Henry David Thoreau

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henry David Thoreau, 1856

Henry David Thoreau (pronounced: [ˈθɔɹoʊ] or [θəˈɹoʊ], born July 12, 1817 in Concord , Massachusetts , † May 6, 1862 there ) was an American writer and philosopher .

Life

Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, the son of a pencil manufacturer. The father was an emigrant with French-speaking ancestors from the island of Guernsey . Thoreau studied at Harvard University from 1833 to 1837 .

Activity as a teacher

He worked as a teacher for a short time, but since he “did not make use of the indispensable corporal punishment”, he fell out with the administration of his school and resigned. In 1838 he founded their own private school with his brother John . When the brother died of tuberculosis in 1842 , the school had to be closed.

In 1841 Thoreau met Ralph Waldo Emerson , who as a poet, Unitarian and philosopher had founded the Unitarian movement of American transcendentalism , to which a large group of American poets and thinkers belonged. After his brother's death, Thoreau lived temporarily in Emerson's house in Concord, near Boston.

Retreat into the "woods"

Under Emerson's influence, Thoreau developed reformist ideas. On July 4, 1845, Independence Day , Thoreau moved into a self-built log cabin (Walden Hut) near Concord on Lake Walden , on a property in Emerson. Here he lived alone and independently for about two years, but not isolated. In his work Walden . Or Life in the Woods (German: Walden. Or life in the woods ) he described his simple life at the lake and its nature, but he also integrated topics such as economy and society. The “Walden” experiment made it clear to Thoreau that six weeks of wage labor a year is enough to make a living. The remaining time he could use to read, write, reflect and explore nature. Alexander von Humboldt was an author whom he particularly valued and read often . His descriptions of nature had a great influence on Thoreau.

First page of the first print edition of Resistance to Civil Government , 1849

Thoreau as a prophet of civil disobedience

23 July 1846 spent Thoreau in jail because he refused his tax debt to Massachusetts, the poll tax or head tax to pay and with these tax dollars the US government (and thus the slavery and the expansive Mexican War to support). However, the war only began a short time before Thoreau's imprisonment, and tax debts were significantly older. The debts have been paid; It is not clear by whom, and Thoreau was finally released from prison.

Inspired by the night in prison, Thoreau later gave lectures on the reason for his refusal to pay. He summarized these lectures in the essay Resistance to Civil Government (1849), which later became known under the title Civil Disobedience (dt. On the duty to disobey the state ). Scripture advanced to become the “Bible” of the “heroes of opposition”. It served Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King , among others, as a source of inspiration for the conscientious, nonviolent resistance against the authorities and continues to the present day as a standard work and namesake of civil disobedience .

From 1849 Thoreau earned his living as a surveyor , casual laborer , and lecturer. He repeatedly railed against social injustice and slavery. In 1857 he met the militant anti-slavery opponent and guerrilla fighter John Brown , who with his supporters waged a "private war" against slavery and was hanged two years later. Although Henry David Thoreau continued to favor nonviolent resistance, in essays and a poem he showed great respect for John Brown, whom he even compared to Christ . He proved how serious he was about rejecting slavery when he helped an escaped slave to escape to Canada in 1851.

The last few years

Thoreau's grave in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord , Massachusetts

Thoreau was infected with tuberculosis in 1835 , but the disease only appeared sporadically. In 1859 he had bronchitis after Thoreau had been out and about in the stormy rain at night. After that, his health deteriorated noticeably. In recent years he has been working on unpublished works (especially The Maine Woods and Excursions ). He wrote letters and journal entries until he became too weak. His friends marveled at the serenity with which Thoreau faced his end. He died in 1862 at the age of 44.

The human being

Ralph Waldo Emerson describes his friend Thoreau in 1862: "He led a life full of renunciation like few people. He had not learned a profession and lived alone. He did not believe in a beautiful house, clothes, customs and conversations of highly cultivated people. He met better with a “good Indian.” Everything that had to do with Indians was important to him. In his entire life he had not a single vice. When he was with other people, he continually contradicted them, which seemed like a cooling for others and for them that Approaching Thoreau made difficult. In early writings it was also a rhetorical method of his to take contradicting positions and to justify both. He was more attracted to young people as well as to farmers who valued his practical knowledge.

He spoke nothing but the truth and acted accordingly. He penetrated the topic of a conversation immediately and recognized the barriers of his interlocutors. He had no respect for the opinions of other persons or parties and only worshiped the truth itself. According to Emerson, he could quickly derive universal laws from a single fact like no other. His knowledge of the secrets of nature and their interrelationships was extensive.

A great "weapon" was his patience. He could sit motionless for a long time until the animals approached him and he could observe their behavior. He loved nature so much, was so happy in its solitude, that he viewed cities with suspicion, believing that their luxuries and temptations would ruin man and his environment.

His relationship with women is considered to be distant, and nothing is known of intimate relationships. Although the debate about women's rights was also carried out in his environment, e.g. B. by Margaret Fuller , this aspect of social inequality is in no way reflected in his work.

reception

During his lifetime, Thoreau's writings had relatively little influence on political life in the United States. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote about Thoreau when he died: "Never has a true American lived like Thoreau." In 1880, the British Robert Louis Stevenson called Thoreau "the headstrong man from Concord a slacker". But he also admitted, “There was little that Thoreau did not master. He could build a house, a boat ... or a book. He was a surveyor, a scholar, and he could do almost anything with unusual accuracy. "

Later generations found it easier than contemporaries to discover positive things in the “social rebel”. Citizens with a libertarian attitude found confirmation from Thoreau for their calls against government harassment. Conservationists and ecologists were enthusiastic about his tirades against materialistic profit thinking. Advocates of political emancipation from Mahatma Gandhi to the left-wing students of 1968 declared him a role model.

Today Thoreau has become a kind of American consensus figure who is mostly quoted in left-wing circles, but also by thinkers who are considered to be more conservative. Today, as a writer, he is also one of the most distinctive figures in classical American literature in formal terms. As a “carefully filing stylist, as an excellent linguist”, he has “stimulated generations of American writers” through the essay form that is characteristic of him.

Thoreau found attention through his contributions in American anarchism , for example with Emma Goldman .

See also

Works (in German)

literature

  • Karl Knortz : An American Diogenes. Henry D. Thoreau . Hamburg 1899 ( online  - Internet Archive ).
  • Helmut Klumpjan: The Politics of Provocation. Henry David Thoreau: literary man - social critic - nonconformist . Lang, Frankfurt 1984, ISBN 3-8204-8066-8 .
  • Hans Dieter and Helmut Klumpjan: Henry David Thoreau . Rowohlt (rm 356), Reinbek 1986; 3rd edition 2000, ISBN 3-499-50356-5 .
  • Heiner Feldhoff : On the luck of disobedience. The life story of Henry David Thoreau . Beltz & Gelberg, Weinheim 1989, ISBN 3-407-80683-3 .
  • Dieter Schulz: American transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1997, ISBN 3-534-09407-7 .
  • Andreas Streim: Civil Disobedience. Henry David Thoreau and the American Civil Rights Movement . Grin, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-638-64011-4 .
  • Gerhard Casper : Henry Thoreau and Civil Disobedience. In: On the duty to disobey the state. Wallstein, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8353-0299-0 .
  • Jack Turner: A Political Companion to Henry David Thoreau. Univ. Press of Kentucky, Lexington KY 2009, ISBN 978-0-8131-2478-0 .
  • Mark Van Doren : Henry David Thoreau: A Critical Study. Houghton Mifflin, New York / Boston 1916, Text Archive - Internet Archive
  • Walter Fischer: Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), the poet of Lake Walden (1854). In: Franz H. Link (Ed.): America. Vision and Reality, Contributions of German Research to American Literary History . Athenaeum, Frankfurt 1968, pp. 97-113.
  • Alain Refalo: Henri David Thoreau, précurseur de la désobéissance civile . Series: Culture de non-violence, n ° 3. Center de ressources sur la non-violence du Midi-Pyrénées, Colomiers 2006.
  • Frank Schäfer : Henry David Thoreau - forest walker and rebel. A biography . suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-518-46769-5
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson : Thoreau (1862). In: Three speeches. About education, religion and Henry David Thoreau , with an introduction by Dieter Schulz. Derk Janßen Verlag, Freiburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-938871-01-0
  • Laura Dassow Walls: Henry David Thoreau: a life . The University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 2017, ISBN 978-0-226-34469-0
  • Kevin Dann: Expect great things: the life and search of Henry David Thoreau . TarcherPerigee, New York N> [2017], ISBN 978-0-399-18466-6
  • Dieter Schulz: Henry David Thoreau - ways of an American writer . Mattes Verlag, Heidelberg 2017, ISBN 978-3-86809-120-5

Web links

Commons : Henry David Thoreau  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wikiquote: Henry David Thoreau  - Quotes
Wikisource: Henry David Thoreau  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Ralf Waldo Emerson: Thoreau in: Henry David Thoreau. Ktaadn . 2017. ISBN 978-3-99027-092-9 . S107
  2. ↑ Joel Myerson: Barzillai Frost's Funeral Sermon on the Death of John Thoreau Jr .. In: Huntington Library Quarterly , 57, 1994, p. 367, doi: 10.2307 / 3817844 , JSTOR 3817844 .
  3. ↑ a b c d America. Land of pioneers . Der Spiegel story , 5/2016:
  4. ↑ Andrea Wulf: Alexander von Humboldt and the invention of nature . C. Bertelsmann, 2016, ISBN 978-3-570-10206-0 , pp. 314-331 .
  5. ↑ Andreas Dorschel : A state that would bear such fruits. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . No. 19 (January 25, 2005), p. 16.
  6. ↑ Maximilien Le Roy: Thoreau - a philosopher for our time. Interview with Michael Granger, em. Professor of American Literature of the 19th Century at the University of Lyon. In: Henry David Thoreau - The pure life. Knesebeck, Munich 2012.
  7. ^ Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" - a plea for part-time exit. Retrieved on March 3, 2020 (German).
  8. ↑ Analysis and Notes on Walden: Henry Thoreau's Text with Adjacent Thoreauvian Commentary by Ken Kifer, 2002
  9. ^ Walter Fischer: Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), the poet of the Walden lake (1854). In: Franz H. Link (Ed.): America · Vision and Reality, contributions to German research on American literary history . Athenäum Verlag, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1968, p. 111.
  10. ↑ See e.g. B. George Woodcock: Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements .
  11. ↑ Emma Goldman: Anarchism and Other Essays. , P. 62, describes him as "the greatest American anarchist". Google Books . See also Google Books
  12. ↑ Against silent despair . Spiegel Online , (Review)
personal data
SURNAME Thoreau, Henry David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH Concord
DATE OF DEATH May 6, 1862
Place of death Concord