Gustav von Schlabrendorf

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Gustav von Schlabrendorf

Gustav Graf von Schlabrendorf (born March 22, 1750 in Stettin ; † August 21, 1824 in Paris ) was a cosmopolitan , political writer, enlightener , Freemason, sympathizer and later critic of the French Revolution . He wrote several critical works on Napoléon Bonaparte . Because of his peculiar way of life, he was called "Hermit of Paris" or "Eremita Parisiensis".

Life

Origin, youth, studies

Gustav von Schlabrendorf belonged to the noble family von Schlabrendorf from Brandenburg . He was born in Stettin in 1750 as the son of the Vice President of the Pomeranian War and Domain Chamber, Ernst Wilhelm von Schlabrendorf . His father was transferred to Silesia as the Prussian minister in charge in 1755 , where he helped to maintain this province during the Seven Years' War that broke out the following year . The son spent his early childhood in Silesia, which from then on he considered his real home, although he later spent the second half of his life in self-chosen exile in Paris. After a careful upbringing at home, he studied law at the universities of Frankfurt (Oder) and Halle . His studies extended far beyond jurisprudence and extended to old and new languages ​​as well as a Studium generale , which included both other sciences and art. During this time Schlabrendorf turned to Freemasonry ; In 1777 he was accepted into the Freemason Lodge Minerva to the three palms in Leipzig.

With the death of his father in 1769, he inherited a considerable fortune and thus gained material independence for a self-determined lifestyle. Intellectual curiosity and openness to everything unknown prompted him to go on educational trips through Germany, Switzerland and France. He spent six years in England, during which he toured this country temporarily in the company of Freiherr vom Stein . Here he met the enlightened philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi , with whom he had a lifelong friendship. Schlabrendorf was enthusiastic about the English constitution.

The Hermit in Paris

Before the beginning of the French Revolution , Schlabrendorf returned to France and from then on lived in Paris . As an eyewitness and sympathizer, he witnessed the fall of the Ancien Régime and the revolution. He became personally acquainted with many French philosophes and revolutionaries , e. B. with Condorcet , Mercier and Brissot .

However, he never lacked the necessary critical distance from political developments, which made him suspicious during the Jacobin reign of terror . It was only by chance that he escaped guillotine execution : the anecdote says that he was not taken to the scaffold because of a pair of missing boots and then simply forgotten because he was not on the execution list the next day. He spent a total of 17 months in three different prisons. After the end of the Jacobean terror, he moved back to his room in the Hôtel des deux Siciles on Rue Richelieu in central Paris, which he would live in until his death.

Schlabrendorf was in close contact with the Germans in Paris, who often came to France out of enthusiasm for revolutionary ideas, especially Georg Forster , Johann Georg Kerner , Konrad Engelbert Oelsner and, in the short time leading up to his execution, Adam Lux . Schlabrendorf was the oldest in this group, who with advice and material support formed the center of the German democrats in Paris.

With increasing concern about the erosion of revolutionary hopes, Schlabrendorf worked tirelessly by promoting charitable and humanitarian ventures. As a devout Protestant , he supported a Bible society and the Protestant congregation, and was committed to the expansion of the school system and welfare for the poor . Wilhelm von Humboldt reports in his diary that Schlabrendorf was impressed by Mary Wollstonecraft , who had visited him frequently in prison, and her commitment to women's rights . Without appearing as a writer himself, he spoke out on all current political issues and proved himself to be a tireless stimulator and persistent conversation partner among his friends.

However, his lifestyle in all these activities was that of an eccentric. He was affectionately and ironically called the " Diogenes of Paris". He would rather gather people around him than leave his apartment and his books himself, and neglect his appearance (for example, he let his beard grow, did not change his clothes or wore nothing under his coat: “ The overcoat is certain still the one we knew in the previous century, ”stated Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1814). According to Oelsner, he should not have left his room for years: “ One circumstance [I] disregarded, namely that Count Schlabrendorff had not left his room for nine years. At the end of 1814 he began to sit down. “Many Germans in Paris sought his advice and financial support. Politicians and diplomats as well as scholars and artists, Germans and French, met in his apartment. Caroline von Humboldt was his lover for years and named her and Wilhelm von Humboldt's 1805-born child Gustav after him. She described him as " the most human person I have ever known ". Joseph von Eichendorff wrote in his autobiographical work "Experienced":

“ So did the famous Parisian hermit, Count Schlabrendorf, who, in his hermitage, let the whole social upheaval go by unchallenged like a great world tragedy, observing, judging and often guiding. Because he stood so high above all parties that he could clearly see the meaning and course of the ghost battle at any time without being reached by their confused noise. This prophetic magician stepped before the big stage when he was still young, and when the catastrophe had scarcely ended, his aged beard had grown to his belt. "

His most famous publication, whose authorship he initially denied, appeared in 1804 under the title “ Napoleon Bonaparte and the French people under his consulates ”. His biographer Karl August Varnhagen von Ense speaks of the fact that the book “appeared like a light meteor in the cloudy political sky in its time”. The German reading public (including Goethe , Johannes von Müller and others) was confronted for the first time with a script that revealed Napoleon in his threatening role in the democratic development of Europe. In “Epistle to Bonaparte” (1804) he sharply criticized Napoleon's hypocrisy, lust for murder and cruelty: “ Do you think that Europe and France do not see through your clever love of justice, with which you are deceiving, but basically only trying to secure yourself and your body? The crude, flat butchery of the Moroccan ruler, who ticks off the heads of his subjects as he pleases, is in fact much more respectable than the wretched hypocrisy of a European government which spins those who have already been condemned with its legal slime. (...) Oh, so murder in a nutshell! It will serve you better than the unbearable hypocrisy. “Schlabrendorf's passionate criticism of Napoleon would certainly have had more serious consequences for him if his solitary lifestyle had not convinced the French censorship authorities of his political harmlessness. He was not taken seriously as a political opponent, which was probably life-saving for him.

So Schlabrendorf could unhindered his fortune z. B. for the financial support of Prussian prisoners of war from the revolutionary wars. In 1813 the Prussian revolt against Napoleon tempted him to return to his homeland, but he was refused the necessary entry passports. When the trip to Germany would have been possible after 1815, however, it became apparent that his ties to France and Paris were stronger. He shifted more and more to writing; B. intensively on general language teaching and etymological studies. But it didn't get published. Instead, clear traces of his work can be found in publications by friends.

Schlabrendorf began in his last years to put together a collection of writings relating to the French Revolution, which he originally wanted to bequeath to a Prussian university. Since he failed to clearly regulate his legacy, it was auctioned after his death and scattered to the wind. His correspondence, which he conducted with a large number of important personalities of his time in the course of his life, is likely to be a treasure that has not been recovered to this day.

Gustav Graf von Schlabrendorf died almost penniless on August 21, 1824 near Paris and was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris with great sympathy from his friends.

Theodor Heuss described his last years as follows:

“ Alexander von Humboldt took care of him a little, and after his death (1824) he promised his sister-in-law, who was also one of Schlabrendorf's friends, to get a bust. But he writes to his brother that the count 'actually degenerated in the dirt', 'out of bizarre' only ate fruit, hadn't worn a shirt for three years, and so on. The report is benevolent but almost embarrassing. The paradox of its existence had to outlast death. The books were to be left to a German university, but he couldn't decide which one, and that was what he died. A Paris auction catalog from 1826 is the echo of an immense collector's activity that included early prints from all nations and disciplines. And since he did not leave a regular will, but made various dispositions and promises, there were battles and trials over the great inheritance for so long. Admittedly, the Prussian embassy had paid for the funeral expenses for lack of cash. "

Works

(The fictitious places of publication are also indicated.)

  • Letter to Bonaparte. From one of his former devotees in Germany . Germany, early June 1804.
  • Patriot mirror for the Germans in Germany. A tie for Bonaparte at his coronation. Teutoburg 1804.
  • The Moloch of our day and its high priest in Germany . OO 1804.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte as he is and the French people under him . From the English. Petersburg 1806.
  • The crocodile; or: the last fate of people and states. A prophetic-romantic vision from the author of Napolion [!] Bonaparte and the French people . First volume. London 1806.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte as he is, and the French people under him . Second part. Petersburg 1814.
  • Carl Gustav Jochmann : About the language . With Schlabrendorf's remarks on language and the Jochmann biography by Julius Eckardt, ed. by Christian Johannes Wagenknecht. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1968 [1828].
  • Anti-Napoleon . With the letter to Bonaparte and a dossier about a great missing person. Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1991, The Other Library series .

literature

  1. Ernst Penzoldt: The lost shoes. Comedy .
  2. Ilse Foerst: The historic Schlabrendorf. Documents .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anonymous, in: Preußische Jahrbücher Vol. 1, 1858, p. 84. The names "Einsiedler", "Sonderling", "Diogenes" etc. can be found in numerous contemporaries.
  2. ↑ Quotation from Dagmar von Gersdorff: Caroline von Humboldt. A biography. Berlin 2013, p. 75.
  3. ↑ Anonymous, in: Preußische Jahrbücher Vol. 1, 1858, p. 85.
  4. ^ Dagmar von Gersdorff: Caroline von Humboldt. A biography. Berlin 2013, pp. 75, 116–118.
  5. ↑ Letter to Napoleon, p. 52.
personal data
SURNAME Schlabrendorf, Gustav von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schlabrendorf, Gustav Graf von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1750
PLACE OF BIRTH Szczecin
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 1824
Place of death Paris