Friedrich August Weber
Friedrich August Weber (born January 24, 1753 in Heilbronn ; † January 21, 1806 there ) was a city doctor , writer and composer .
biography
Weber was born in Heilbronn as the son of the city doctor Christian Friedrich Gottlieb Weber (1727–1770). His musical interest was awakened at a young age by the harp masters Widmann and Saueracker from Augsburg, who were visiting Heilbronn , whereupon Weber's father sent the boy to singing lessons and to a piano teacher. Due to a sore throat he had to give up singing at the age of eight and from then on devoted himself to the piano and the violin, which he learned autodidactically after a succinct instruction. At the age of ten he composed his first unanimous movements, and in the following year he composed an eight-part symphony. In 1764 he received violin lessons from the Austrian virtuoso Joseph Karl Pirker (1700–1786), who at that time was staying in Heilbronn for three months. Pirker's wife, the soprano Marianne Pirker († 1782), is said to have had a great influence on the young Weber.
After attending the Heilbronn grammar school , he began studying medicine at the University of Jena . In 1773 he moved to Göttingen , where he passed his medical exam and obtained his doctorate by translating an English work on the theory of inflammation. He then returned to Heilbronn in 1774, where he initially practiced as a doctor and also took part in several operettas as a violinist. He published articles in the Heilbronner Wochenblatt , published his own medical monthly in 1775/76 and contributed to a 21-volume work on natural history.
In December 1777 he went to Bern , where he hoped to get a job as a city doctor. Although this hope was not fulfilled, he met musicians and composers such as Michael Esser, Gaetano Pugnani , Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni and Giovanni Battista Viotti during his four-year stay in Bern . In Bern he appeared at concerts as a singer or violinist and worked as a composer and arranger of compositions. After he was unable to gain a foothold professionally as a doctor in Bern, he returned to Heilbronn in August 1781.
In 1782 he married Maria Margareta Ammermüller († 1801), a pastor's daughter from Tübingen. They had three daughters together, but two of them died at a young age.
In 1785 Weber became the third city doctor in Heilbronn, where he worked alongside Eberhard Gmelin and, like him, attached himself to healing magnetism . In 1792 he advanced to the second city doctor's post. After the transition of the imperial city of Heilbronn to Württemberg in 1803, he became, like Christian Johann Klett, who was added as the third city doctor in 1801, the bailiff's doctor and later senior physician, while Gmelin resigned from his office.
Weber is said to have composed and published all his life. The enumeration of the writings he wrote in Gradmann's writer lexicon Das Schilden Schwaben comprised nine pages, his compositions (symphonies, concerts, oratorios, operettas) took up three columns in Gerber's artist lexicon. In 1802 he was accepted into the Patriotic Society of Doctors and Naturalists in Swabia on an honorary basis as an “important doctor and widely read writer”.
When French troops dragged typhus to Heilbronn in the autumn of 1805 during the troop marches in the course of the Napoleonic Wars , Weber, who as a doctor had contact with the sick, was also infected. The infection was fatal. Weber died in January 1806 at the age of 53.
Works (selection)
- Order of life for the healthy and the sick. Heidelberg: Pfähler, 1786. Digitized version of the University and State Library in Düsseldorf .
- Medical Reason , 1796.
- FA Weber's Little Journeys , 1802.
- Onomatologia Medico-Practica: Encyclopedic manual for practicing physicians in alphabetical order. (4 volumes 1783–1786, as editor).
literature
- Brief biographical message from FA Weber in Heilbronn, an amateur in the musical field . In: Olla Potrida, vol. 1789, third piece, pp. 100–117 ( digitized version ).
- Johann Jacob Gradmann : Weber, Friedrich August . In: The learned Swabia: or Lexicon of the now living Swabian writers. Gradmann, Ravensburg 1802, pp. 729-741 ( digitized version ).
- Karl Hermann : Dr. Friedrich August Weber, a Heilbronn doctor and important musician. In: Historischer Verein Heilbronn, 23rd publication, Heilbronn 1960.
Web links
- Literature by and about Friedrich August Weber in the catalog of the German National Library
- Weber biography in Gerber's artist lexicon from 1814 ( memento from October 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Works by and about Friedrich August Weber in the German Digital Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Weber, Friedrich August |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German composer, doctor and writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 24, 1753 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Heilbronn |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 21, 1806 |
| Place of death | Heilbronn |