Ernst Raupach

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Ernst Raupach, portrait of Carl Christian Vogel von Vogelstein (1840)

Ernst Benjamin Salomo Raupach (born May 21, 1784 in Straupitz near Liegnitz , † March 18, 1852 in Berlin ) was a German writer .

Life

Ernst Raupach was the son of the preacher Johann Christoph Raupach († 1794). At the age of 17, Raupach began to study aesthetics, history, mathematics and theology at the University of Halle in the summer of 1801 . He finished his studies in the autumn of 1803 and found a job as a private tutor in Groß-Wirsewitz near Liegnitz .

In 1806 Raupach went to his older brother Johann Friedrich, who had also been a tutor in Russia for several years. Thanks to his support, Raupach soon found a job in the household of Minister Novossitzoff in St. Petersburg . In 1814 Raupach became a private lecturer in German language and history at the University of St. Petersburg and two years later he advanced to full professor there .

In the same year Raupach married the Swiss Cäcilie von Wildermeth in St. Petersburg, who died of childbed fever the following year . In 1817 he was entrusted with a professorship for history and he held this position until June 1822. Then he went on an extensive study trip to and through Italy and did not return to Russia until the spring of 1823. Raupach published his experiences and impressions about this trip under the pseudonym "Hirsemenzel". Later the writer Karl Leberecht Immermann used this name in his Munchausen to parody Raupach .

In August of the same year (1823) Raupach resigned from all his offices. He was in Weimar for a short time, but settled in Berlin forever in 1824. Due to his good contacts to the court in Russia, he also made friends in Weimar with the Grand Duchess Maria Pawlowna and her daughter Augusta . And he soon found access to the circle of the writer Johanna Schopenhauer .

In 1820, Raupach's play Die Fürsten Chawansky premiered with great success . The audience was enthusiastic and Ernst August Friedrich Klingemann saw Raupach as the legitimate successor of Schiller in his criticism . Because of these successes, but also because of his good contacts with the court, Raupach was asked to write a libretto for Agnes von Hohenstaufen (music by Gaspare Spontini ). This opera was premiered on May 18, 1827 on the occasion of the wedding of Princess Marie of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach to Prince Carl of Prussia .

In 1830 the 16-part Hohenstaufen cycle began with the world premiere of Heinrichs Tod , with which he wanted to establish a national theater. In the same year Raupach's social drama Der Müller und seine Kind premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna and was so successful that it was on the repertoire of many theaters every year (mostly on All Saints' Day ) well into the 20th century .

After his success on stage, Raupach was able to negotiate financial improvements to his contracts with the general manager of the royal theater, Count Karl von Brühl, and later with his successor, Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Redern . Raupach's negotiations with Theodor von Küstner were also successful ; later Küstner took this as an opportunity to introduce royalties . From 1846 King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Raupach had this sum paid out as royal honorary salary .

Grave of Ernst Raupach in Berlin-Kreuzberg

A peculiarity of Raupach's stage plays was that he did not treat his subjects as complete in a single piece, but that he allowed details to pass into other pieces by taking up what was known from older pieces in new pieces. Above all, he created certain standing figures that reappeared again and again with slightly different shapes. His "Till" and his village barber "Schelle" can be found in numerous pieces "in all sorts of disguises, in new situations and with new jokes in the mouth".

On May 12, 1848, Raupach married the actress Amalie Pauline Werner in Berlin .

Five weeks before his 68th birthday, Ernst Raupach died on March 18, 1852 of respiratory and lung paralysis . His grave is on the Trinity Cemetery I in Berlin-Kreuzberg in field 2. A pedestal cross made of red granite serves as a grave marker. The writer Ludwig Rellstab wrote an obituary for Raupach in the Allgemeine Zeitung on March 26, 1852 , in which it says:

... And yet Raupach had so rich so viellseitig created for the theater, and much that it was indisputably his plays alone for several years ... form a stage repertoire in the spirit of a finer judgment, a nobler knowledge .

The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences today administers his estate.

reception

Even with his first plays, such as Die Erdennacht , Isidor and Olga or Die Fürsten Chawansky , official theater critics saw Raupach as Friedrich Schiller's successor. However, there was no further development, rather the familiar was repeatedly presented in variations.

Relying on his technical virtuosity in grouping scenes and his skilful verse construction, he avoided any deepening and contented himself with the traditional characteristics and rhetorical platitudes (criticism in the theater world)

Ultimately, everything of his enormous work has survived; only his 16-part cycle Die Hohenstaufen , a series of tragedies ranging from Barbarossa to Konradin , and the play The Miller and His Child are still occasionally discussed. Walter Friedemann's adaptation of Der Müller und seine Kind is the earliest surviving Austrian feature film.

Many of his plays are revealing arrangements of works by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , Friedrich Schiller, various Spanish playwrights and others. Raupach also found his comedies , from classic conversation pieces to farce and anecdotes , to exactly what the audience wanted. His successes such as Der Zeitgeist , Die Schleichhandel or The Sealed Mayor prove his flair for dry wit, humor and above all for situation comedy . Raupach repeatedly made use of parody and satire , which he could sometimes exaggerate, but always use effectively and delightfully.

Heinz Rühmann describes in his autobiography That was it’s his first appearance - around 1917 - on a stage in Raupach's The Miller and His Child : "In the last act in the cemetery, I appeared as a ghost ..."

The contemporary critics , including Carl Leberecht Always man and Friedrich Hebbel was, in part, quite rudely with Raupach to: the former called him again and again as sad caterpillar ; the latter publicly thought about putting Hohenstaufen tapeworms in alcohol . Arguably as he was, Raupach was not behind his colleagues. The young Germany he refused vehemently; Karl Gutzkow , Heinrich Laube but also Robert Prutz he denied any ability. In the last years of his life he also repeatedly called for theater reform through the establishment of a royal private theater, for whose repertoire he highly recommended himself.

Honors

Works (selection)

  • Cromwell. A trilogy. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1841.
    • The Royalists, or Cromwell, General. Tragedy in five acts. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1841. ( digitized part 1 )
    • The Royalists, or Cromwell, Protector. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1844. ( Part 2 )
    • The Royalists or Cromwell's End. Tragedy in five acts. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1844. ( Part 3 )
  • Mirabeau. Historical drama in five acts and a prelude. Association bookstore, Berlin 1850. ( digitized version )
  • Timoleon the Liberator, a dramatic poem. Drechsler, St. Petersburg 1814. ( digitized version )
  • The miller and his child. Folk drama in five acts. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1855. ( digitized version )
  • Lebrecht Hirsemenzels, a German schoolmaster, letters from and about Italy . Verlag Cnobloch , Leipzig 1823. ( digitized version )
  • Tasso's death . Tragedy in 5 acts. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1835.
  • Dramatic works of a comic genre . Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1828–35.
  1. Rest the dead, criticism and anti-criticism, conversion . 1829.
  2. The surreptitious dealer, the changer, think of Caesar . 1832.
  3. Ring in the moon, The stepfather, The sonnet . 1834.
  4. The hostile brothers or homeopath and Allopath, The Zeitgeist, The Nose Thug . 1835.
  • Dramatic works of a serious genre . Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1830–1843. (16 vols.)
  • The school of life. Drama in five acts based on an old novel. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1841. ( digitized version )
  • A hundred years ago, or: old Dessauer and Vice Rector Langer. Large comic character painting from the previous century in 4 sections . circa 1839.

Film adaptations

The film The Miller and His Child is considered to be the oldest fully preserved feature film in Austria.

literature

Web links

Commons : Ernst Raupach  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gotthilf Weisstein: On Raupach's hundredth birthday. In: Berliner Tageblatt. May 21, 1884, morning edition, p. 2.
  2. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 227.
  3. ↑ Heinz Rühmann: That's it. 4th edition. Ullstein, 1994, ISBN 3-550-08500-1 , p. 26.
personal data
SURNAME Raupach, Ernst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Raupach, Ernst Benjamin Solomon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet of dramas and comedies
DATE OF BIRTH May 21, 1784
PLACE OF BIRTH Straupitz near Liegnitz
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1852
Place of death Berlin