Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer

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Silhouette Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer as a student in Göttingen

Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer ( the Bramstedt Meyer ), (born January 28, 1759 in Harburg , † September 1, 1840 in Bramstedt , Holstein) was a German lawyer, scholar, librarian, publicist and playwright.

Life

Meyer was the son of a postmaster and first attended the Johanneum in Hamburg and one year the Hamburg Academic Gymnasium . After his father died, he went to the learned school in Ilfeld .

Entry of Meyers as d'Harbourgh in the studbook of the Swede Johan David af Sandeberg

On November 6, 1775, he began studying at Kiel University, where he was matriculated until Easter 1776. From Easter 1776 to Michaelis 1779 he studied law in Göttingen. On September 4, 1777, he became a member of the Hanover Landsmannschaft in Göttingen and was temporarily its secretary. The Landsmannschaft 's convent protocols that he kept are among the few surviving documents of this type from Landsmannschaft of the 18th century. Meyer, who was called Meyer d'Harbourgh in Göttingen and also drew that, stayed in Göttingen in the Hardenberger Hof and first kept the protocol of the Landsmannschaft on May 12, 1778 pro tempore , the last time on September 3, 1778. His whitewashed silhouette from his student days is in the Schubert silhouette collection . Schubert notes on the back of the silhouette of his fellow student: "A beautiful spirit ..." After graduating, he first worked as a private secretary in St. Petersburg and Berlin , and for a short time in Vienna .

In 1783 he was given the post of government auditor at the Judicial College in Stade, where he met Friedrich Ludwig Schröder again, whom he already knew from Hamburg. Both became close friends and also worked together artistically: Schröder himself played in Meyer's play Kronau and Albertine (printed in Vienna in 1783), and Meyer worked on pieces by Schröder; he became Schröder's first biographer.

In 1785 Christian Gottlob Heyne supported Meyer and got him a job as a librarian in Göttingen . He held this office until 1788. In addition to his work as a librarian, he was one of the educators of the younger sons of George III. , the Dukes of Sussex , Cambridge and Cumberland . During this time he made several trips that brought him together with the Weimar Circle - also with Schiller  ; Meyer made many acquaintances and made contacts in literary circles.

Today's Bramstedt Palace is actually the gatehouse of the palace complex that was demolished in the 18th century

In 1788 he stopped his professional work in Göttingen and spent three years in England, France and Italy. He improved his language skills considerably. In those countries he was very interested in theater life; in England he met the conservative state theorist and politician Edmund Burke . Meyer returned to Germany in September 1791, worked as a writer in Berlin for a few years, and from 1795 to 1797 was an editorial member of the monthly "Berlin Archives of Time and Its Taste" , which he edited together with Friedrich Eberhard Rambach. When his younger brother Friedrich Albrecht Anton Meyer (born June 29, 1768; † November 29, 1795), who was also a playwright, died at the age of 27, Meyer's financial situation improved, so that in 1797 he owned the Bramstedt estate, which was previously owned by Stolberg where he remained active as a journalist until his death.

Meyer's tomb in the churchyard of the Maria Magdalenen Church in Bad Bramstedt

Meyer made a name for himself as a reviewer and translator of English, French and Italian works ( Wilhelm Hodges Travels through the East Indies, during the years 1780, 1781, 1782 and 1783. Hamburg 1793; George Hamilton's trip around the world in the years 1790-1792 . Berlin 1794; Johanne Lane Buchanan's travels through the Western Hebrides from 1782 to 1790. Berlin 1795). He published poetry in magazines and almanacs, for example in Heinrich Reichard's "Theater-Kalender" , in the " Musenalmanach " by Johann Heinrich Voss , in the Göttinger and in Schiller's "Musenalmanach" ; Meyer wrote essays and reviews in the "Litteratur- und Theaterzeitung" , in the "Journal von und für Deutschland" and in the "Göttingische Gelehrten Advertisements" . He also published most of his plays in theater magazines.

Contemporaries highlighted his translation services. Meyer translated and edited dramas and singspiels by French authors such as Madame de Beaunoir, Dancourt , Joseph de Lafont, MarcAntoine Le Grand, Marivaü, Marmontel and Jacques-Marie Boutet de Monvel, and English ones such as Susanna Centlivre, William Congreve, Fielding, Samuel Foote, Arthur Murphy and Shakespeare.

Meyer also worked closely with Schröder in Freemasonry and played a major role in Schröder's reform work, the Schröder's style of teaching . Meyer wrote Schröder's biography under the name " Friedrich Ludwig Schröder, Contributions to the Customer of Man and the Artist , 2 parts., Hamburg 1819". After Meyer's death, Elise (Elisabeth) Campe b. Hoffmann wrote a biography of Meyer, whom she held in high esteem.

bibliography

Collections

  • New plays, Berlin 1782.
  • Contributions, dedicated to the patriotic stage, Berlin 1793 (contains the comedies: The Guardian Spirit; How won so melted away; The writer; The test).
  • Games of wit and fantasy, Berlin, Fr. Vieweg, 1793
  • Schauspiele, Altona 1818 (contains: The Evening of the Orient; Play brings danger; Trust; The change of luck).

Single issues

  • Das Blendwerk, Gotha 1781 (comic opera).
  • Repentance before the wedding, Berlin 1782 (Singspiel).
  • The marriage by a weekly paper, Vienna 1786 (Posse).
  • Letters about acting, theater, etc. Theater in Germany, Hamburg 1798.
  • Friedrich Ludwig Schröder, Contributions to the customer of man and the artist , 2 parts, Hamburg 1819.

Translations

  • Denis Diderot : The traitors . From the French v. FLW Meyer.
  • Emmanuel Mercier Dupaty : The soldiers' prison or the three prisoners. Comedy in five acts . From the French by Emanuel Dupaty by (Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm) Meyer. First German edition, Hamburg, August Campe, 1805
  • John Hodges : Travels through the East Indies during 1780, 1781, 1782 and 1783 . Translated from the English by Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer. Hamburg, Benjamin Gottlob Hoffmann, 1793
  • John Moore: Diary during a stay in France from the beginning of August to the middle of December 1792. Along with a narration of the strangest events in Paris from this point on, except for the death of the last deceased King of France . Translated from the English. (by Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer), Berlin, Voss 1794

literature

  • Gunnar Henry Caddick: The Hannöversche Landsmannschaft at the University of Göttingen from 1737 to 1809. Göttingen 2002, No. 679.
  • The deep dichotomy between desire and failure. Unknown letters from Georg Forster to Wilhelm Meyer, the third member of the group. In: Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 2018, pp. 265–310.
  • Elise Campe: In memory of FLW Meyer, Schröder's biographer . 2 parts, Braunschweig 1847.
Digitized volume 1, copy from the Bavarian State Library
Digitized volume 2, copy from the Bavarian State Library

Web links

Wikisource: Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm Meyer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Enrollment in Göttingen on April 25, 1776.
  2. ↑ Götz von Selle (ed.): The register of the Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen - 1734 - 1837 . Leipzig 1937, Kraus Reprint, 1980, ISBN 9783262000308
  3. ↑ Published in full text by Otto Deneke : Alte Göttinger Landsmannschaften - documents on their earliest history (1837-1813) , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1937, p. 26 ff.
  4. ↑ Deneke, p. 32 ff.
  5. ↑ Deneke, p. 34 ff.
  6. ^ Schubert silhouettes collection, sheet 121.
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Friedrich Ludwig Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, scholar, librarian, publicist and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1759
PLACE OF BIRTH Harburg
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 1840
Place of death Bramstedt , Holstein