Jacob Hermann Obereit

Jacob Hermann Obereit (also: Oberreit or Obereidt ; * December 2, 1725 in Arbon , Thurgau , Switzerland ; † February 2, 1798 in Jena ) was a writer , philosopher and surgeon . Obereit became famous for his rediscovery of the Donaueschingen Nibelung manuscript C in 1755 in the Hohenems Castle Library in Vorarlberg .

Life

Jacob Hermann Obereit was born in Arbon as the son of the Lindau merchant Ludwig Oberreit and Ursula, née Wocher. The parents wrote each other with two “rs”. A sister was born to him in 1731, but she soon died. In 1732 the family moved to Lindau (Lake Constance) , where the father took up a job as a tax clerk. The following year, the parents had another son who also did not live long. After irregular school attendance in Lindau, Jacob Hermann Obereit completed an apprenticeship as a surgeon in Arbon from 1740 to 1742. Originally he wanted to become a theologian, but his father refused to do so because of personal problems with the church. He then went on a journey through Munich, Augsburg, Nuremberg and Vienna . In 1746 he received a grant from the Lindau magistrate, he began studying medicine at the University of Halle and moved to Berlin in 1747. There he dealt in particular with practical surgery and the then very backward maternity medicine. He became increasingly interested in the philosophical works of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Isaac Newton as well as classics of Roman and Greek literature. In 1750, at the urging of the city of Lindau, Obereit moved back to Lindau and was employed as a surgeon and general practitioner. In 1751 he published his first book in Lindau: Newly founded phasic considerations on some surgical materials as large crushes, hot and cold burns, external and internal leg rot . In 1752 he was appointed master obstetrician and midwife in the city. At his persistent insistence, all midwives and obstetricians in the city were sworn in to take action against the widespread mischief in this guild. In 1763 he became a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

Nibelung manuscript C

On 29 June 1755 visited Obereit the castle library of the Imperial Count von Hohenems and encountered today in the Baden State Library in Karlsruhe kept Nibelungen handwriting C . In a letter to his friend Johann Jakob Bodmer , he reported on the find: Just yesterday I had an unexpected opportunity to make a short trip to Hohen-Ems in Vorarlberg, where today, among other things, I inspected the library and was so happy that I almost found two old bound parchment codices of old Swabian poems among the first books, one of which was written very nicely, makes up a moderately thick quarto, and seems to contain a large number of heroic poems connected to one another, by the Burgondian queen or Princess Chriemhild, but the title is Adventure from the Gibelungen ...

The second volume mentioned contained the Barlaam and Josaphat written by Rudolf von Ems . Bodmer, however, spread the news that it was not Obereit but the Oberamtmann Franz Josef von Wocher who had discovered this manuscript. It was only 130 years later, after viewing Bodmer's estate, that Johannes Crueger succeeded in correcting this untruth. One reason for this lie was possibly Bodmer's selfishness.

However, von Wocher discovered the Hohenems-Munich manuscript A on 9 September 1779 at Bodmer's instigation . He sent the volume to Bodmer and reported on it on September 10th: ... I found the whole sizeable store of books lying on top of each other in tattered piles, and after a long rummaging through I finally found the old poem: That Liet to find the Nibelung ...

Further life

Already great commitment to obstetric medicine led to the issuance of the decree in 1760: The Holy Roman Empire City of Lindau renewed order and instruction including spiritual instruction / according to which all midwives in town and country are involved, which, in turn, takes action against some very dubious practices of obstetricians and midwives. With increasing age, Obereit devoted himself more and more to his philosophical and metaphysical studies and work. He was in contact with almost all of the important philosophers of the time and was respected by many and was especially close friends with Christoph Martin Wieland . In 1763 he became a member of the Munich Academy of Sciences and in the same year his mother Ursula died. In the following years, Obereit published numerous philosophical writings that received great attention in Germany. He got into controversial conflicts with the philosopher Johann Georg Zimmermann , and both of them subsequently attacked each other sharply. In 1776 he published his most important work: The loneliness of the conquerors of the world weighed up for internal reasons, by a laconic philanthropist , which was published in 1781 by Böhme in Leipzig. In the same year his father dies and he moves to Winterthur with his love, Mrs. Rietmeier. In 1769, with the support of Wieland, Chancellor of the free imperial city of Biberach , he received the title of Doctor of Philosophy . In 1776 (or 1777) he married Mrs. Rietmeier, who died of consumption just eight weeks later. Obereit moves to Zurich and from 1781 to various places in Germany, including staying with his patron Andreas Nitsche in Upper Lusatia for several months . In 1784 he visited Weimar several times with Wieland, Schiller and Goethe , who supported him financially in his final years. In a roundabout way, he moves to Jena in the house of the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte in a small attic room. Unable to organize his finances, Obereit becomes increasingly impoverished and becomes more and more dependent on his patrons and sponsors. At the Meininger Hof he was appointed court philosopher in 1786 with the support of Goethe, which secured him a small income, apartment and maintenance. After a short time, however, he fled back to Jena from the duties of the court in 1791, where he died seriously suffering, lonely and impoverished on February 2, 1798 at the age of 73.

Works

• Newly established phasic considerations on some surgical matters as great crushes, hot and cold burn, external and internal leg rot. Lindau 1751
• The loneliness of those who conquer the world, contemplated for internal reasons by a laconic philanthropist. Leipzig 1781
• Universalis confortativa medendi methodus disquisitio nova . Karlsruhe 1766
• Universalis confortativa medendi methodus . Karlsruhe 1767
• Defense of mysticism and hermit life against Herr Zimmermann in Hanover . Frankfurt / Main 1775
• Original spirit and body connection, according to Newtonian spirit: To the deep thinkers in philosophy . Augsburg 1776
• The loneliness of those who conquer the world, contemplated for internal reasons by a laconic philanthropist . Leipzig 1781
• The nature and the pagans about Steinbart; a conversation while promenading . Leipzig 1782
• Conversation in a dream about a new reformation of the spiritual orders and the Church; a counterpart to the loneliness of those who conquer the world, and to the conversations between Waldern and Diethelm in German Merkur . Amsterdam and Leipzig 1783
• Supplike to philosophical ladies, to appease the great ardent authorship about the loneliness of the court advisor and personal physician Zimmermann in Hanover. In three waits . Leipzig 1786
• Especially the Swiss declaration of centralism, exjesuiterey, anecdote hunt, superstition, etc. against a new Rosary brother . Berlin 1786
• The desperate metaphysics . Berlin? 1787
• The returning spirit of desperate metaphysics; a critical drama to new basic criticism of the spirit of life . Berlin 1787
• Attempt to clarify the optics of eternal natural light down to the first reason for all reasons . Berlin 1788
• The open secret of all secrets, the natural source of moral and physical miracles, for the development of the highest magic of the Orient . Meiningen 1788
• Arch-riddle of the criticism of reason and of desperate metaphysics; in the impossibility of a proof and non-proof of the existence of God from essential concepts . Meiningen 1789
• Critical late walks of reason in Elysean fields; from the spirit of desperate metaphysics . Meiningen 1789
• Maastab and compass of all reason, in the science of equilibrium, which generally gives aim and measure, from the ground of perfection . Meiningen 1789
• The playing universal criticism of the whole of world reason in a game of equilibrium about everything to the highest right of purpose; a conversation with the gods, socially opened by the old sons of the muses, Gotthard Nulle and unnamed brothers of the old architectural order . Freiberg 1790
• Observations on the source of metaphysics, from ancient onlookers; caused by Kant's Critique of Pure Reason . Meiningen 1791
• Above revocation for Kant. A psychological cycle . In: Karl Philipp Moritz and Salomon Maimon (eds.): Gnothi Sauton - or magazine for empirical soul science . Volume 9, Issue 2, 1792, pp. 106-143
• Final critique of reason for the straight heart: on Mr. M. Zwanziger's commentary on Kant's critique of practical reason; with a new pragmatic syntheocritic, onostatics and unistati . Nuremberg 1796.

literature

• Robert H. Blaser: Un Suisse, JH Obereit, 1725-98, Médecin et Philosophe, tire d'oubli la Chanson des Nibelungen . Berlincourt, Bern 1965, ( Publication de la Faculté des lettres de l'Université de Neuchâtel ).
• Mark-Georg Dehrmann: Productive loneliness: Gottfried Arnold, Shaftesbury, Johann Georg Zimmermann, Jacob Hermann Obereit, Christoph Martin Wieland . Wehrhahn, Hannover 2002, ISBN 3-932324-58-7 .
• Werner Dobras: Jakob Hermann Obereit . In: Josef Bellot (Hrsg.): Life pictures from Bavarian Swabia . Volume 13. Anton H. Konrad Verlag, Weißenhorn 1986, ISBN 3-87437-238-3 , pp. 199-217.
• Werner Dobras: Life and work of the discoverer of the Nibelungen manuscript Jacob Hermann Obereit . In: Montfort . Volume 34, 1982, ISSN  0027-0148 , pp. 154-162, ( [1] ).
• Werner Dobras:  Obereit, Jakob Hermann. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 382 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Ernst Heri: Jakob Hermann Obereit. The magician from Arbon. In: Thurgauer Jahrbuch , Vol. 43, 1968, pp. 78–86. ( e-periodica.ch )
• Hermann Arthur Lier:  Obereit, Jacob . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1887, pp. 88-90.
• Eberhard Thiefenthaler: The finding of the manuscript of the Nibelungenlied in Hohenems. In: Montfort . Volume 31, 1979, ISSN  0027-0148 , pp. 295-306, ( [2] ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Jacob Hermann Obereit in the catalog of the German National Library
• Werner Dobras: Obereit, Jakob Hermann. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eberhard Thiefenthaler: The discovery of the manuscript of the Nibelungenlied in Hohenems. In: Montfort . Volume 31, 1979, p. 300
2. ↑ Eberhard Thiefenthaler: The discovery of the manuscript of the Nibelungenlied in Hohenems. In: Montfort . Volume 31, 1979, p. 304