Friedrich Carl Petit

Friedrich Carl Petit , also Frederik Carl Petit , Fritz Petit , after 1829 Le Petit (born May 26, 1809 in Copenhagen , † March 1, 1854 ibid) was a Danish-German author and translator .

family

Fritz Petit was the son of the Copenhagen accountant Charles Matheus Philip Petit (1776–1823), who worked for the Brandassurance-Compagni (Kongelige Brand) , and his wife Sophie Cathrine nee. Fiedler (1788-1881). His eldest sister Rosalie (1807–1873) became a graphic artist and in 1831 married the Danish painter Christian Holm . Charles Petit , the merchant and Danish consul in Lübeck, was his younger brother. His sister Sophie Charlotte (1812–1841) was married to the lawyer and later Senator from Lübeck, Theodor Curtius .

Two portraits of his parents by the painter Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg in 1816 and 1819 were sold in the Copenhagen art trade in 2016.

• 

  Charles Petit Sr. (1816)

• 

  Sophie Catharine Petit (1819)

Life

He attended the Sorø Akademi . Here his friendship with Carl Bagger and Hans Christian Andersen began . Andersen, who attended the Latin school in Slagelse from 1822 to 1826 , often came on weekends to Sorø , 14 km away , where he visited the poet Bernhard Severin Ingemann , who taught there, and met Bagger and Petit. During his studies at the University of Copenhagen , Petit, Bagger and Andersen formed a friendship alliance, which they named Serapionsklub , based on the model of ETA Hoffmann's Die Serapionsbrüder . The two wild gander oaks in Andersen's The Ugly Duckling are, according to some researchers, an allusion to Petit and Bagger, the recipient of the story.

In 1829 Petit left Denmark and went to the University of Göttingen , where he stayed until the summer of 1830. The next decade is in the dark. At an unknown point in time, he was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD. He lived in Quedlinburg for a while and published several translations of English and French works in quick succession. Karl Gutzkow notes on Petit's life path at this time: Fate took him to all parts of the wind rose, he saw England, France, Italy, and all of this in Quedlinburg, near Basse's and his Aranzes and Marmorinos, his Gerillos and Guavannis to caulk and collect his stranded ship of life again.

He came to Altona in the early 1840s . In 1843 he took up contact with Andersen again. He worked on a biography of Andersen, with which Andersen readily supported him, and translated several of his works. With his translations, however, he incurred the displeasure of Andersen, who considered Petit's style to be quite unbearable. In a certain way, however, Petit has become formative for Andersen's reception and also for a development in Andersen's self-image, since the traditional German title of Andersen's autobiography The Fairy Tale of My Life is based on Petit's decision, the ambiguous Danish word eventyr not as adventure , but as Translate fairy tales .

It is therefore obvious that the formula 'The fairy tale of my life', which today is a matter of course for all of Andersen's research and also defines the genre in literary history, actually sprang from the early German biography of Andersen - in the end an invention by Fritz Petit, who is terrible in some respects.

Petit was probably also active as a Danish teacher and published various works on learning the Danish language.

Probably at the end of the 1840s, possibly in connection with the Schleswig-Holstein survey , he went back to his hometown of Copenhagen, where he died in 1854.

His widow Anna, b. Holst, moved back to Hamburg after his death.

Andersen correspondence

• List of preserved or documented correspondence between Andersen and Petit, November 1829 to May 1847

Fonts

• Dierte from Rus tides. Copenhagen 1828 ( digitized version , Danish Royal Library )

as Le Petit :

• Dmitry a dramatic picture. Frankfurt am Main: 1833
• Luther and Faust in vignettes on German poets. A literary primer book. Leipzig: CHY Hartmann 1834
• GC Lichtenberg's detailed explanation of the Hogarthische Kupferstiche, with reduced but complete copies of them by E. Riepenhausen, continued by the editor of the sixth supply with use of the English explanations. 14. Delivery Göttingen 1835
• Customs Gallery of Nations. The Book of Nations in Pictures and Vignettes. 2 volumes, Mannheim 1836/37
• The little Dane: for teachers and learners comprehensible textbook and reading book for elementary lessons in the Danish language ... / Von Sternhagen. Often verm. And verb. by Le Petit,

2nd edition 1844, 3rd edition 1850, 4th edition 1856, 5th edition 1864

• Grammar of the Danish language, in all its parts. Hamburg: Laeiß 1846

Translations

• The pilgrims of the Rhine. By EL Bulwer Quedlinburg 1834
• Mirabeau's memoirs. 7 volumes Quedlinburg: Basse 1835–1838
• The salons of Paris: paintings and portraits from the big world under Louis XVI., The Directorium, the Consulate and the Empire, under the Restoration and the government of Louis Philip I / of the Duchess of Abrantes . Translated from the French by Le Petit. 6 volumes Quedlinburg; Leipzig: Basse 1837-1840
• History of the non-European countries / published by several scholars. Volume 12: New South Wales: historically and statistically represented as a penal settlement and British colony. / John Dunmore Lang. Translated from the English by Le Petit according to the second, frequently enlarged edition, which deals with the history of the Colonie until the end of 1836. Quedlinburg; Leipzig: Basse, 1840
• Horatio, the mulatto: romantic drama in five acts / based on HC Andersen, freely edited. by Le Petit. Hamburg: Kittler 1845
• New fairy tales from HC Andersen. Translated from the Danish by Dr. Le Petit, Hamburg: Kittler 1845
• Hans Christian Andersen: Albert Thorwaldsen. After d. Danish original manuscripts. by Le Petit. Hamburg 1845.
• Hans Christian Andersen: Adventures and fairy tales on a New Year's Eve on a foot trip to Amack. Translated into German and introduced by Le Petit with a biographical portrait of the author. In addition to the author's portrait, Hamburg: Gobert 1846
• Hans Christian Andersen: picture book without pictures. New episode, or 21. – 31. Eve. From the Danish by Le Petit. Berlin 1846
• Hans Christian Andersen: A wreath of fairy tales. Selected u. edit again by Max Dreßler. Translated by Le Petit. With original color illustr. by E. Reinhardt, Karlsruhe: Turmberg-Verlag 1925

literature

• Thomas Hansen Erslew: Almindeligt Forfatter-Lexicon for Kongeriget Danmark med tilhørende Bilande, from 1814 to 1840. 3 vols. [With] Suppl. 3 Bder, 1847, p. 561 (with list of publications)
• Sven Hakon Rossel: Hans Christian Andersen: Danish Writer and Citizen of the World , Rodopi, 1996 ( digitized version )
• Johan de Mylius: The German Andersen: To justify the biographical Andersen picture in Germany. In: Heinrich Detering , Anne-Bitt Gerecke, Johan de Mylius: Danish-German double: transnational and bicultural literature between baroque and modern. Göttingen: Wallstein 2001 (Grenzzüge. Studies on Scandinavian-German literary history 3) ISBN 9783892443568 , pp. 157–173

Web links

Wikisource: Friedrich Carl Petit  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Data from Der Deutsche Herold. Journal of Coat of Arms, Seal and Family Studies 32 (1901), p. 84
2. ↑ Entry  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on private Danish genealogy site  
3. ^ Entry Holm, Rosalie in Weilbach's artist lexicon
4. ^ Catalog Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers of Fine Art: No. 865/9: CW Eckersberg: Portrait of Charles Petit and Catherine Sophie Fiedler. 1816 and 1819. Unsigned. Oil on canvas. 52 × 60 cm each.
5. ^ Mylius (lit.), p. 163
6. ↑ Mylius (Lit.), p. 163; see. also the first work by Petits, Digte fra Rus-Tiden. Copenhagen 1828 ( digitized motto from Die Serapionbrüder )
7. ^ Maria Tatar (ed.): The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen. New York: WW Norton & Company 2008 ISBN 9780393060812 , p. 107
8. ↑ Karl Georg Heinrich Basse, publisher, see Josef Benzing:  Basse, Gottfried. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 653 ( digitized version ).
9. ^ Karl Gutzkow, preface to: Dr. Le Petit's detailed explanation of Hogarth's copper engravings , quoted from Gutzkow's works and letters. Annotated digital complete edition, published by the edition project Karl Gutzkow, 1999ff.
10. ^ Hans Christian Andersen, Lina von Eisendecher: Briefwechsel , Wallstein Verlag, 2003, p. 373; Mylius (lit.), p. 164
11. ^ Mylius (lit.), p. 166