Johan Sebastian Welhaven

Welhaven bust in mountains

Bust of Welhaven by Julius Middelthun 1867

Johan Sebastian Welhaven , "Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer Welhaven" (born December 22, 1807 in Bergen , † October 21, 1873 in Christiania ) was a Norwegian poet, literary critic and art theorist.

Life

Welhaven was the son of Ernst Welhaven, pastor at St. Jørgen's Leper Hospital in Bergen. His mother was Else Margrete Cammermeyer, daughter of Johan Sebastian Cammermeyer, the resident chaplain (deputy of the local pastor) at the Kreuzkirche, and his wife Maren Heiberg. Maren belonged to the Danish branch of the Heiberg family and was the cousin of the Danish poet and literary critic Johan Ludvig Heiberg . Welhaven came into close contact with Danish cultural life through this relationship.

1817-1825 he attended the cathedral school in Bergen. There he had the casual poet and esthete Lyder Sagen as a teacher in Norwegian. Sagen directed the young Welhaven's interest to the fine arts (drawing) and the theory of aesthetics ( Herder , Lessing , Winckelmann ). Sagen attached great importance to the purity of style and euphony in word and writing. In the first winter after his exams, he attended the drawing school that Sagen had founded in 1824. He originally wanted to be a painter, but gave up when Norway's most famous painter at the time, J. C. Dahl , had disparaged himself about his production.

After the admission examination at the University of Christiania in 1827, which he had passed with an overall grade of "non" (the lowest grade for just passed) but with the best grade in philosophy, Welhaven began studying theology, which he soon gave up due to lack of interest. His father died in 1828, which meant that his economic support was lost. He tried to keep himself afloat with private tuition from Christiania's upper class. In this way and through his beginning literary activity, he came into contact with leading people in Christiania: Count Hermann Wedel-Jarlsberg , businessman Christian Friedrich Gottlieb Herre (father of the poet Bernhard Herre) and the bookseller Dahl , who became his patron. He received suggestions from Det norske Studentersamfund (The Norwegian Student Association), in which he soon became a central figure due to his wit and quick-wittedness. From 1829 to 1831 he was editor of the club newspaper. He was introduced into Christiania's social life where he was valued for his conversational and casual poetry skills. His contacts in the student association with other talented people such as the lawyers Anton Martin Schweigaard , Bernhard Dunker , Frederik Stang and the historian Peter Andreas Munch were of particular importance for the future . He dealt with Johan Ludvig Heiberg, Schiller's aesthetic treatises and Wolfgang Menzel .

Ida Kjerulf

In 1830 he met Henrik Wergeland's 17-year-old sister Camilla and they fell in love. Welhaven, however, much to Camilla's grief, never asked for her hand. Instead, his great love became Ida Kjerulf, the sister of the composer Halfdan Kjerulf . They got engaged in 1839, but she died in December of the following year. Welhaven set a monument to her in the poem Den Salige (Die Selige). In 1845 he married the private tutor Joséphine Bidoulac, daughter of a French who immigrated to Denmark.

Welhaven came to Copenhagen for the first time in 1835 and met the leading cultural personalities Johan Ludvig Heiberg , Christian Winther and Henrik Hertz there .

Around 1840 its economic situation gradually improved. The poor opposition figure with an uncertain future established himself in Norwegian cultural life. A new philosophy department was set up at the university in 1839 and he applied for the position. He was immediately attacked in the press. He is not professionally trained for it. Nevertheless, he received the controversial appointment as a lecturer for two years from the Vice Chancellor of the University of Graf Wedel. This intensified the attacks against him in the press. In 1843, his position was converted to permanent editing with the prospect of a professorship in 1846. The Norwegian historian Ludvig Daae was his student and in his autobiography made a devastating verdict on his teacher: Welhaven "was an actor at the chair who always made for a bang at graduation," and he was a "zero" in philosophy. In no way did his writings show Welhaven's personality, for he was just as anxious in what he had printed as he was a babbler in what he said.

During his time as a professor, Welhaven was active against alcohol consumption and was active in the teetotaler movement "Den norske Forening mod Brændevinsdrik". During this time a new political idea emerged, "Scandinavianism", which had the vision of the union of the three kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. He had great sympathy for this movement, even if he was not thinking of a political association, but of a culture that spanned all three nations. In Scandinavianism he also saw a counterweight to Norwegian nationalism. He appeared as a keynote speaker at Scandinavian festivals in all three countries.

In 1868 Welhaven left the university. But his past as a critic of student nationalism caught up with him: the government proposed the highest pension of 1,200 Speziesthalers annually. The government committee reduced the amount to 100 Speziesthaler. The Storting finally approved on November 12, 1868 with 55 against 54 votes only 800 Speziesthaler. On the same day, the students honored him in protest with a torchlight procession to his house and sang the song Lyt nu du ludende sanger for the first time (Listen now, you incline singer), composed by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and set to music by Edvard Grieg , which is considered one of the most beautiful Norwegian occasional poetry applies.

The critic and the feud with Wergeland

During his student days Welhaven followed the aesthetic polemics in Denmark and publicly protested against the situation of literature in Norway. Against the background of the Danish intellectual life as a model, he deplored the mindless Norwegian society against the ideal demands of a spirited society of self-confident individuals. In the “Intellegensparti” (intelligence party) within the student body led by him and his friends, people were appalled by the low level of culture in the student body and in society in general. It was felt to be crude without the aesthetic and political culture known from Denmark. The rejection was particularly directed against Henrik Arnold Wergeland , mouthpiece of a nationalist student movement. His rejection was directed not only against poetry and the radicalism of Wergeland, but also against the pompous patriotism and the lack of originality of the older generation of poets.

When Wergeland published his ambitious poem “Skabelsen, Mennesket og Messias” - strangely enough, with a drawing by Welhaven as the title page - the protest of the “intelligentsia” became public: Welhaven published the poem “Til Henrik Wergeland” anonymously on August 15, 1830 Morgenbladet , which begins with the often quoted line: "How long do you want to race against reason?" He wanted to defend the temple of beauty against the barbarians. This was followed by a polemical feud between Wergeland and Welhaven in the handwritten student paper, which went down in Norwegian literary history as the “Stumpefeiden”. Wergeland called his first verses, which he published there, "stump" and means "stump, stump, piece". The majority of these were aggressive epigrams .

In 1832 Welhaven and his friends left the student association and founded their own student association with the weekly magazine Vidar (1832–1834). He now saw his most pressing task as a critic. Modern aesthetic criticism should also have its representative in Norway. Because so far there has been no objective criticism based only on aesthetic standards. This was also directed against Wergeland's poetry, which transcended all boundaries. Wergeland's father responded to this criticism with the text "Retfærdig Bedømmelse af Henrik Wergeland's Poesi og Karakter" (Justifying assessment of Henrik Wergeland's poetry and character). In Vidar Welhaven published the milieu-critical article Christiania Vinter- og Sommerdvale (Christiania Winter and Summer Sleep ) in 1832 . At the same time, Welhaven published the pamphlet Wergelands Digtekunst og Polemik, ved Aktstykker oplyste (Wergelands poetry and polemics, shown on the basis of documents). In 1834 he completed his campaign against Wergeland with his sonnet collection Norges Dæmring (Norway's Twilight), demonstratively for the birthday of the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger on November 14th. It portrayed Norway as proud, beautiful nature, its harsh living conditions, its terrible intellectual culture against the background of what he believed to be the boastful patriotism of the 30s and equally boastful politics. Dæmringsfeiden (the twilight feud ) followed, in which Wergeland's father all Ernstes suggested that Welhaven's volume of poetry be publicly burned on Constitution Day on May 17, which also happened in some places.

In 1836 Welhaven traveled abroad again, visited Paris for a few months and returned to Christiania via Germany. There, the ship was received by nationalist demonstrators who followed him home with angry shouts and yelling.

In 1838 there was the "Campellerschlacht", a fight in the theater in Christiania after Welhaven's supporters tried to drown a piece of Wergeland in a whistle concert. After that, Welhaven no longer attacked Wergeland directly.

Literary work

Welhaven's reputation as a poet is based initially on his anthologies Digte (poems) (1838), Nyere Digte (1844), Halvhundrede Digte (1848), Reiseilleder og Digte (1851) and En Digtsamling (1860) from the time he was one Got a job at the university. In it he showed the broad spectrum of poetry that he mastered, from the elegiac love poem “Den Salige” to the art-philosophical poem “Aand” (spirit), the self-analytical “Det tornede Træ” (the prickly tree) to the humorous national I Kivledal and Dyre Vaa and Koll med Bilen (a Viking portrait). The latter are still popular in school books today and are often learned by heart. It is precisely in these poems that Welhaven's efforts to “Norwegianize” the Danish written language, which he otherwise used, are evident. A lasting source of his poetry was his deep love for Ida Kjerulf, who died prematurely, and his national romanticism for the Norwegian nature and traditions. The collection of poems, however, also met with strong criticism from the intellectual circle “ Det lærde Holland ”.

Most of Welhaven's poems are divided into stanzas. Therefore, they are well suited for setting to music. Together with his brother-in-law Halfdan Kjerulf, he is one of the creators of the Norwegian song, in which the lyric text is closely linked to the melody. Songs like Til Fjelds over Bygden staar min Hu (My sense stands after the mountain above the parish) form the core of the oldest Norwegian song tradition, both as a solo number and arranged for the first Norwegian male choir, "Den norske Studentersangforening", founded in 1845.

The themes that Welhaven's poetry encompasses are very specific: impressions of nature, memories of his childhood, a person, a situation. A characteristic trait in his poetry is the striving for spiritualization of the material, or in his own words: “Art is the spiritualized conception of the image of reality.” The true poet “gives the beauty of the universe as it sinks into him an ideal, concrete form. "

In his literary historical works, there is a strong interest in the Norwegian line in Danish-Norwegian literature. In this context, he was also involved in the debate at that time about a specifically Norwegian book of psalms and published Antydninger til et forbedret Psalmeverk (approaches for an improved book of psalms) in 1838 .

meaning

Welhaven is a founder figure in Norway as a poet, literary critic and art theorist. In terms of the sociology of literature, it represents a process of modernization and professionalization. With him literary criticism became an independent genre. As a poet, he established a line of tradition of idealistic, rigid lyric poetry in Norwegian literature. He said of himself: "With me, Norwegian literature began according to the standpoint and demands of the European Enlightenment."

literature

• Sigurd Aage Aarnes: Johan Sebastian Welhaven . In: Norsk biografisk leksikon
• Johan Sebastian Welhaven . In: Store norske leksikon .
• 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. 700-703 (Danish, runeberg.org ).
• Gregor Gumpert: Johan Sebastian Welhaven's aesthetics and poetry theory (Münster's contributions to German and Nordic philology 9). Kleinheinrich, Münster 1990, ISBN 3-926608-44-7 .

Web links

Commons : Johan Sebastian Welhaven  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Johan Sebastian Welhaven in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s} Aarnes in Norsk biografisk leksikon.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Løchen / Kavlan
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Store norske leksikon.
4. ↑ Ludvig Kristensen Daa in particular highlighted this deficiency in the Granskeren newspaper, which he directed . Ludvig Christensen Daa . In: Norsk biografisk leksikon .
5. ^ Serenade til Welhaven , op. 18 (Romanser og sanger) No. 9 (1865-9), printed 1869.
6. ↑ quoted in Aarnes.