Johann Christoph Berens

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Johann Christoph Berens (born October 7, 1729 in Riga ; † November 19, 1792 ibid) was a patrician, merchant and councilor in Riga. Most recently he worked there as President of the Commercial Court. He became known in German literary history through his friendships with Johann Georg Hamann and Johann Gottfried Herder and as the founder of the Berens Circle , which promoted the Enlightenment in Riga . He was co-editor of the weekly Daphne .

Live and act

Study and educational trip

Johann Christoph Berens was the son of a patrician family based in the Hanseatic city of Riga, who originally came from Rostock . Like his brother Reinhold, he first attended the cathedral school in Riga . He studied law from 1748 to 1751 at the Royal Albertus University in Königsberg . During his student days he also got to know Immanuel Kant . Hamann had already registered at the Königsberg Albertina two years earlier. In April 1751 Berens moved to the Georg-August University in Göttingen . After graduating, he traveled through Germany, the Netherlands and France. He made contact with the literary greats of his time.

Berens Circle

After his return in 1754, he and his brothers founded the so-called Berens Circle in Riga. It was a narrow circle of intellectuals, which was expanded by scholars from Königsberg . Berens also devoted himself to local cultural policy. This group of people committed to the Enlightenment included, among others, Johann Christoph Schwartz , Johann Gotthelf Lindner , Gottlieb Schlegel and Johann Friedrich Hartknoch . Berens knew Hamann and Lindner from Königsberg. Hamann had been Herder's English teacher in Konigsberg, who in turn was a childhood friend of Hartknoch's. Berens, together with Lindner, Hamann and others, was co-editor of the weekly magazine Daphne , which was published by Martin Eberhard Dorn in Königsberg from 1749 to 1750 and published as an anonymous collaborative work. Even then, the authors and editors saw themselves as local enlighteners and were largely guided by the French spirit and taste. The magazine reflects the intellectual life of the capital of East Prussia before the appearance of Kant and Hamann.

Friendship with Hamann

Hamann's first major publication was the translation of a trade policy paper. He was then employed in 1756 at the Berens trading house in Riga, which sent him to London in 1757 , where Hamann failed professionally and personally. After Hamann's Christian awakening experience and his criticism of the Enlightenment, tensions arose with the Berens circle, who now considered him to be a bourgeois Christian enthusiast. Berens tried to win his old friend and colleague back to the thoughts of the Enlightenment. Kant was supposed to help and mediate in this, but he was not successful. In connection with these differences of opinion, Hamann's courtship for the sister Catharina Berens also failed in 1758 and the Socratic Memorabilia emerged as a justification against Berens and Kant.

Public offices

Berens was married to Catharina van Limburg, the eldest daughter of a Dutch trading company. In addition to the commercial work in his company, Berens also devoted himself to public offices in Riga as a deputy of the city for the Saint Petersburg residence , as a council clerk, overseer of the city archives, since 1771 as a member of the magistrate and most recently as chief competitor. He was then president of the local commercial court. In 1786 he withdrew into private life in poor health after the old constitution of Riga had to give way to the general Russian "city order". He died in November 1792 and his only living son, Abraham, continued his work. In his honor, his bust was placed at the Riga City Library.

Fonts

Illustration from Peter the Great's bomb in the Riga City Library: Memorandum. Instead of a description of the city library to be reopened by a former member of the old magistrate by Johann Christoph Berens (1787)

Johann Christoph Beren's writings mostly deal with matters of Riga. The general dictionary of writers and scholars of the provinces of Livonia, Esthland and Courland by Johann Friedrich von Recke from 1828 provides a catalog of works. Berens left behind several essays on the trade in Riga as well as on urban institutions and developments. In 1783, "Riga, the Confirmed Municipal Constitution" appeared .

“In 1783, the Riga and Reval Governments were established according to the great legislature-wise order for the governorships still in existence in our Russian world system. It declared our municipal constitution to be good, and not only confirmed it, but also set up its own higher judicial authorities, such as the governorate magistrate and the conscience court, to which tried and tested men from our own good circle of citizens were to be elected every 3 years, without their voices and activities in civil meetings and associations being torn from them. On this occasion this our beloved brother [i.e. Johann Christoph Berens] wrote to those of his beloved fellow citizens and friends, not writing in flames, but with pure feeling, with calm reflection, as if in the shade on a hot day [...] "

- Reinhold Berens, history of the Berens family

In 1787 Berens published "The bomb of Peter the Great, instead of a description of the reopening city library by a former member of the old magistrate" . His most important work is “Bonhomien, written at the opening of the newly built Rigische Stadtbibliothek” from 1792. Herder quoted it approvingly in his “Letters for the Promotion of Humanity ”.

“In a life where often, in his offices and multiple endeavors, work of a heterogeneous nature, basically so alien to his inclination, had to suppress his mind and narrow his heart, he has always loved his jobs, them with strength and honesty filled out; and finally, after his life had belonged entirely to his city and only the last remnant of it was deprived of its effectiveness by the circumstances, he tried to be useful to it through his writing. […] The city for which this noble citizen and senator wrote is Riga; His name is: Johann Christoph Berens [...] My soul is touched when I think of the times in which I lived in their circle, of so many excellent characters from their noble families, of my friends in them and among them to the author think back to the »bonhommies«. "

- Johann Gottfried Herder

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Johann Friedrich von Recke u. a., General Lexicon of Writers and Scholars of the Provinces of Livonia, Esthland and Courland , Vol. I, Steffenhagen, Mitau 1828, p. 108ff.
  2. ^ Matriculation on August 10, 1748, register of the Albertus University in Königsberg, Vol. II, p. 426.
  3. ↑ The register of the Georg-August-Universität noted April 3, 1751 as the day of enrollment.
  4. ^ Johann Georg Hamann, Johann Gotthelf Lindner u. a. (Ed.), Daphne. Reprint of the by Johann Georg Hamann, Johann Gotthelf Lindner a. a. published Koenigsberger Zeitschrift (1749–1750) . With an afterword by Joseph Kohnen. Regensburg Contributions to German Linguistics and Literature Studies, Vol. 5. Lange, Frankfurt am Main 1991.
  5. ↑ This emerges in particular from a letter from Hamann to Kant on July 27, 1759
  6. ↑ Johann Georg Hamann, Complete Works , ed. by Josef Nadler, Vol. II, reprint 1999, p. 57 ff.
  7. ↑ Reinhold Berens, History of the Berens family from Rostock , Müller, Riga 1812, who have lived in Riga for a hundred and fifty years , p. 28.
  8. ↑ Johann Gottfried Herder, Letters for the Promotion of Humanity , VII, 77
  9. ^ Johann Gottfried Herder, Letters for the Promotion of Humanity , Vol. II, Berlin and Weimar 1971, p. 421.
personal data
SURNAME Berens, Johann Christoph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Commercial entrepreneur, councilor and scout
DATE OF BIRTH October 7, 1729
PLACE OF BIRTH Riga
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1792
Place of death Riga