Henrik Wergeland

Henrik Wergeland

Henrik Arnold Wergeland , in the church book "Henrich Arnold Wergeland" (born June 17, 1808 in Kristiansand , † July 12, 1845 in Christiania ), was a Norwegian poet of the Late Enlightenment and Romanticism .

Life

The early years

His father was Nicolai Wergeland (1780–1848), adjunct in Kristiansand, later pastor in Eidsvoll . His mother Alethe Dorothea Thaulow (1780–1843) came from a family that had produced artists before. He was the oldest of five children. The family moved to Eidsvoll in spring 1817, where Nicolai Wergeland became pastor. Here nature gave him the impressions that later became the source of his romantic poetry. In 1819 he came to the Cathedral School in Christiania. From 1821 he also attended the newly founded drawing school there. Soon after, he wrote the first short stories for the Morgenbladet newspaper . In 1825 he passed the exam artium with top marks, but had to repeat the subject geometry. He enrolled in the university and passed the Philosophicum a year later. In 1826 he began studying theology. He also came into contact with old Norwegian literature; in particular he read the first critical edition of the saga literature, the three-volume saga library by Peter Erasmus Müller , and other historical writings on Norway. He was very involved in the student body and was elected several times as editor of the student newspaper, where he wrote many articles. He witnessed the creation of the constitution at close quarters and was very familiar with the farmers in the Eidsvoll area, but lost contact with the intellectual circles in Christiania.

However, due to his lack of control, he was also embroiled in lawsuits that resulted in fines. In the presence of witnesses, he dubbed a neighbor, the procurator Jens Obel Praëm, who, in his opinion, treated the citizens badly, as a “bloodsucker”, which brought him a trial with a fine. His hostility to Praëm eventually ruined him at the end of his life.

The royal military violently broke up a May 17th demonstration in 1829. Caricature by Henrik Wergeland.

His interests lay in the field of botany and history. He graduated from his studies in 1829 with the only sufficient grade “Haud illaudabilis” because he relentlessly argued with the examiner about the character of the hell punishment.

In 1824, on the initiative of Matthias Conrad Peterson , the first celebration of May 17th took place in Trondheim. The other cities have not yet celebrated that day. Wergeland's commitment to these celebrations was limited to poems and other texts related to May 17th. But initially no public events grew out of it. Meanwhile, celebrations for May 17th were held in Eidsvoll. In 1829 a demonstration in Christiania was violently ended on May 17th by the military. This military action, in which Wergeland only witnessed from a safe distance, went down in history as "Torvslaget" and inspired Wergeland to the farce Phantasmer , which was commented on by a cartoon of him about the military action. On the way home he himself received a saber cut from a cavalry patrol on his official student uniform. The son of the city commandant, Count Wedel-Jarlsberg Fritz Wedel-Jarlsberg, was on the patrol . He sent the uniform to the city commandant with the remark that he no longer wanted to wear such disregarded clothing. In this he saw an attack on the constitutionally guaranteed freedom. The Swedish governor, on the other hand, saw a violation of a prohibition by King Karl Johan from 1828 to celebrate May 17th. On May 17, 1833, State Councilor Christian Krohg, who died in 1828, was commemorated by unveiling a memorial. Wergeland's award song was sung for Krohg, and he gave the speech. In the years 1835 to 1837 he was active in the student union in this matter, which then earned him the reputation of having pushed through the celebration of May 17th. But it was a whole group of leading personalities who founded this tradition: Jonas Anton Hielm , Henrik Anker Bjerregaard , pastors Georg Prahl Harbitz , Iver Hesselberg , Hans Riddervold , Anton Martin Schweigaard and Frederik Stang . On May 12, 1836, they wrote an appeal in Den Constitutionelle to “remember the day and place on which the constitution was given.” Wergeland also contributed to the formation of an organized celebration.

Wergeland's nationalism consisted of the textual contribution to the nationalist discourse. He was not an organizer, political leader, or nationalist activist. This is also due to the fact that in the crucial 1830s up to 1834 he only rarely stayed in Christiania, so that he could not build up a circle of friends there either. Even after 1838, when he settled in Christiania, he lived outside the city at that time.

Development of his worldview

But his way of life, interspersed with several love affairs, did not recommend him as a pastor and certainly not as an official. As the leader of the student movement, he was suspect in the eyes of the government. He lived in Eidsvoll at home for several years, preaching occasionally in his father's church, and also helping out with confirmation classes. Here he represented critical views on Luther's catechism and its interpretation by Erik Pontoppidan . He then wrote his own theological pamphlet Hvad Mennesket veed, bør troe og gjøre (What Man Must Know, Believe and Do), in which he presented Jesus as a perfect human being and both miracles and the resurrection of the flesh and the doctrine of the devil and who refused hell punishments. But the font was not printed. Since then he has been committed to popular education.

In 1830 he traveled to Stockholm, where he had an audience with King Karl Johan and met a number of Swedish politicians and writers. He became acquainted with the ideas of the French socialist Count Saint-Simon through the opposition politician Gustaf Hierta .

On April 15, 1831, he put an advertisement in the Morgenbladet , in which he described the procurator Jens Obel Praëm as a "criminal against the state and humanity". The resulting process haunted him until the end of his life.

The testimony of the examination in practical theology, combined with the trial sermon and examination, was good, but contained the warning that he had to give up his youthful recklessness (spreta juvenili levitate), which made the job search very difficult. In the years that followed, he only worked briefly as a chaplain or teacher in many places, never on a permanent basis.

Between 1833 and 1837 Wergeland wrote a number of historical works, one on the history of Karl Johans, in which he showed him sympathy and only criticized the lack of understanding of the Norwegian sensitivities, then on Norwegian history, the history of the Norwegian people and their language and a history of the Kingdom of Sweden. However, he could not speak Old Norwegian ( Norrøn ), so that he had no direct access to the sources, but had to orientate himself on Keyser and PA Munch . Wergeland and all historians of the time shared a metaphysical-teleological view of history. The story had a "goal". In the end, good triumphs over evil, the hero takes his fate into his own hands and the hero in this case was the Norwegian people.

The dispute with Welhaven and other conflicts

After the publication of his great poem "Skabelsen, Mennesket og Messias" in 1830, he was exposed to sharp attacks from Welhaven.

In 1834 Welhaven published a series of sonnets under the title Norges Dæmring , in which he distanced himself from the national ideology of Wergeland and referred to him as a “mob chief”. Wergeland responded with a series of newspaper inserts entitled “Defense of the Norwegian People”. He also turned against the Danish poet Johan Ludvig Heiberg, when he saw Welhaven as his apprentice. The core of the conflict was based on different views on the development of the Norwegian nation: Welhaven and his “Intelligenspartiet”, later called “tropperne”, relied on the law and the reliability of the legal order in society as a prerequisite for an independent nation. Wergeland saw in this emphasis a sterile bureaucratization of society.

In 1835, the house maid at the rectory in Eidsvoll, Gunhild Mathea Larsen, had an illegitimate child from him, with which his prospects of getting a pastor's position were finally buried.

He could not live from his poetry and his political commitment. So he tried a new course and enrolled in medicine, which he only lasted for a year. Then he got a badly paid job as a library assistant at the university. He wrote several writings on humanity, righteousness and freedom. Despite his admiration for King Karl Johan, he wrote revolutionaries and described the republic as the best form of government.

In 1836 he was at the forefront of the violent political dispute over the preservation of the constitution. The King had dissolved the Storting because the May 17th celebrations had again provoked unheard-of patriotic marches.

He took over the editing of the agitation newspaper Statsborgeren . Shortly thereafter, his opponents founded the newspaper Den Constitutionelle under Welhagen . The political controversy between 1836 and 1837 essentially took place in these two sheets. Both of them agreed in condemning Swedish politics. It was all about the way of fighting. The heads of the newspaper “Den Constitutionelle” were lawyers and cautious, while Wergeland, according to his habit, struck out regardless of any page and tried to reach people with leaflets and other pamphlets. There were also two political farces "Stockholmsfareren" 1 and 2 against the Swedish government.

Sophie Bekkevold

In the meantime, the argument between him and Welhaven has turned into a purely personal exchange of blows. This conflict subsided in 1837 when King Karl Johan made concessions to Norway that boosted his popularity.

In 1838 he became engaged to Amalia Sophia Bekkevold, whom he married on April 27, 1839. The search for a permanent position became more urgent, but after his pamphlets in his leaflets and the two political farces it was even more hopeless. He became more and more apolitical in his work. Now a new conflict arose. Ludvig Kristensen Daa , a former friend and political comrade in arms , distanced himself from him and ultimately became a sharp opponent with his articles in the weekly Granskeren . The reason was that Wergeland had become Ministerialrat in 1840 with the supervision of the Reich Archives and Daa had denied him the qualification for this task. Wergeland responded in 1841 with the farce Engelsk salt (English salt, a laxative popular at the time), where Daa was mocked in the main character Vinæger. The dispute eventually led to Wergeland being convicted of libel in 1842. This break in friendship also led to one of Wergeland's most intimate poems, “Fordums-Venner” (Former Friends), in which he describes Daa's generosity and which contains the lines: “Woe to me that I cannot forget. / Woe to you that you could. ”In 1845, however, he is said to have reconciled with Wergeland. Another setback came when he was denied admission to the Atheneæum reading society. There the opinion leaders of the intelligentsia Ulrik Anton Motzfeldt , Christian Birch-Reichenwald and PA Munch were in charge. In 1841 he wrote his last satire Kunsthandler Schmahrs Proces , which came out in 1842 but was never performed.

The relationship with the king

Wergeland's position towards the king was twofold: on the one hand he attacked him as a radical republican, on the other he saw in him, Bernadotte, a representative of the French spirit who had opposed Napoleon. In general, there was a very friendly relationship between him and the royal family. For example, on the occasion of the King's visit to Christiania in 1838, he composed a prize poem “Kongens ankomst”. Be it that the king was impressed by the poem, or that he thought it wise to bind the political opponent to himself through gratitude, he promised him a job as chaplain . Since this was not realized due to Wergeland's carelessness (he had taken part in a binge drinking with an officer on duty), he gave him 200 Rigsdaler specie annually from his private box, which he increased to 300 Speciesthaler two years later. He accepted the money and considered it a reward for his commitment to popular education. When this became known, there was outrage from all sides: the opponents ridiculed him as a "republican court pensioner", his best friends now saw in him an apostate from his own cause. He was boycotted because nobody wanted to have anything to do with the traitor. The newspapers now rejected his articles. Storsveen also explains the rejection with the fact that he had previously been publicly upset about the royal support of others. In 1836 the peasant delegate Ole Mjelva asked the king for financial support and received it. Now he had a credibility problem. Nevertheless, in 1841 he was given a position at the Reich Archives, probably following an intervention by the king. He was now financially secure. Nevertheless, he continued to accept the king's money.

His good relationship with the king did not prevent him from sharply criticizing the dissolution of the Storting in 1836. He also acted aggressively against any aristocracy he deemed inconsistent with the constitution. If one were to have a king, it had to be a citizen-king who could not rely on an aristocracy.

Later work and death

Wergeland on the deathbed

Politically calmer times came, and Wergeland no longer had a political battlefield. But in 1832 he discovered a “stain” in the beloved constitution: In Section 2, Jews were forbidden to walk on Norwegian soil. In 1839 he wrote a petition to the Storting to remove the "eyesore", as he put it. It contradicts the liberal spirit of the rest of the constitution. He accompanied this initiative with two poems: Jøden (1840) and Jødinden (1844), and in 1841 with his commentary on the Jewish question , in which he campaigned for tolerance. But the proposal does not yet receive the required ² / ₃ -Mehrheit. To his particular disappointment, it was the peasant faction in particular who voted against, since he had campaigned for further democratization through the participation of broad sections of the population in the Storting. In the next Storting in September 1845, which Wergeland no longer experienced, the proportion of votes was even worse, although many members of the previous meeting had been swapped in the election: Only 18 of the members who had voted no in 1842 were re-elected. The proposal was only adopted six years after his death with 93 votes to ten. This development can hardly be traced back to Wergeland, but rather to the political and social changes that had de-dramatized the Jewish question.

In 1843 he became a member of " Det Kongelige Norske Videnskabers Selskab " in Trondheim.

The trial with Praëm ended with a settlement that ruined Wergeland financially. He had to sell his house in Christiania to pay the fine and 813 Speziesthalers in legal costs.

His tireless commitment to the fatherland gradually turned the mood of the people back on him. But when reconciliation was on the way, a serious lung disease struck him down in 1844, which developed into tuberculosis. More recent medical findings, however, suggest lung cancer. According to his own statement, the trigger was that he absolutely wanted to see the move on May 17, 1844 and went to Kirkegata. But he was deeply disappointed by the development of the national holiday into an apolitical festival, at which even "Long live unification with Sweden" was shouted. He still had many plans: enlightening the people, improving the prison system, abolishing discrimination against Jews, solving the workers' question. The longer the illness lasted, the more the mood of Christiania's population turned to him. He died in July 1845.

plant

Youth works

One of his many loves was the then 16-year-old Hulda Malthe, whom he met in the summer of 1826. He asked for her hand several times, but was turned away. The overcoming of this disappointment, which can be traced in his letters, shows how Hulda later became the central figure of his youthful poetry, Stella . Here he developed a mystical-philosophical doctrine of the spirit, which unfolded in the poem Skabelsen, Mennesket og Messias (The Creation, Man and Messiah), his main work. It included his mythology and religion, and much of his later work remains incomprehensible without knowledge of this poem. But before this poem he had already produced an extensive literary production: three farces, two tragedies, a comedy, a large number of lyrical poems and a myriad of articles in the country's newspapers. He dedicated his tragedy Sinclairs Død to King Karl Johan. This work is strongly influenced by Walter Scott , one of his favorite authors. Some he published under the pseudonym "Siful Sifadda". Apart from the poems, his literary creations have achieved no lasting significance. These were summarized in 1829 in the anthology Digte, første Ring . In 1830, the publication of Skabelsen, Mennesket og Messias , 720 pages in Iambus followed . It was followed by Menneskeheden's epic , Republican’s Bible . The basic idea that pervades his youthful poetry is the belief in a theological evolution. Humanity is in a permanent transition to a higher level of perfection, and the striving for moral perfection is the basic moral law of humanity. His feeling of solidarity not only encompassed people, he also considered animals to be oppressed and also included plants and inanimate nature in his feeling of solidarity.

Wergeland melted these and the other ideas of his poems together from the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the romantic pantheism and the romantic longing for eternity. He drew it from the natural philosophy of Heinrich Steffens , from the theory of evolution by Niels Treschow (1751–1833) and the historical speculations of Herder . None of his thoughts come originally from him, but the form is directly from him and without a direct model. Skabelsen, Mennesket og Messias was by no means an unassailable work, and contemporaries complained that the verses were sometimes miserable. With the greatest arbitrariness the poet did violence to the words in the accent, often the thoughts were drowned in an accumulation of images, and there were no limits to the rawness which he took out; in short, it is teeming with sins against the prevailing aesthetics. Articles in Denmark and Sweden also supported this view, and it persisted into the 20th century. Sharp contradiction was inevitable. It came from Welhaven in the Morgenbladet newspaper in the form of an anonymous poem, which was to be the beginning of a protracted and bitter feud about the future content of Norwegian culture, and which eventually spread to all the contradictions in social, literary and political life. It was essentially written in poetry.

Wergeland and Welhaven were well versed in European art philosophy. Wergeland claimed to free itself from the traditional demands on poetry and broke a lance for the claims of Romanticism for the imagination and free development of poetic creativity. He claimed the freedom of genius for you. This was especially true for erotic topics, the treatment of which he dealt with in 1830 was quite shocking. Welhaven, on the other hand, saw the prerequisite for freedom from form in going through the compulsion to form, which ultimately leads to its overcoming. In the poem Teatret he wrote: “All art must be learned. - only then is it free; for freedom is only won in the school of coercion. ”So he found Wergeland's poetry dangerous for the people and pernicious for the nation's culture.

The July Revolution

When the news of the July Revolution in Paris came to Norway, Wergeland saw the breaking up of the spirit that he had sung about in his poems, and he rushed to Paris. However, he could not travel there until the following year, when the revolution was over. He was hardly more than a month in Paris, but the aftershock he had experienced there influenced his further poetry. She became expectant and urgent. Immediately he wrote a hymn to the July revolution "Det befriede Europa" (The liberated Europe) with all its baroque and pictorial verses. Meanwhile the argument with Welhaven continued. Wergeland turned against the Danish-speaking theater in Christiania and condemned Welhaven's disregard for the Norwegian language and drew him and his circle of "Danomania".

After a fire in the theater in Christiania in 1835, the new building was opened in 1837. Wergeland wrote a play Campbellerne eller Den hjemkomne Søn , which was not performed at the opening, but was performed later. At the second performance on January 28, 1838, supporters of Welhaven gave a whistle concert, and there was a fight in the theater, the so-called "Campbellerschlacht". The troublemakers were removed by the police, and Wergeland's reputation among the population rose.

The late work

A new period of erotic love poetry followed after the engagement to Sophie Bekkevold in 1838. During the boycott of his texts because of the financial support of the king, he composed “Jan van Huysums Blomsterstykke” in 1840, one of his most successful and imaginative poems.

The newspaper For Arbeidsklassen

On his sick bed from 1844 to 1845 he revised his great basic poem Skabelsen, Mennesket og Messias now under the title Mennesket . He wrote more poems until a few days before his death, as well as an autobiography under the title Hasselnøtter . It is considered to be the most important source for his life, whereby it is usually not taken into account that it also served for self-portrayal and self-justification, so some things are not true and the author also took poetic liberties.

Wergeland was very concerned with popular education. He wanted to evoke a people's soul and wanted every Norwegian to live as a conscious citizen of this country. The first step towards this was the spread of the Enlightenment. He worked tirelessly for public libraries, district education associations and Sunday schools. "Writings for the general public" and "Writings for the working class" appeared. He also wrote a constitutional history ( Den norske Constitutions Historie ). There were also instructions for agriculture and educational pamphlets on the use of plants.

Language reform

He is also considered the most important initiator of the modern Norwegian language movement. In many respects he became a forerunner of Knud Knudsen and the spelling reform in the 20th century by proposing to leave out endings and "silent" letters. He advocated a "Norwegianization" of the language by asking for words from the dialects to be included. His article "Om norsk Sprogreformation" (written in 1832, printed in Bauernfreund (Bondevennen) in 1835) is well known. He wrote "Langeleiken" (about the Norwegian plucked instrument Langeleik ) in the dialect of Valdres . He took a firm stand against the influence of Danish culture on Norwegian intellectual life, although he was himself an avid reader of Danish literature.

posterity

Wergeland burial site in Oslo.

Soon after his death, the canonization process began: first of all, his lyrical qualities were highlighted. Then his services in shaping the Norwegian nation were celebrated. During the 19th century Wergeland remained the symbol of the Norwegian left. Soon after his death, his collected writings and a popular edition appeared. A complete edition of everything he had written appeared in 1925.

On May 17, 1881, a statue of Wergeland by Brynjulf ​​Bergslien with a speech by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was unveiled in Oslo, in protest of the conservatives . In his speech he praised Wergeland as Norway's greatest son. Gustav Vigeland created a memorial for Kristiansand, the city of birth, in 1908. In 1926 another monument, created by Oskar Espeland, was unveiled. He is buried in the Vår Frelsers gravlund (Savior Cemetery) in Oslo. After his death in 1845 were in Sweden Jews living in Stockholm erect a monument to him. The translated inscription reads:

Grateful Jews outside Norway's borders

erected this monument

in 1847 ,

and the Norwegian Jewish community lays flowers at his grave on May 17th each year.

He is considered the greatest Norwegian poet. He contributed greatly to the emergence of the Norwegian nation and the later conception of Norwegian identity.

Work edition

• Pick up scripters. Trykt and utrykt. Edited by Herman Jæger, Didrik Arup Seip , Halvdan Koht and Einar Høigård. Steenske Forlag, Kristiania / Oslo 1918–1940 ("Collected writings. Printed and unprinted", complete edition with a chronological bibliography; digital copies of all volumes in the Documentation Projection of the University of Oslo )

Works in German translation

• Subjects. Translated from Norwegian and edited by Heinrich Detering . Wallstein Verlag , Göttingen 1995, ISBN 978-3-89244-202-8 .
• Jan van Huysum's flower piece. Translated from Norwegian and with a foreword by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel , an afterword by Heinrich Detering and an artistic comparison by Bettina Krieg. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-88221-603-5 .
• In the wild paradise. Poems and prose. Translated from Norwegian and edited by Heinrich Detering. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-8353-3498-4 .

literature

This article is initially based on the content of Salmonsens konversationleksikon and was then enriched and updated with the information from the Norsk biografisk leksikon .

• Edvard Beyer: Henrik Wergeland . In: Store norske Leksikon , version dated February 24, 2009.
• Gerhard Gran, Einar Skavlan: Henrik Wergeland . In: Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen, Palle Raunkjær (ed.): Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon . 2nd Edition. tape 24 : Tyskland – Vertere . JH Schultz Forlag, Copenhagen 1928, p. 941-946 (Danish, runeberg.org ).
• Anne-Lise Seip: Nasjonen bygges 1830-1870 . In: Aschehougs Norges historie , Volume 8.Oslo 1997.
• Odd Arvid Storsveen: En bedre vår. Henrik Wergeland og norsk nasjonalitet. 2 volumes. Oslo 2004.
• Vigdis Ystad: Henrik Wergeland . In: Norsk biografisk leksikon

Web links

Commons : Henrik Arnold Wergeland  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Works by and about Henrik Wergeland  in the German Digital Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Vigdis Ystad in NBL
2. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 43.
3. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 668.
4. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 388.
5. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 18.
6. ↑ Storsveen (2004) pp. 41, 46.
7. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 177.
8. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 180.
9. ↑ Arne Løchen, Einar Kavlan: Welhaven, Johann Sebastian . In: Johannes Brøndum-Nielsen, Palle Raunkjær (ed.): Salmonsens Konversationsleksikon . 2nd Edition. tape 24 : Tyskland – Vertere . JH Schultz Forlag, Copenhagen 1928, p. 700 (Danish, runeberg.org ).
10. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 656.
11. ↑ ^{a b} Ludvig Christensen Daa . In: Norsk biografisk leksikon
12. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 500 f.
13. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 520.
14. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 59.
15. ↑ Wergeland in Morgenbladet No. 102 v. April 12, 1839; Storsveen (2004) p. 435.
16. ↑ From autumn 1839 Wergeland was referred to in the newspaper Den Constitutionelle only as "Hoffets Pensioners". Storsveen (2004) p. 499 with individual references.
17. ↑ Ystad does not write anything about this and attributes the boycott of the newspapers to the conflict with his former friend and politician Ludvig Kristensen Daa, who criticized his poetry derogatory, to which he reacted in a way that the newspaper did not want to print. Beyer, on the other hand, follows the description in Salmonsen's konversationsleksikon . Using the newspaper articles in the dispute with Morgenbladet , Storsveen (2004) p. 512 ff. Shows that both aspects played a role and that the newspaper no longer accepted any articles from him.
18. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 436.
19. ↑ Beyer.
20. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 438 ff.
21. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 718.
22. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 725.
23. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 726.
24. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 687.
25. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 44.
26. ↑ Seip p. 17.
27. ↑ So in Salmonsen's Konversationslexikon 1928. The more recent representations do not go into this aspect.
28. ↑ Seip p. 17.
29. ↑ Storsveen (2004) p. 26.
30. ↑ Beyer.
31. ↑ The list of books on loan from the library in Christiania proves this. Storsveen (2004) p. 44.
32. ^ List of new publications Norway June 2019 (PDF) , Frankfurt Book Fair, accessed on August 19, 2019.