Wanderlust
Wanderlust describes the human longing to leave familiar relationships and to explore the wide world. The word "wanderlust" is literally the opposite of homesickness , the longing for home .
Word history
The word creation is attributed to Prince Pückler-Muskau , who used the word several times in his widely read travel stories from 1835 onwards. The word is formed in analogy to the older word "homesickness". In Pückler's biography it says in 1843: "Pückler says somewhere in his writings that he never suffers from homesickness, but rather from wanderlust". It was mainly used in poetic and educational language. In the 20th century, the term was adopted in advertising language in connection with tourism . The artificial creation of "wanderlust" through images and representations of distant countries became an important global economic factor.
A comparable, somewhat older word is wanderlust . Alternative word creations like "stork or crane feeling" did not spread. In 1873 it says: “Professor Dr. Erdmann [...] describes this characteristic wandering instinct with the name of the stork or crane feeling. Prince Pückler-Muskau gives it the equally significant name of wanderlust. ”For comparable behavior patterns of animals, the words wandering instinct (zoology) or migratory unrest are preferably used, which refer to the externally visible behavior, while“ wanderlust ”almost always with reference to people is needed. Specific German word creations such as Heimweh, Wanderlust or Fernweh with their connotations do not always have exact equivalents in other cultures and therefore play a role in German foreign language lessons.
Concept history
The German classics - Schiller and Goethe - did not yet know the word "Fernweh". In Schiller's drama Maria Stuart , the captive queen is gripped by sadness at the sight of moving clouds. This clearly shows that the two words wanderlust and homesickness try to classify feelings that need not necessarily be different as feelings. The lines are:
“ Where the gray mountains of mist rise,
My empire's frontier begins,
And these clouds that chase after noon,
They seek France's distant ocean.
Hurrying clouds! Sailors of the skies!
Whoever walked with you, sailed with you!
Greet me kindly my youth country! "
Goethe remembered the campaign in France in 1822 , 30 years earlier. On his way back from France in 1792, when he arrived in Koblenz, he could travel home to his wife and children in Weimar or to his mother in Frankfurt am Main. However, at the sight of the flowing water of the Rhine, a "feeling of escape" seized him:
“I feared any continuation of the warlike situation, and the feeling of escape seized me again. I would like to call this a reverse homesickness, a longing for space instead of tightness. I stood, the splendid river lay in front of me: it led down so gently and lovingly, in a vast, wide landscape; it flowed to friends with whom, despite some changes and turns, I always remained loyally connected. From the strange, violent world I asked for the breast of friends, and so after my vacation I hurriedly rented a boat to Düsseldorf, recommending my Chaise Koblenz friends who were still staying behind, with a request to take them down to me. "
literature
- Friedrich Kluge : Homesickness: An Attempt at Word History , 1901 ( online at Archive.org )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Friedrich Kluge : Heimweh: Ein Wortgeschichtlicher Attempt , 1901, p. 40
- ^ Hermann von Pückler-Muskau : Penultimate Weltgang von Semilasso , Stuttgart 1835, p. 236. Online
- ↑ August Jäger (von Schlumb) : The life of the Prince of Pückler-Muskau , Metzler 1843, p. 191 f. On-line
- ↑ Rudolph von Kyaw: Contribution to travel literature. A passport online
- ↑ Gabriele Schweller: Goal C1: German as a foreign language. Teacher's Guide, Volume 1 , Hueber-Verlag 2011, p. 62. Online
- ^ Friedrich Schiller : Maria Stuart , 1801. Online
- ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Campaign in France , 1822. Online