Hinrich Janssen
Hinrich Janssen (born March 17, 1697 in Hofswürden near Eckwarden ; † July 19, 1737 there ) was a German farmer and poet .
Life
Janssen's parents were the wealthy farmer Johann Hinrichs († after 1717) and his wife Nanne. Growing up on her farm in Butjadingen , Janssen attended the Mariengymnasium in Jever from 1713 and the GutsMuths-Gymnasium in Quedlinburg from 1716 . When the Christmas flood in 1717 destroyed the peninsula between the mouths of the Weser and the Jade with many dyke breaks, his father brought him home. He had to drop out of school and give up the curriculum. He soon took over his father's farm and on February 17, 1724 married the farmer's daughter Metta Behrens from Eckwarden. After overcoming the worst economic difficulties, the gifted Janssen endeavored to expand his knowledge by self-study and to find a connection to the academic class of the region. The rural as well as the educated environment suspected this “tendency to higher things”. Janssen became known with the award song »Suffering-Cypressen and Freuden-Palmen by King Friederich the Fourth Death, and King Christian the Sixth Assumption of Government« (1730). It should Christian VI. (Denmark and Norway), as Counts of Oldenburg, have moved to forego any further repayment of the money borrowed for the repair of the dykes. Confirmed and encouraged by the success, Janssen wrote numerous poems in the following years for high-ranking contemporaries, wedding poems, spiritual songs, Low German verses and mocking poems for his disapproving neighbors.
Janssen was reading Virgil , Ovid , Pliny the Younger , Peter Lotichius Secundus and Zeeland Jacob Cats . He wrote verse in Dutch and Low German . His soul and fate were related to Horace and Hans Sachs . The "Ode to the artful-singing Papagay" was successful. Janssen recognized himself in this housemate of the Hahn estate . His occasional poems develop from lamentos into grotesques . So wedding poems can be about death and the devil. He quickly found sponsors who took up the "Land- und Feldpoeten" and after 1732 was able to publish individual poems in various magazines.
“In his occasional poems he developed quite personal stylistic traits. He revived the traditional baroque polarity of courtly and anti-courtly through the bitter experiences of his own life situation. Throughout his life he suffered from the dichotomy that his education lifted him out of the rural-village environment and alienated him from it, but without being able to gain a foothold in the educated class he was courting. For his patrons he always remained a curiosity. Janssen, constantly suffering from economic worries, died after a long illness at the age of 41; his poems were only published forty years later by his son, pastor Johann Hinrich Janßen (1731-1781). "
Works
- Complete poems , 1768, 1864
literature
- Leif Ludwig Albertsen: The poetic farmer Hinrich Janssen from Butjadingen , in: Oldenburger Jahrbuch 65 (1966).
- Leif Ludwig Albertsen: Janßen, Hinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-00191-5 , p. 342 f. ( Digitized version ).
- August Mutzenbecher : Janßen, Hinrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1881, p. 708 f.
- Emil Pleitner : Hinrich Janssen, the Butjadinger peasant poet. His life and poetry, with a selection of his poems , 1898.
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Janssen, Hinrich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Janßen, Hinrich |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German farmer and poet |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 17, 1697 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Court dignity at Eckwarden |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 19, 1737 |
| Place of death | Court dignity at Eckwarden |