Heinrich Holzschuher

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Johann Heinrich Christoph Holzschuher (born February 11, 1798 in Wunsiedel , Upper Franconia ; † December 30, 1847 at Bug Castle , Hof / Saale district ) was a social worker and hymn poet .

Live and act

Heinrich Holzschuher attended the Latin school in Wunsiedel until he was 13. His father, a belt maker, dealer and operator of a billiard room, had lost all his fortune and committed suicide in August 1811. Heinrich's mother, who had divorced shortly before, returned to her Bohemian homeland with two younger siblings and later emigrated with the two children to the pietistic German community of Sarata . Heinrich and his brother Karl Georg Ferdinand remained penniless with relatives in Wunsiedel. Karl got a job as a district court clerk, but was sentenced to four years imprisonment in a prison labor house for theft, forgery of public documents and embezzlement. He later became a teacher at the orphanage in Bunzlau and died in 1871 as a respected senior teacher in Meseritz . In 1830 Karl wrote a poem for the Franconian Merkur about the trauma of his youth. After dropping out of school, Heinrich received training as a clerk at the rent office in Wunsiedel and began to write smaller articles for the Wunsiedler Wochenblatt . Sensitized by the family disaster, he gradually approached more active, Christian diakonia. As early as 1821 he was mentioned as a "child teacher" in Schnaditz . In 1823 he sat for two months at the Lutherhof in Weimar with Johannes Daniel Falk , who became his great role model. After unsuccessful attempts to establish similar social diaconal teaching and improvement institutions for young people in Bayreuth and Wunsiedel, he was placed in the forced labor house on the Plassenburg near Kulmbach . There, with the director Karl Georg Stuhlmüller and with financial support from the banker Johann Lorenz Schaezler, in April 1825 he set up a teaching and training facility for “juvenile criminals”. However, he was released a few months later because of a “gross misstep in service”.

At the turn of the year 1827/28, Holzschuher became an employee of the pedagogue Karl Reinthaler , who ran the Martinsstift in Erfurt , a home for neglected children. In Erfurt, after passing a state examination in June 1828, he was elected to teach at rural and lower city schools in Prussia. As the only candidate, however, “only insofar as the position in question does not require organ playing, auditions and singing lessons”. He then went on several longer trips from Erfurt, mostly to raise funds for the Martinsstift. He stayed in Erfurt until the early autumn of 1830. In 1831/32 he worked as a clerk at the Bavarian assembly of estates in Munich . At the end of July 1832 the Legislative Committee decided to dismiss Holzschuher as a clerk at the Chamber of Deputies because he could no longer be “trusted”. The motives for the dismissal are not clear.

Together with Dr. Wolfgang Lindner (1802–1862), a Munich writer and publisher of mostly short-lived magazines, founded the Bayerische Dorfzeitung , the first issue of which appeared on January 1, 1834. On January 22nd, after a falling out, Lindner resigned as co-editor, editing and ownership went “solely” to Holzschuher. But on February 25, Holzschuher said goodbye because he had been called to an “external post” “by the highest order […] yesterday”, to which he had to leave immediately. Lindner took care of the issue of the newspaper on February 26, 1834. It contained a contribution, apparently sent in earlier but not yet published, entitled Cosmopolitan considerations and wishes , which advocated legal equality for Jews in Bavaria. The editors agreed to the article in a detailed, long footnote. On March 1st, Lindner informed “his” readers that he had “thought straight away that we would not be apart for long”. Holzschuher had meanwhile been appointed as a provisional actuary at the men's penitentiary in Lichtenau (Middle Franconia) . According to his biographer Elisabeth Jäger, he was one and a half years later from Lichtenau, without the reasons being known, "sent away with disgrace and shame". He then spent five years in Neumarkt in the Upper Palatinate as chief clerk to Johann Friedrich Gustav Wülfert, the first Protestant district judge in the district. The establishment of a savings, loan and relief fund there goes back to Holzschuher and Wülfert. Holzschuher became their treasurer, chronicler and journalistic propagandist. It was the only savings bank in Bavaria to be excluded from the reorganization carried out in 1843. In addition, he was employed by the Neumarkt municipal authorities in 1839 to organize the city archive, but could not be paid any further for this activity.

Last but not least, the financial aspect should have prompted him to work as patrimonial judge for the von Dobeck property in Bug near Hof an der Saale . He held this office for six years and died at the age of 49, suffering from tuberculosis for a long time.

Heinrich Holzschuher was buried in the "old", abandoned cemetery in Berg , where a small park was built in 1976, which was named Heinrich-Holzschuher-Park . In Bug there is also a Heinrich-Holzschuher-Weg , and two streets in Wunsiedel and Lichtenau are named after him. In 1989 a memorial plaque was placed on the house where he was born in Wunsiedel.

Publications

Holzschuher appeared through numerous and very different publications. He was committed to a “practical Christian education of the people”, but also published historical studies, political-satirical works, poems and biographical treatises. His reputation as a hymn poet, however, is limited to two lines. The new poetry of the second and third stanzas of the Christmas carol O you merry by Johannes Daniel Falk (who conceived it as a three-day carol Christmas-Easter-Pentecost) goes back to Holzschuher. This version was first printed in the Bayerischer Landbote at Christmas 1826. In Munich he wrote from approx. 1826 to 1834 mainly for the Bayerischer Landbote and for the Bayerische Landbötin , always anonymously or under a pseudonym, so that the true number of his contributions can only be determined approximately. For a few weeks at the beginning of 1834 he was the owner and sole editor of the Bayerische Dorfzeitung .

Holzschuher as an anti-Semite

Itzig Feitel Stern: The Schabbes-Gärtle vun unnere Leut, 1st edition, FW Goedsche, Meißen 1832. The illustration shows the front cover of a reprint around 1900

Heinrich Holzschuher was suspected, especially in the 19th century, of having published anti-Jewish poems and writings, mostly in Yiddish dialect , under the pseudonym Itzig Feitel Stern . With reference to an essay by an Erlangen librarian and archivist from 1928, the majority of the opinion prevailed that the Franconian baron and district judge Johann Friedrich Sigmund von Holzschuher (1796–1861) was behind the pseudonym. A linguistic study of Jewish dialect poetry by non-Jews in Franconia in 2008, however, came to the conclusion that “of all persons named in the past and present who may have written at least some of the writings published under 'Itzig Feitel Stern', Heinrich Holzschuher die most tangible and most probable (is). ”In the summary, however, the investigation limits, Heinrich Holzschuher is probably only considered as the author of the early texts of Itzig Feitel Stern, printed in Munich and Augsburg. There is a possibility that the texts published in Meißen from 1831, in particular the Schabbes-Gärtle , came from a third author, because Baron von Holzschuher could at most “for some texts published between 1850 and 1860 that were also published under the pseudonym 'Itzig Feitel Stern 'appeared to be held responsible. "

In addition to other writings by Itzig Feitel Stern, FW Goedsche in Meissen published Die Linke Massematten der Houchlöbliche Jüdenschaft (1833), “a downright terrifying anti-Semitic pamphlet for its time.” But this pamphlet in particular refutes the possibility of a third person being considered. The author Itzig Feitel Stern orientates himself in two places on Hartwig von Hundt-Radowsky and mentions two of his own "little works", as he calls them, the Lauberhüttenkränz and the Schabbes-Gärtle . In particular, he quotes from a paper by the Plassenburg police commissioner Stuhlmüller. In addition, he goes into the Jewish missionaries Monheimer from Feuchtwangen, as well as Pauli in Amsterdam, both historically verifiable people. Karl Heinrich Monheimer was imprisoned at the Plassenburg several times. Stern claims to have attended a speech by CWH Pauli "three years ago" in Amsterdam . In fact, according to Elisabeth Jäger, Heinrich Holzschuher had made it across the Lower Rhine to Amsterdam via the Lower Rhine during a journey of several months, during which he collected subscribers for the harp sounds and the Volks-Spiegel for the benefit of the Erfurt Martinsstift. In addition, a largely translated text by Itzig Feitel Stern was published in Amsterdam. A longer note about the "robber and robbery murderer Itzig David Silbermann" can be found literally in Holzschuher's case history at the end of Itzig David Silbermann in the Volks-Spiegel of 1829. Finally, the unmasking pamphlet Linke Massematten closes with the rhyming phrase printed in a locked print: “If the Jew comes into the house, luck and blessings go out”, which is found identically in the early play Itzigs Liebschaft by Itzig Feitel Stern, printed in Augsburg in 1827.

In 1835, Goedsche brought Itzig Feitel Stern's last writing onto the book market, Die Schabbes-Lamp von Pollische Messing. In the same year Holzschuher lost his job in Lichtenau prison. As he wrote, because of earthly wickedness and power . Before that, on July 27, 1835, the Allgemeine Anzeiger und Nationalzeitung der Deutschen published an anonymous, devastating criticism of the "filthiness" of the writings written in "Judendeutsch", which would deeply offend "all moral feelings" and "whose authors are Itzig Feitel Stern calls “. An editorial postscript agreed with the criticism and found: "It not only does not honor the censors who allow such shameless and immoral works to be printed, but they are guilty of the crime of immoralizing the people [...] in a criminal way . "

Moritz Gottlieb Saphir , who was repeatedly exposed to the anti-Jewish ridicule of Stern / Holzschuhers in Munich, returned the favor in Der Humorist , the magazine he edited: “Goedsche in Meissen! The immortal publisher of the great Izig Veitl Stern! [...] to Guttenberg's ghost came at midnight and said to him: 'Get up at this hour and print every trash!' "

Works (selection)

literature

  • Erika Bosl: Heinrich Holzschuher. In: Karl Bosl (ed.): Bosls Bavarian biography. Pustet, Regensburg 1983, ISBN 3-7917-0792-2 , p. 369 ( digitized version ).
  • Ramona Ehret: Holzschuher, Johann Friedrich Siegmund Freiherr von . In: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 2/1, 2009, p. 377
  • Claus Henneberg: Christ appeared to us to atone. A picture of Heinrich Holzschuher's life from Wunsiedel . Hof 1968 (based only on hunters, but cites more from their sources).
  • Wolfgang Herbst. Holzschuher, Heinrich . In: ders. (Ed.): Who is who in the hymnal. 2nd, revised edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-50323-7 , p. 159 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  • Gerhard Heufert: "Here is your father: Johannes Falk!" Traces of life of Heinrich Holzschuhers, the finisher of the "O you cheerful". In: Christian Hain (Ed.): Neue Falkiana. Research on Johannes Daniel Falk, his work and his time. Lumpeter & Lasel, Eutin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946298-13-7 .
  • Elisabeth Jäger : Heinrich Holzschuher (1798–1847), the creator of the Christmas carol “O you cheerful” . In: Journal for Bavarian Church History. Year 36, 1967, pp. 39–65 (online, but without the comments in the original article: [2] ; PDF; 3.1 MB).
  • Elisabeth Jäger:  Holzschuher, Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 9, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1972, ISBN 3-428-00190-7 , p. 580 f. ( Digitized version ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ My youth . In: Weekly supplement to the Franconian Merkur. No. 29 of July 18, 1830 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  2. ^ Official Journal of the Royal Government in Erfurt , June 14, 1828, p. 151 f. ( Digitized in the Google book search).
  3. ↑ Elisabeth Jäger 1967, p. 55f
  4. ↑ Bayerische Dorfzeitung from January 22, February 26 and March 1, 1834 ( digitized in the Google book search).
  5. ↑ Elisabeth Jäger 1967, p. 59 f. Cf. Anna Schiener: The municipal savings bank Amberg in the 19th century . Diss., Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2005, p. 32, note 41, DNB 977680622/34 . The text house blessing, appeal to young and old was probably written by Holzschuher.
  6. ↑ Elisabeth Jäger 1967, p. 60; see also archive history Neumarkt: [1]
  7. ^ Alfred Klepsch: Jewish dialect poetry by non-Jews in Franconia. The riddle of the Itzig Feitel Stern . In: Yearbook for Franconian State Research. Published by the Central Institute for Regional Research at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Volume 68 (2008), pp. 169 – p. 201, here p. 188.
  8. ↑ Klepsch, p. 193
  9. ↑ Klepsch, p. 180
  10. ↑ Klepsch, p. 181; 198. The Amsterdam print from 1834, Poems, Parabolas en Sjnoekes ( digitized in the Google book search). In terms of content, it corresponds to the third edition of Gedichte, Perobeln unn Schnoukes ( online ) published by FW Goedsche in 1832 .
  11. ↑ Left mass mats houchlöbliche Jüdenschaft [etc.]. For instruction and warning, published by IF Stern , Meissen at FW Goedsche, 1832. The reprint from the 1850s, unchanged except for the cover, as part VII of Itzig Feitel Stern's writings ( digitized in the Google book search); here p. 3 and 67 on Hundt-Radowsky; P. 4 and 67 on Lauberhüttenkränz ; P. 10 on robbery murderer Silbermann; P. 11 and 13 on Karl Stuhlmüller; P. 33 on the Schabbes-Gärtle ; P. 89 on Monheimer; P. 91f on the Jewish missionary Pauli; P. 96 the rhyme from Itzig's love affair , also: ( digitized in the Google book search), cf. P. 14.
  12. ^ Heinrich Holzschuher: Instructions for the successful establishment of savings and auxiliary funds [etc.], Nuremberg 1842, introductory dedication
  13. ↑ Allgemeine Anzeiger und Nationalzeitung der Deutschen, July 27, 1835, p. 2603 f. ( Digitized in the Google book search).
  14. ↑ Der Humorist , August 16, 1839 ( digitized in the Google book search).
personal data
SURNAME Holzschuher, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Drachenfels, David Löw (pseudonym); Holzschuher, Johann Heinrich Christoph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social pedagogue and hymn poet
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1798
PLACE OF BIRTH Wunsiedel
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1847
Place of death Bow (mountain)