nuremberg were disappointing. In the summer of 1829, Große spent a few months with his family in Nuremberg and Stuttgart. Ludwig Uhland placed him in October 1829 as a proofreader for the Allgemeine Zeitung in Augsburg . In 1830 he moved to Munich, where his wife lived with their four children. According to Gross himself, he was appointed by Cotta as an editor for the official magazine Das Inland . Since April 1830, he has been responsible for editing the Bayerische Blätter printed in Kempten with the Bavarian Chronicle attached from July . With his critical reports and a. However , he made himself unpopular with the government through the Bavarian Chamber . On October 15, 1830, Große was expelled from Bavaria, whereupon he moved to the Württemberg border town of Isny in the Allgäu . During this time he was busy editing the works of Lorenz von Westenrieder . In 1831 he was able to complete the first volume and in July sent a copy to King Ludwig I with the request to lift the banishment . After some back and forth, Große managed to get Ludwig I to stay in Munich at least until the end of 1831 was allowed to stay. When in December he wrote his Farewell! Farewell to the sick poet from Bavaria distributed in the assembly of the estates - a critical-satirical account of government policy - the same was immediately confiscated and banned. Große was arrested on January 26, 1832 and held for two months at the Frohnfeste in Munich. He was released on March 18th on bail, placed by the German Press and Fatherland Association . Große then stayed in Zweibrücken and Pirmasens and met with Philipp Jakob Siebenpfeiffer and Johann Georg August Wirth . He wrote pamphlets, had them printed at his own expense, and distributed appeals. At the Hambach Festival , he gave a speech that has only survived in fragments, in which he reviled some of Germany's rulers and is said to have called for civil arming. In order to avoid the threat of arrest, he fled to Alsace in June 1832. On July 29, 1833, by the appellate court in Landau , Grosse was absent for the "crime of unsuccessful inciting of the inhabitants of the kingdom to arm against the royal authority" and the "violent overthrow of the royal state government through public speeches and pamphlets" Years expulsion from the country, then ten years under police supervision, and sentenced to deprivation of civil and civil rights. In Munich, however, he was charged with lese majesty and attempted high treason with his writing Farewell! accused and sentenced to four years in prison by judgment of October 19, 1833. Attached was the addition that every year at the time of the crime, he would be locked in a dark dungeon with bread and water for three days.

German refugee and citizen in Switzerland

After his escape, Große first lived in Weissenburg , later in Niederbronn and Strasbourg . In the meantime, on August 6, 1832, he had attended a meeting of Germans living in London and German refugees. In January 1833 at the latest, he lived with his wife and children in Switzerland. He temporarily worked as a proofreader for the publisher Heinrich Remigius Sauerländer in Aargau before settling down as a citizen in the Oberstrass community in October 1834 . The journalist Dr. Jakob Eduard Singer, actually a spy for the Central Investigation Authority in Frankfurt, reported in his travel notes Portfolio of a German journalist (1836) that Große, a citizen of Oberstraß, was busy publishing reprints of Goethe's works in Herisau . A message that could already be read in southern German newspapers in December 1835. In fact, between 1835 and 1838, twelve volumes were published in the Literature Comptoir in Herisau. Despite the Oberstaßer citizenship, the family changed their place of residence and residence several times. Driven by financial hardship, Caroline Große and three of her children performed on the Zurich stage. In August 1838, Große accompanied three deputies from the independent community of Oberstrass to solemnly give Louis Napoléon citizenship. A highly controversial action, especially in Zurich, which can possibly be traced back to a great long-term acquaintance with the prince.

Secretary at the Mainz aristocratic association

Grosse lived with his family in Switzerland until around 1844, then in the Prussian Rhine District. Karl Heinrich Brüggemann found him a job with the Kölnische Zeitung . In February 1845, Grosse got in touch with the Association for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas and became its executive secretary and agitator. In this position he was also committed to the project of the so-called Darmstadt forties . A group of young intellectuals and artisans who founded the short-lived settlement of Bettina (Texas) in order to realize primordial communist ideals . When they left, Große had told them that they were not romantic enthusiasts, but a culture-breaking crowd , in order to show over in the new world what German strength and German culture can do when they are free to develop freely The barriers of old Europe unfold . After he had advertised and represented the colonization association for over two years, he dissolved his contract at the end of 1847 after previous conflicts with the association's management. The knowledge and contacts he had acquired led him to Berlin in the spring of 1848, where he wanted to discuss the development of an emigration plan with government representatives.

Berlin 1848

The March Revolution turned its goals in a different direction. With the brochure The shaken royal and threatened bourgeois property, or: what is actually hidden behind the question: whether a republic? or monarchy? Grosse tried to bring himself into discussion as an election candidate for the German parliament. As a tried and tested veteran of freedom and a child of poverty , he spoke out on the workers question, which he declared to be the vital question of the German nation. He recommended a national rescue fund for the organization of trade and labor relations, as well as a general German credit bank for the small trade and craftsmen class. In a pamphlet of May 20, 1848 he advertised his brochure, the 2nd edition of which was self-published for the benefit of poor working-class families . He described himself as a stranger, unknown and unnoticed , who had only been part of the political movement for two weeks. The people should not be satisfied with phrases, but through real improvements, regardless of which party . He therefore carried the people's cry for emergency to the throne . Grosse increasingly sought contact with the Prussian government, presented numerous plans and railed against the democratic weeds and the corrupt literary class in extensive letters . His sincere endeavors to serve the government ( Julius von Minutoli ) were not enough for a hoped-for field of activity, and he was not given a job. At some point, around 1852, Große was expelled from Berlin. Perhaps the unauthorized connection to a woman with whom he had three children during his time in Berlin may have contributed.

End of life in Paris

From Berlin he went to Paris. It is not known what he did for a living there. In Paris in 1856 he published a book entitled Le vrai Napoléonisme . It emerges from it that the great was also financially supported by Louis Napoleon. Große died on April 1, 1871 in a Paris hospital. His wife Caroline died on June 6, 1872 in Speyer. She hadn't heard from her husband in over 20 years.

Act

Rolf Hecker describes Große as an intellectual who was unsuited to be a poet, dealt with a wide range of topics and met numerous men of high standing. Great's first biographer, the national liberal archivist Carl August Hugo Burkhardt, who worked in Weimar, was of the opinion that none of the German poets had received such early appreciation, but had almost been forgotten far away from home. But great early appreciation by Adolf Müllner , who had published several of his poems in the Morgenblatt für educated estates , (No. 82–91) in 1821 , was followed by disappointment in dealing with Goethe. Jean Paul, too, had little more than friendly advice for him. Great political writings, according to Burkhardt, tended more and more to an eccentric, aggressive and erratic style full of satirical allusions. Burkhardt interpreted great, fantastic and eccentric creatures and the resulting irritability as a phenomenon of the times and justified peculiarity of many who stood up for the liberal development of the German fatherland . In fact, however, very different sources convey the picture of a chaotic thinker of high irritability, who lacked inner clarity and calm, who succumbed to self-deception, was unhappy and, despite his humane endeavors, had disintegrated with the world (Julius von Minutoli, quoted from Hecker). His striking fixation on charismatic, authoritarian personalities - from Goethe to Ludwig I, whom he admired at least initially, to Westenrieder, who was exaggerated in his importance, to the two Napoleons - was basically always unwieldy to his plebeian way of thinking, which the Juste milieu despised . Irritable, manic and with no sense of literary change, he polemicized against Moritz Gottlieb Saphir during his years in Munich . Great mocking poems Der neue Hofrath and in particular Die Ballad vom Hofnarrn und Blauspecht were charged with anti-Jewish venom , which contributed to the fact that Saphir was only perceived in German literary history as a vain and self-indulgent humorist.

reception

• Karl Herloßsohn : My emigration from Austria . In: Die Grenzboten , 1845, pp. 49–67, here p. 55
• Ludwig Storch : Swabian poet pranks , 1863

Works

• Bertha , (unprinted tragedy, lost)
• Count Gordo , Hanover 1822
• Poems. Published for the best of the Greeks , Leipzig 1823 (together with Heinrich Steglitz)
• Open letter from a Braunschweig citizen guard , Braunschweig 1830
• Second letter from a Braunschweig citizen guard to the Braunschweig people , Braunschweig 1830
• Appeal of a Silesian militant to his Silesian and Prussian comrades before marching on the Polish border etc. , Kempten 1830
• Lorenz v. Westenrieder's entire works , 29 volumes, Kempten 1831–1838 (In June 1832, Großes Frau entrusted the further publication to an unknown Catholic clergyman from Munich. From volume 11 onwards as editor "Some friends of patriotic literature".)
• Farewell, farewell to the sick poet von Baiern , Augsburg 1831
• To the lady. von Closen, lullaby for my youngest daughter and epistle from an exile from Bavaria to his wife who was left behind in Munich. Three songs from exile with humorous and serious comments , Augsburg 1831
• Songs from Exile , Augsburg 1832
• The new councilor and the ballad of the court jester and blue woodpecker. A breakfast sheet for the nobility. Along with the adieu to the Munich journalists , Augsburg 1832
• The journalist's life and daily history with the great Raimund's magic and fairy opera: The constitutional inconstitutional, or The ordonance and ukase minister in a thousand fears ... Appended The Bockskeller, The Riegelhänke and The Secret Cabinet of Turandot , Augsburg 1832
• The German May , 1832
• The Liberal in Westrich on May 27, 1832 , 1832
• Appeal to Rheinbayern in Germany to protect the oppressed press , 1832
• Le vrai napoléonisme: examen historique et critique sur toutes les questions réstees en suspens depuis 1815 , Paris 1856

Web links

Wikisource: Ernst Ludwig Große  - Sources and full texts

literature

• Hecker Rolf RA: Ernst Ludwig Große A speaker at the Hambach Festival on May 27, 1832 was born 199 years ago in Osterode am Harz; A biographical research about him and his wife Caroline . Munich 2001.
• CAH Burkhardt: Ernst Ludwig Grosse . In: August Sauer (ed.): Euphorion - Journal for the History of Literature . Bamberg 1895, p. 330-344 ( archive.org ).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} C.AH Burkhardt: Ernst Ludwig Grosse . In: August Sauer (ed.): Euphorion - Journal for the History of Literature . Bamberg 1895, p. 330-344 ( archive.org ).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Hecker Rolf RA: Ernst Ludwig Große A speaker at the Hambach Festival on May 27, 1832 was born 199 years ago in Osterode am Harz; A biographical research about him and his wife Caroline . Munich 2001.
3. ^ University of Jena: Große, E .: Graf Gordo. Tragedy. Hanover: Hahn 1822 . (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on July 18, 2017 ; Retrieved January 19, 2013 ( online ). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ Revision writing of the royal. Attorneys Steer in Munich for the royal chamberlain, Karl Freihern v. Closen , Stuttgart 1836, p. 132 (confirmation by the notary Escher, Zurich)
5. ^ Heinrich Jucker: The donation of civil rights from the community of Oberstrass to Prince Louis Napoleon , in: Zürcher Taschenbuch on the year 1880, new series, 3rd year