Friedrich Justus Riedel

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Friedrich Justus Riedel

Friedrich Justus Riedel (born June 10, 1742 in Vieselbach , † March 2, 1785 in Vienna ) was a German writer and university professor for aesthetic sciences.

Life

Friedrich Justus Riedel was born the son of a pastor. After finishing school at the grammar school in Weimar , he studied law and philosophy in Jena , Leipzig and Halle . In Halle he met the philologist Christian Adolph Klotz , who promoted the talented Riedel. Riedel gave up his legal career and only dealt with writing and the arts. He wrote intensely and exhaustively all his life.

After teaching in Jena, he was given a chair in aesthetic sciences at the University of Erfurt in 1768 . He played a key role in the reform of the university in Erfurt and got to know the writer Christoph Martin Wieland , the philosopher Johann Christian Lossius and the theologian Carl Friedrich Bahrdt . Catholic clerics who taught in Erfurt prevented some of his ideas for reforming the University of Erfurt from being carried out. He also published verse and prose and was a journalist. He neglected his official duties and lived the life of an eternal student . Many of his colleagues and superiors disapproved of his friendship with his students. In 1771 he was dismissed without giving any reason.

Riedel received a call to Vienna through a connection that Klotz had with Tobias Gebler , who was employed in the Austrian civil service . Riedel hoped that this reputation would give him more scientific and literary freedom and a career in high government offices. In 1772 he started working at the art academy in Vienna. He received the status of an imperial council , received a high salary and was given the right to freedom of religion . But he did not succeed in settling in Vienna. Riedel was excluded after a short time because of his behavior in the Viennese salons. His boyish demeanor, his frankness in expressing his own thoughts bluntly, that he smoked, that he did not show the usual gallantry towards women, met with rejection. His colleagues were also irritated by his relationship with his students. After all, a cleric who was already conflicting with him in Erfurt considered it his duty to inform Maria Theresa that an atheist with a questionable lifestyle was in her service. Maria Theresa gives Riedel the choice to convert to Catholicism or to quit the service. He chose to be released.

From one day to the next, Riedel had to live without an income. Any prospect of the fulfillment of his professional wishes fell apart. Christoph Willibald Gluck and, after the death of Maria Theresa, State Chancellor Wenzel Anton Graf Kaunitz supported him financially and offered him small opportunities to earn a living. Gluck made his summer house available to him as an apartment. When Riedel was finally awarded a small pension, he was already physically and mentally exhausted. Hypochondriac tendencies that had occurred earlier increased and he was admitted to hospital because of severe psychotic states. Riedel died at the age of 43 in the St. Marx Hospital in Vienna.

Subjects of his writings

Riedel was a member of the learned republic . In-depth knowledge, academic training, literary skills, independent thinking and publishing of books and articles in journals were the hallmarks of its members. Above all, Riedel showed a satirical talent. He wrote articles and longer satires about the "little spirits" in high offices of his time and his immediate environment. Unfortunately, he said, it was the fate of a literary man to be blamed for what he was merely describing. He also described customs and traditions with a sense of humor that was on par with Jonathan Swift's . In the translations from the language of animals , a church and bat talked about funeral rites of people. “First you have to notice,” begins the church mouse, “that it was once introduced among people to cry when someone dies. The bat: 'Can people cry if they want to?' The mouse: 'I think so; because grief cannot possibly always be the cause of her tears. But it is nice that they have to cry too, so that people can see it, and that's why they hold these celebrations on their corpses so that they can weep in public. '"

He also described himself in a satirical way. In his preface to the satyrs he said: A preface is nothing more than a satire that the author unconsciously and unintentionally writes about himself. If it had been up to him, he would never have published the following writings. Because he actually only wrote it for himself. “But you were lucky or unfortunate to please a friend of mine who saw you almost without a doubt. I was obliged to lend them to him; he copied them, and after a while I learned that they were to be printed in Holland or in Switzerland, I don't really know where. This compelled me to think about the issue of it myself, to which many great patrons, the gracious Junker, the pastor, the court clerk, and the schoolmaster encouraged me. I assure my readers that this is all a lie. "

In his Philosophical Library he reviewed new publications on metaphysics , logic and mathematics . Themed neurophysiological knowledge in connection with reason , sensation , understanding and consciousness. At the time his Philosophical Library was published , there was a lack of bread and hunger in Erfurt. He commented on political and economic issues. He reported on new ideas and publications on questions of education and the study of nature . He informed about new knowledge in animal anatomy and discussed the question of the truth in the Christian religion. He considered all of these topics to be part of philosophy. Riedel advised all publications to put oneself in the shoes of our author, think about it and then "remember what common sense tells us, not what we have learned from Wolff , Darjes , Baumgartens , Crusius ' reading books."

What he wrote about the use of words was interesting for philologists . “So I believe that man is nothing else than an animal, which has an essential basic power to play useful word games. But a play on words is an oratorical figure through which I seem to be saying something that I am not thinking. I take this word in the most expansive sense so that I can only say a lot about it. ... With some you still think something, just not what you normally should think with the notes, with others you don't think at all and these are the most common. ”By following this metaphor , politeness became a bow to fools , learned taste an unknown god that everyone serves, think a humiliating word when you say, 'I would not have thought that.' and the philosophical quod demonstrandum guessed a compliment to common sense in order to apologize for all that has been done to it.

Contemporaries saw in him a learned opportunist who chased every fashionable scientific trend. Herder called Riedel's theory of the fine arts and sciences a frizzy Riedel labyrinth . Riedel represented a sensualist view of the aesthetic. What is beautiful is what people like and not what authorities call classically beautiful . His influence on the prose and poetry of his time is rated positively by current researchers.

Works

  • The bustard gun. A funny heroic poem in three chants. Beyer and Grunert 1765.
  • Dissertatio de philosophia populari . Jena 1766.
  • Metaphysicae Darjesjanae tenuia rudimenta per tabulas exposita. Jena 1766.
  • Theory of fine arts and sciences. An excerpt from the works of various writers. Jena 1767.
  • The library of the wretched scribes. Frankfurt / Leipzig 1768. Together with CH Wilcke. Google book.
  • Philosophical library. Hall 1769. Google book.
  • HP Riepels merits to the Klotzische learned world. 1769.
  • Orestrio of the three arts of drawing. From Gehlen 1774.
  • Various writings on the music of the knight Christoph von Gluck . Trattnern 1775. Co-authors: François Arnaud, Moline (Pierre Louis, M.) Google book.
  • The serious one or the thoughtful and odd for tall people. Vienna 1783.

Published posthumously:

  • All writings in 5 volumes. Vienna (Kurzbeck) 1787. Google book.
  • The enlightenment according to fashion, or a comically tragic story how it sets up the world for the heart of my brothers. JSF Riedel 1790.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Riedel wrote: The young people love me because I love them, and teach them some knowledge without pedantry, quasi aliud agendo, and at the same time jokingly or amicably chatting. Friedrich Wilhelm Ebeling: History of comic literature in Germany since the middle of the 18th century. Volume 1, p. 398.
  2. ↑ Ebeling wrote: A man of courtly customs was expected, and a scholar with small-town and boyish habits appeared. For the Cavalier circles he was lost from the start. It was enough that he smoked, which was strictly frowned upon in the aristocratic circles of Vienna at the time. He lived on familiar terms with his pupils, and this was enough that his pedantic colleagues despised him. Society was fond of strict observation of the etiquette, and he did not show the slightest inclination towards this martyrdom of the good tone, he did not at all know how to bow to this gossip stick. Ebeling: History of the comic literature ... , Volume 3, p. 400.
  3. ↑ All works, vol. 1 , p. 69.
  4. ↑ Preface to the satyrs in all works, volume 1 , p. VIII.
  5. ↑ Philosophical Library , p. 5 f.
  6. ↑ Quoted from Friedrich Wilhelm Ebeling: History of comic literature in Germany since the middle of the 18th century. Eduard Hahnel, Leipzig 1869. Volume 1, pp. 397-423.
  7. ↑ See all works , p. 137 ff.
  8. ^ Robert Edward Norton: Herder's aesthetics and the European Enlightment. New York (Cornell University Press) 1991, p. 159.
  9. ↑ See, inter alia, Bruno Markwardt: Enlightenment, Rokoko, Sturm und Drang. History of Poetics Vol. II. Berlin (Gruyter) 1956, pp. 563–566. and Klaus Manger: Classicism and Enlightenment: The Example of the Late Wieland. Frankfurt am Main (Klostermann) 1991, p. 141.
personal data
SURNAME Riedel, Friedrich Justus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1742
PLACE OF BIRTH Vieselbach
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1785
Place of death Vienna