Felix Schumann (poet)

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Felix Schumann at the age of 18. The picture comes from a photo series by the London photo studio Elliott & Fry , which was taken by Felix with his mother Clara during his stay in England in 1872.

Walter Alfred Felix Schumann (born June 11, 1854 in Düsseldorf , † February 16, 1879 in Frankfurt am Main ) was the youngest child from the musician marriage of Robert Schumann and Clara Schumann .

He became known through the setting of some of his poems by the composer Johannes Brahms .

Life

Origin and youth

Felix Schumann's life was shrouded in a particular tragedy from his birth. On February 27, 1854, his father threw himself from the Düsseldorf Rhine bridge into the river and was taken to the mental hospital in Endenich near Bonn. His mother Clara Schumann was faced with the struggle for existence with her seven underage children. Johannes Brahms stood by her side as a loyal, caring friend during this difficult time. He also became a godfather when Felix was baptized on January 1, 1855. His father expressly requested the name Felix (Latin for "the lucky one") in memory of his friend Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy . Robert Schumann had never seen his son, with whose fate this name, as it turned out, did not harmonize at all. Johannes Brahms loved Felix like his own son.

From numerous letters it can be read that Felix had a very close relationship with his mother and siblings (especially his eldest sister Marie, * 1841). Since Clara Schumann often had to leave her children alone for professional reasons, they exchanged intense letters through letters.

From 1863 to 1872 Felix attended the Joachimsthal High School in Berlin and stayed with his teacher, Professor Hermann Planer, during this time. Clara's letters to Brahms show that he was not a very diligent student at first and that his mother was worried about this. In a letter from Munich on April 26, 1866, she reproached Felix that he was not learning enough and that his grades were not satisfactory. Clara did a lot to give her children the best possible education. Felix would have liked to become a musician at first, but his mother and Joseph Joachim advised against it, because he would have been constantly measured against the performance of his parents, which would have meant a lot of pressure. Clara did not rate his talent as an excellent musician so highly that she would have encouraged him in his wishes. Felix passed his high school diploma with flying colors and was allowed to travel to England in March 1872, where his mother was engaged at the time. The above photo of the young Felix Schumann was also taken there.

Felix then decided to go to Heidelberg in the spring of 1872 to study law there. He did not feel a great inclination for this subject, as did his father 43 years earlier. He threw himself into the joys of student life and soon fell into debt. As early as April 1872 he complained in a letter to his sister Marie about his financial difficulties. In October 1872 he was in such a difficult financial position that he confessed everything to his mother. At that time she had other worries (her daughter Julie, who was expecting her third child, suffered from a lung disease and was not doing well; her son Ludwig was in a mental institution at the time with a mental illness). Nevertheless, Clara Schumann apparently traveled to Heidelberg to help her son out of a tight spot. He confessed to her that he had lost the money gambling. During this stay - at which Clara also gave a concert - Julie died in Paris . Clara said nothing to anyone and appeared anyway. This emerges from the diary entries of Clara Schumann; Letters relating to this are no longer available.

But now Felix apparently had to help repair the damage. In December 1872 he wrote to his sister Marie that he had sold his piano with a heavy heart. Aware of his guilt, he asked at the same time whether the mother had not experienced tangible relief from a payment from the Schumann Foundation in the amount of 50,000 Reichstalers. Apparently Felix never "relapsed" again in later years. Rather, he kept saying in his letters that he regretted having caused so much worry and expense to his mother. During his stay in Italy and Switzerland, he gave lessons in German and music to contribute to these costs. He asked Joseph Joachim for a violin, which his sisters who were staying with him at the time disapproved. They felt that he should do more to take at least part of the cost off the mother.

He evidently showed tender love and trust in his mother (letter of June 1, 1876 from Zurich ).

At Christmas 1871 Felix presented his mother with a small collection of poems. His poem Meine Liebe ist green like the lilac bush and two others were set to music by Brahms and included in Brahms' songbooks. This made them popular.

Sickness and death

Honorary grave of Felix Schumann in the Frankfurt main cemetery

In 1872 Felix contracted pulmonary tuberculosis , which drove him from place to place for five years. In autumn 1874 he stayed in Weißenburg, Montreux , and from February 1875 to the end of 1876 in Engelberg, Meran . In 1877 he lived in Zurich , then for several months in southern Italy ( Palermo , Naples , Capri ), always in the hope of recovery from the insidious disease. In between he stayed with his mother in Baden-Baden , where she had bought a house as a meeting place for the whole family. Many of the poems that appear in the collection of poems Meine Liebe ist green as a lilac tree come from this time . They reflect emotional events, longing, hope and finally the renunciation of the sick.

Felix always hoped to recover. In the winter of 1876/1877 he was already planning to resume his studies, although he did not want to continue the unpopular law degree, but instead enlisted in the philosophy faculty in Zurich in the spring of 1877. He had never thought before that writing could become his profession, but it still seemed logical to acquire knowledge of it. However, when he planned to publish some works, Clara again warned him against rash decisions and so nothing was published during his lifetime, except for the three mentioned songs that Brahms set to music.

In the spring of 1878 Felix Schumann's health was very bad. At Clara’s request, Brahms visited him in Naples, accompanied by the doctor Theodor Billroth . This probably gave him little hope of recovery. In the summer of 1878 Felix pleaded with him to be allowed to come home. In the meantime, however, Clara had given up her house in Baden-Baden and moved to Frankfurt. So at the beginning of the following year she brought him to the Dettweiler sanatorium in Falkenstein im Taunus. At the urging of Felix, whose condition was getting worse and worse, she took him to Frankfurt at Myliusstrasse 32.

According to his mother's diary, Felix Schumann died on Sunday, February 16, 1879, at 3 a.m. in Frankfurt and was buried there too. However, February 18, 1879 was noted in the official documents and on the tombstone; this was probably the day of his funeral.

Felix Schumann as a poet

Facsimile, poem: " My love is green as the lilac bush "

He wrote a number of poems during his youth and university years and his long illness. It was not published during his lifetime, apart from the songs set to music by Brahms.

Brahms used three poems by his godchild Felix Schumann in his compositions:

  • The most famous poem is My love is green like the lilac bush . Published as op 63, issue 2, no.6 in Junge Lieder no.1
  • When the evening wind comes around the elder . Also published in op. 63, volume 2 Junge Lieder .
  • There roaring waves of love, Op. 86, No. 5, appeared there. The headline “Sunken” seems to come from Brahms.

Other unpublished works are by Felix Schumann:

  • Epic for the Brandenburg Reformation Festival on November 2, 1871 - titled: Flight of Christoph von Württemberg
  • "Cejanus" - a tragedy in five acts whose hero is Etius Cejanus, prefect of the Pretorians under Tiberius Claudius Nero
  • In 1887 two mysteries "The Lost Paradise" and "The Deluge" were created
  • 1876 ​​"The Golden Age" and "An Interlude"
  • 1871 a translation of the three-act dramatic poem "Manfred" by Byron.

Furthermore the text for a cantata "Penelope" for choir and individual parts, which he wrote for his uncle Woldemar Bargiel . The planned setting then probably no longer took place.

literature

Works

  • My love is green like the lilac bush , poems by Felix Schumann, ed. by Max Flesch-Thebesius , Stuttgart 1947

swell

The handwritten estate of Felix Schumann consists of a large number of poems and letters, mainly to his mother and his eldest sister Marie, as well as his former teacher Professor Planer in Berlin. The entire literary estate as well as the private correspondence are archived in the Robert Schumann House in Zwickau . The original of the picture by Felix Schumann and the handwritten original of the poem are also in the Robert Schumann House in Zwickau.

Poems by Felix Schumann - from the estate of his sister Eugenie Schumann - are also in the Bonn City Archives, including an autograph of an 83-line poem Am Grabe R. Schumann / Bonn the Elder. Aug. 20, 1873 and several handwritten writings of poems that Clara Schumann kept in an envelope that bears the note in her handwriting “Gedichte v. Felix ". The poems were shown in the exhibition "Clara Schumann 1819-1896", which opened in Bonn on the 100th anniversary of Clara Schumann's death in 1996.

Furthermore:

  • Letters from the years 1853–1896. By Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms , on behalf of Marie Schumann ed. by Berthold Litzmann, 2 volumes, Hildesheim [u. a.] 1970 (reprint of the Leipzig 1927 edition)

Representations

  • Max Flesch-Thebesius: Epilogue to My love is green like a lilac bush , poems by Felix Schumann, ed. by Max Flesch-Thebesius, Stuttgart 1947.
  • Berthold Litzmann: Clara Schumann: an artist's life. Based on diaries and letters , 3 volumes, Leipzig 1902ff. (numerous other editions).
  • Eugenie Schumann: Clara's children . With an afterword by Eva Weissweiler and poems by Felix Schumann, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-920862-05-8 .
  • Eugenie Schumann: Memories , Stuttgart 1925 (numerous other editions).
  • Renate Hofmann: Clara Schumann and her sons , Sinzig 1997, pp. 27–40, Series Schumann Studies 6. On behalf of the Robert Schumann Society Zwickau ed. v. G. Nauhaus.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schumann, Felix
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schumann, Walter Alfred Felix (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Son of Robert Schumann and Clara Schumann
DATE OF BIRTH June 11, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1879
Place of death Frankfurt am Main