Isaac of Sinclair

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Isaac von Sinclair, painting by Favorin Lerebours (1808)

Isaac von Sinclair (born October 3, 1775 in Homburg before the height , † April 29, 1815 in Vienna ) was a German diplomat and writer and friend of the poet Friedrich Hölderlin .

Life

origin

Sinclair's birthplace in Bad Homburg

Isaac von Sinclair came from a family originally based in Scotland , whose surname Sinclair (St. Clair ) suggests an Anglo-Norman origin ( Clan Sinclair ). His father Alexander Adam von Sinclair was probably born in Germany around 1713. Alexander von Sinclair was a lawyer and had studied in Jena since 1733. In April 1752 he took up a position in Bad Homburg as a tutor for the then three-year-old son of Landgrave Friedrich IV of Hesse-Homburg, and for the following fourteen years he educated him according to his Calvinist-Pietist convictions.

The father died in 1778 when Isaac was only three years old. Isaac von Sinclair was brought up together with the younger children of Landgrave Friedrich V , who was his godfather. From 1792 to 1793 he studied law at the University of Tübingen and from 1793 to 1795 at the University of Jena and then entered the Landgrave's service in 1796.

Friendship with Holderlin

After Sinclair began his studies in Jena in May 1794 he got there, probably in the philosophical lectures Fichte , even Hölderlin know. During his studies he became a member of the Order of Harmonists . He was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution , was close to some members of the society of free men and, on record, also took part in one of the student tumults that were frequent at the time. From 1796 he worked in or for the Landgraviate of Hessen-Homburg and remained in friendly and supportive relationship with Hölderlin. After separating from Gontard's house in Frankfurt am Main , Hölderlin went to Homburg at the end of September 1798 and stayed there until June 1799. After Susette Gontard's death in June 1804, Sinclair invited Hölderlin to Homburg again and gave the dejected poet that Office of a court librarian.

Alienation occurred in 1805 at the latest when Holderlin incriminated Sinclair, who had been accused of high treason. In August 1806, Sinclair informed Hölderlin's mother that he could no longer look after his friend because Homburg was being mediatized . When the mediatization of Homburg was completed on September 11, 1806, at the same time Hölderlin was brought to Tübingen to the university clinic headed by Johann Heinrich Ferdinand Autenrieth .

Hölderlin immortalized Sinclair in his novel Hyperion in the form of Alabanda. In the poem To Eduard , the poet makes a fraternal alliance with the revolutionary Sinclair. Looking back, Bettina von Arnim described Sinclair (“St. Clair”) in longer passages in her letter novel Die Günderode (1840).

High treason trial

A serious turning point in the lives of Sinclair and Holderlin was the high treason trial against Sinclair and some of his friends, in which at times there was also an investigation against Holderlin. In connection with a state lottery with which Hessen-Homburg wanted to reorganize its ailing finances, the impostor Alexander Blankenstein was hired at the beginning of 1804, who also gained Sinclair's favor. When Sinclair wanted to uncover Blankenstein's frauds and take action against him, Blankenstein blackened him on January 29, 1805 with Elector Friedrich I of Württemberg , who had been fighting for a long time with the estates known as "landscape".

Blankenstein referred to a round table in Stuttgart in June 1804, in which Ludwigsburg mayor Christian Friedrich Baz , who was one of the radical leaders of the Württemberg estates , also took part in addition to himself and Sinclair . Blankenstein claimed that in connection with this meeting it was planned to assassinate the elector and thereby start a revolution. The elector, whose subject Sinclair was not, obtained Sinclair's arrest from the Homburg Landgrave. Sinclair was brought to Württemberg on February 26, 1805 and imprisoned; a commission tried him, Baz, and other alleged co-conspirators. Hölderlin was only spared further re-enactments because he was not considered capable of being heard. The Homburg doctor and court pharmacist Müller reported in an opinion of April 9, 1805 that Holderlin was shattered, his madness had turned into a frenzy, he kept shouting “I don't want to be a Jacobin!” And made serious accusations to Sinclair. The process finally revealed that although a few bad words had been spoken against the elector at the meeting, there had never been an actual plan of overthrow, so that Sinclair was finally released on July 9, 1805 in Homburg.

Sinclair as a diplomat and writer

Memorial plaque on Dorotheenstrasse 6

Sinclair represented the interests of Hessen-Homburg and his Landgrave Friedrich V von Hessen-Homburg in many diplomatic missions and at times also led government affairs. It was thanks to his commitment that Hessen-Homburg, mediatized a decade earlier, was given back its full sovereignty at the Congress of Vienna . Sinclair was sent on a diplomatic mission to Berlin in the late autumn of 1805 and lived with his mother with Charlotte von Kalb . Meanwhile, no longer standing by the ideals of the French Revolution, Sinclair came into contact with anti-Napoleonic and anti-French circles. He increasingly called for a return to the former German empire, which the nobility should renew. He became an advocate of the coming wars of liberation and is also said to have become very religious.

In order to express the new political goals, Sinclair became increasingly active as a writer in the following years, participated in magazines and published his own volumes of poetry. Under the anagram "Crisalin" he wrote a trilogy of drama on the Cevennes War in 1806/1807 , in which he presented the Huguenots uprising against the French central authority as an example of his own undertakings against Napoléon Bonaparte - a topic that was later taken up again by Ludwig Tieck . Sinclair also wrote two extensive philosophical works ( Truth and Certainty , 1811–1813, and Attempt at a Physics Based on Metaphysics , 1813) and contacted Hegel about this . The poems and philosophical works of Sinclair received little attention even during his lifetime and were soon forgotten.

Death in Vienna

During the Congress of Vienna, Sinclair became a member of the aristocratic association “ Ketten ”. He was able to largely enforce the concerns of Hessen-Homburg and wanted to take part in the campaign against Napoleon, who returned from Elba on March 1, 1815 . His mother died on April 20, 1815. It could be that this news upset him very much. Sinclair was considered to be quick-tempered and had suffered several strokes . On April 29, he died of another stroke at the age of 39. The exact circumstances of his death remained unclear for a long time because he died in a Viennese brothel , which was supposed to be covered up.

See also

Sinclair House (Sinclair's Birthplace)

Works

  • The beginning of the Cevennes War . A tragedy in five acts, o. O. 1806.
  • The end of the Cevennes War . A tragedy in five acts, o. O. 1806.
  • About poetic composition in general, and about lyric in particular ; published in: Faith and Poetry. For the spring of 1806. A collection of poems and fragments in prose , ed. by Lucian, Berlin 1806.
  • The summit of the Cevennes War . A tragedy in five acts, o. O. 1807.
  • Truth and certainty . 3 vol., Frankfurt a. M. 1811-13.
  • Attempt at a physics based on metaphysics . Frankfurt a. M. 1813.
  • Truth and certainty. First volume - Berlin 1811, ed. by Christoph Binkelmann, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 2015. ISBN 978-3-7728-2521-7

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sinclair, Alexander Adam from at: deutsche-biographie.de
  2. ^ A b Friedrich Otto:  Sinclair, Isaak von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 34, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1892, pp. 387-389.
  3. ↑ a b Ursula Brauer:  Sinclair, Isaac Freiherr von (pseudonym Crisalin). In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 455 f. ( Digitized version ).
  4. ↑ Johann Kreuzer (Ed.): Hölderlin-Handbuch: Life - Work - Effect. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 978-3-476-01704-8 , p. 39
  5. ↑ Karl Hoede: Boys out. As a reminder of the origins of the old boyhood. Frankfurt am Main 1962, p. 55.
  6. ↑ Dirk Pilz: In the beginning there is doubt. Review in Frankfurter Rundschau v. 23rd November 2015
personal data
SURNAME Sinclair, Isaac of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1775
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Homburg vor der Höhe
DATE OF DEATH April 29, 1815
Place of death Vienna