Friedrich Johann von Drieberg

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Coat of arms of those von Drieberg (noble family)

Friedrich Johann von Drieberg (born December 10, 1780 in Charlottenburg ; † May 21, 1856 there ) was a composer and writer . He was the illegitimate child of Carl Friedrich von Drieberg , Rittmeister in the regiment of the Gardes du Corps and Maria Charlotta Grunow. In 1791 he was legitimized by King Friedrich Wilhelm II .

life and work

In 1794, at the insistence of his father, Drieberg began the Prussian officer's career in the Leib-Carabinier-Regiment in Rathenow as a junker , but took his leave shortly after his father's death in 1804, as he was completely drawn to music and composition. He traveled to Paris , where he studied for five years under the Italian composers Gaspare Spontini and Luigi Cherubini .

In 1809 Drieberg moved to Vienna for two years , where in the summer of 1811 he met Ludwig van Beethoven , among others , who promised him the examination of his melodrama Les ruines de Babylon . Unfortunately, nothing is known about the result. In 1811 Drieberg returned to his homeland and took over his father's estate, Kantow near Wusterhausen / Dosse . In 1824 he married the piano player and composer Luise von Normann , with whom he had a total of five daughters. In 1826 he bought the Protzen estate near Fehrbellin, moved there and began managing it.

Drieberg composed operas and singing plays that were performed on Berlin stages. In 1812 he presented his first opera Don Tacagno with texts by David Ferdinand Koreff , which was received with great acclaim . It was such a great success that Drieberg was taken over by King Friedrich Wilhelm III. was appointed the Royal Prussian Chamberlain. In the same year he received the Prussian Order of the Red Eagle, 3rd class without a ribbon. Other successful operas were The Singer and the Tailor and Alfonso of Castile .

Drieberg's main interest was the music of ancient Greece and the physical knowledge of the Greeks. From 1816 he set out as an autodidact to research the system and methodology of ancient Greek music. He published his findings for the first time in 1817 in the Leipziger Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung .

It was Drieberg's fate that in his great zeal he overlooked the fact that physical knowledge - unlike music - is not timeless, but is further developed over time and partially refuted. This is especially true of the Greeks' view that there is no air or water pressure. Drieberg was so infected by his penchant for Greek times that he adopted this wrong view. Due to his absurd physical theories about air and water pressure, he soon got the derisive nickname "Luftdruck-Drieberg" from the professional world.

The eccentric Drieberg, however, did not let himself be disturbed in his belief in the validity of Greek physics and was therefore in constant dispute with the experts of his time for years. His views led to bitter arguments in newspapers and books; well-known opponents were the physicist Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni , Alexander von Humboldt and the polymath Salomo Sachs . Finally, the wealthy Drieberg went so far that in 1841 he challenged the entire professional world to refute his daring theses and offered the proud sum of 1,000 ducats as prize money, which was an enormous amount for the time. Nothing is known about the result.

Today it is difficult to understand where Drieberg got the confidence to publish his sometimes absurd ideas. There is no question that his talents were in the musical rather than the technical sector.

Theodor Fontane visited Drieberg on his hike through the Mark Brandenburg in Protzen and later describes it as follows: “His talent was more on the aesthetic side than the practical one. Protzener Park was then one of the most beautiful in the district, thirty acres in size, with the most magnificent trees, with flower beds, areas of water and lawns in between. ... Von Drieberg was entirely of the scholarly type, the book man. His clothes were the simplest in the world; It wasn't the fabric and the cut that mattered to him, only comfort. So he couldn't part with old skirts. When his daughter had given one of these to a day laborer, he asked him out again and paid for it. … He was a genius from the class of perpetual motion machine inventors and constructed a flying machine that fortunately did not embarrass him to fly with. He was content to have 'calculated' and drawn them and gave up the construction as too costly. "

In 1852 Drieberg's daughter Valeska Rosamunde von Drieberg (the other four had previously died unmarried) into the von Oppen family of officers, which was strongly influenced by Prussian military traditions . Her husband was the son-general Karl August Friedrich Wilhelm Ferdinand Gustav von Oppen from the Regiment of the Gardes du Corps .

Due to the marriage of his daughter, von Drieberg, who was already suffering from illness, decided to sell the Protzen estate in 1852 and move to his daughter in Charlottenburg. There he died in 1856 and was buried in the churchyard. With him the tribe of those "von Drieberg" died out.

Mechanical inventions

The Triton diving device. Frontispiece from Mémoire sur une nouvelle machine , Paris 1811

Drieberg's curious inventions and insights, which he stubbornly presented in almost 20 books in spite of all hostility, ranged from a perpetual motion machine, a flying machine (called a "Daedaleon") and a diving machine to a new method of preserving mummies. His first invention was a bizarre diving device called the "Triton". The book in which he presented his invention was published in French in Paris in 1811. David Ferdinand Koreff wrote a lively memorandum in French and German about Drieberg's invention, which he submitted to Napoleon Bonaparte, among others .

According to Drieberg's description, the diving device called “Triton” should have the following properties: “With this new diving machine, the diver can go as deep into the water and stay in it as long as he wants; he has free use of his hands, runs absolutely no danger, is not locked in the machine and can therefore penetrate narrow openings himself, and, when the moor is cloudy, use a lantern to illuminate the water grottoes, etc. The most important part of the invention consists in the artificial lungs, which allow a free and unhindered breath. "

The device had an unconventional design: it consisted of two bellows that the diver should carry on his back. They are connected to a crown-like headband via a rod. The diver should keep the bellows moving by constantly nodding his head. One of the bellows sucked in fresh air from the surface through one hose and passed it on to the diver. The second bellows simultaneously pulled the used air out of the diver's lungs and pumped it back to the surface. The bellows should also supply a small underwater lantern. For physical reasons, this diving device could not have worked. Drieberg wrote that he had built a working model, but he certainly did not use it underwater.

Drieberg was not influenced by the scathing comments from experts and continued to believe in the feasibility of his ideas. This went so far that twelve years later he presented a further development of his diving device. Guided by his considerations on physics and his findings on air and water pressure, he now completely dispensed with the mechanics and the bellows in this version and only equipped the diver with the two hoses - one to inhale and the other to exhale. The diver could do without the tiresome nod of the head, instead he should move a small flap at the end of the hose back and forth with his tongue. According to Drieberg, the machine could be improved even further by dispensing with the hose for exhaling and simply exhaling into the water.

Correspondence

Drieberg is mentioned several times by Rahel Varnhagen von Ense in her correspondence with the poet and playwright Ludwig Robert and the doctor and writer David Ferdinand Koreff . At the Musicology Institute of the University of Mainz there are some correspondence between Gaspare Spontini and Drieberg.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Handbook on the royal Prussian court and state for the year 1843 Berlin Printed in the Deckerschen Geh. Ober-Hofbuchdruckerei p.10
  2. ^ Theodor Fontane: Hike through the Mark Brandenburg. The county of Ruppin. 5th edition, 1892. pp. 343ff.
  3. ↑ A comprehensive bibliography can be found in Michael Jung: The Development of Diving Technology in Germany up to the 20th Century . Merzig, 2000.
  4. ^ Friedrich von Drieberg: Mémoire sur une nouvelle machine à plonger, appelée Triton: précédé de quelques notions historiques sur ce sujet . Paris 1811.
  5. ^ David Ferdinand Koreff: Reflexions sur la nouvelle machine a plonger, appelée "Triton", inventee par F. de Drieberg . Paris 1811. See also: Friedrich von Oppeln-Bronikowski: David Ferdinand Koreff . Berlin 1928, p. 57ff.
personal data
SURNAME Drieberg, Friedrich Johann von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1780
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlottenburg
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 1856
Place of death Charlottenburg