Thank God Wilhelm Burmann
Gottlob Wilhelm Burmann (actually: Gottlob Wilhelm Bormann ; born May 18, 1737 in Lauban ; † January 5, 1805 in Berlin ) was a German poet and journalist.
Life
Gottlob Wilhelm Burmann was the son of a school and arithmetic master who gave lessons in Lauban in Upper Lusatia . The family later moved back to their homeland in Silesia , where Bormann attended the school in Löwenberg and the Latin school in Hirschberg , where he also changed his name from Bormann to Burmann after the rector called him a hard-working Latin, alluding to the well-known Dutch philologist Pieter Burman the Elder and Pieter Burman the Younger always called Burmann .
From 1758 he studied law at the Viadrina in Frankfurt an der Oder and then went first to his homeland and then to Berlin, where he earned his living by teaching, including music lessons, writing and casual poetry. For several years he was also editor of the Spenersche Zeitung .
He was considered an eccentric and talented improviser, both in the poetic and musical field, where he was said to be able to deceptively imitate the style of the great composers such as Handel , Bach , Gluck , Haydn etc. in his improvisations . The impromptu lyricist is reported to have been able to make entire conversations in rhyme. Once he is said to have replied to the cheeky verses of his foreman at a parlor game in which one had to take turns to produce an impromptu rhyme: "Rhymes on / bear skins ": "For you my muse has no wings / you pig hedgehog !"
In the 1760s and 1770s he was relatively successful and well-known as a songwriter, author of fables and epithets, etc. But then its fame waned and its economic situation became precarious. One of the anecdotes told about him reports that he had a long-standing hostility towards poets and Anna Louisa Karsch , the Karschin . When she heard of his poverty, the noble soul forced itself to covertly send funds to support the enemy. When Burmann found out where the money came from, he didn’t give it back, but kept it and said: “If it came from a friend, or from someone I hold in high regard, I would not accept it at all; but that's the way it is from my enemy, and I want to let myself be very comfortable with it, to her antics. ”He paid his debts, changed his clothes and ate the rest of the money at a confectioner.
In general, the combination of strange pride and excessive generosity seems to have gone a long way in making him considered quirky. For example, he was told that his attendant was stealing the wood from him. He declined a complaint because he said that if the woman didn't need it, for example to heat the stove for her children, she would hardly steal. When he was advised to at least let her go, he said vehemently: "I'll let that go - where should she get the wood if I chase her away?"
Another reason to consider him an eccentric would be his poems published in 1788 without the letter R , if one considers the writing of leipograms to be sufficient for the status of an eccentric . But at least there is a poem by Barthold Heinrich Brockes in which 70 consecutive verses do not contain an "R". Burmann himself described these verses as flirting, an experiment to see whether the German language could be softened by eliminating the "R".
As a result of a stroke, he was no longer able to write and spent the last ten years of his life living in extreme poverty and misery with a sub-lieutenant. He announced his impending death with a little poem in the newspaper that appeared on January 5th. When some old acquaintances, from whose sight he had disappeared and who had thought him long dead, rushed to him, they found him different that same morning.
reception
His work is completely forgotten today, with one exception. A line from Little Songs for Little Youths , a collection of moralizing children's poems from 1773 has become a winged word , namely:
Work makes life sweet,
never makes it a burden,
those who hate work
only have
sorrow.
Works
- Several poems (1764)
- Walks near Frankfurt ad O. (1764)
- Letters and odes on the death of a canary (1764)
- New songs with melodies (1766)
- Fables and Tales (1771)
- Little songs for little girls (1772)
- Little songs for little boys (1773)
- Songs in 3 Books (1774)
- Poetic disgust for January 1, 1774, the same for the years 1775 and 1776
- Monthly piano conversations (1779)
- Gift for children's hearts (1780)
- Selection of mixed poems (1783)
- To sing five songs of homage to well-known melodies on October 2nd (1786)
- Songbook for 1787 (1787)
- Poems without the letter R (1788)
- Badinagen or Evidence of the Flexibility of the German Language (1794)
- Winter defrauds and spring defrauds or the latest songs by the best poets for singing and for the piano set to music (1794)
literature
- Karl Heinrich Jördens : Memories, character traits and anecdotes from the life of the most excellent German poets. Volume 1. Leipzig 1812, pp. 66–82, full text in the Google book search
- Karl Heinrich Jördens: Lexicon of German poets and prose writers. Volume 1. Leipzig 1806, pp. 273–278, full text in the Google book search
- Hermann Palm: Burmann, Gottlob Wilhelm . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 627 f.
- The poet Burmann, or where does bizarre lead? In: Der Freimüthige , 1805, No. 8, pp. 130 f.
- Reviews to poems without the letter R . In: Allgemeine Litteratur Zeitung , vol. 4 (1788), no 307, pp. 835–836
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Jördens Lexicon . Volume 1, 1806, pp. 273 f.
- ^ Jördens Lexicon . Volume 1, 1806, pp. 273 f.
- ↑ Jörden's Memories . Volume 1, 1812, p. 79 f.
- ↑ Jörden's Memories . Volume 1, 1812, pp. 73f
- ↑ Jörden's Memories . Volume 1, 1812, p. 75 f.
- ↑ "The silence that followed a strong thunderstorm" (1747) In: Earthly pleasure in God
- ^ Jördens Lexicon . Volume 1, 1806, p. 277
- ↑ Jörden's Memories . Volume 1, 1812, p. 81 f.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Burmann, Thank God Wilhelm |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bormann, Thank God Wilhelm |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German poet and journalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 18, 1737 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lauban |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 5, 1805 |
| Place of death | Berlin |