Johann Friedrich Löwen

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Johann Friedrich Löwen (born September 13, 1727 in Clausthal , † December 23, 1771 in Rostock ) was a German poet , intellectual and theater theorist and a temporary confidante of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing .

biography

Löwen spent the first 18 years of his life, including his high school years, and again for a short time around 1750 in his birthplace Clausthal in the Harz Mountains . In the region, which is characterized by the mining industry, Löwen’s family lived off the father’s activities, which were almost certainly also related to mining.

From 1746 to 1747 Löwen attended the college preparatory college Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig . There, the theologian, polyhistor and general school inspector Johann Lorenz von Mosheim was an important mentor for Löwen. This mentorship continued when Löwen visited the universities of Helmstedt and Göttingen between 1747 and 1749 , where Mosheim was a full professor or chancellor and honorary professor. In addition, Mosheim had probably supported Löwen's membership in the Helmstedt and Göttingen offshoots of the so-called German Society, which were founded there based on the model of the Gottsched Royal German Society in Leipzig . This led to intellectually formative encounters between Löwen and Albrecht von Haller , Johann Matthias Gesner , Johann David Michaelis , Justus Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariae and Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim . It is not exactly known why Löwen ultimately did not graduate; however, it is most likely that after the death of his father, he was no longer able to raise the money required to continue his studies.

After Löwen sought public employment in his hometown Clausthal, possibly unsuccessfully, he turned to Hamburg in 1751, a center of the German Enlightenment . There he belonged to the circle around the poet Friedrich von Hagedorn . In addition to his poetic work, Löwen's activity during this time also consisted of the writing and editing of intellectual magazines and essays. He performed this task partly alone, but partly together with other writers, such as the poet Charlotte Unzer-Ziegler . In 1752 he met the acting troupe of the theater principal Johann Friedrich Schönemann in Hamburg, whom he already knew from Göttingen. Later he married the daughter of Schönemann; the marriage produced at least two children. From 1757 he was part of the theater troupe for a time in an organizational and managerial role, his wife worked there as an actress. He had to reconcile all of this with his work as the private secretary of Prince Ludwig von Mecklenburg-Schwerin in Schwerin , which he had also regularly performed from 1757 , which he had probably already carried out occasionally. A correspondence with Christian Fürchtegott Gellert shows that Löwen's poetry also met with a positive response from his aristocratic employer.

In 1766 Löwen finally returned to Hamburg. From 1767 to 1769 he was the protagonist and director of the first attempt in Germany to create a locally anchored national theater - among other things based on the model of the Danish national theater founded by Ludvig Holberg in Copenhagen . This project, called Hamburgische Entreprise , later became known as the Hamburg National Theater . In agreement with the theater principal Konrad Ernst Ackermann , the actors Konrad Ekhof and Abel Seyler and a consortium of twelve indispensable donors from the wealthy bourgeoisie, Löwen was able to win over Gotthold Ephraim Lessing as dramaturge . The ensemble formed the acting troupe Ackermann, who is sometimes wrongly stated as the initiator of the Hamburg National Theater. A building previously built by Ackermann on Gänsemarkt served as the theater building . A corresponding memorial was erected there in 1881 , but it is only dedicated to Lessing. Despite the coinciding theater-theoretical views of Löwen and Lessing and initial successes, the undertaking soon proved to be economically and organizationally barely feasible. After Lessing left the company in 1768, Löwen tried to keep the company going for a while, for example by temporarily moving to Hanover. In 1769, the Hamburg company had to be finally closed. The main reasons for the failure of this first national theater in Germany are, besides internal discrepancies, above all the lack of experience among organizers and actors with the customs of fixed theaters. The habits of the audience, which was still characterized by the rather undemanding entertainment of the main and state action on the traveling theaters , could ultimately not be reconciled with the enlightenment and educational goals of Löwen and Lessing. Nevertheless, Lessing's Hamburg dramaturgy produced an almost unique literary output from this episode of theater history. In addition, Lessing's standard-setting comedy Minna von Barnhelm was premiered in 1767 in the Hamburg National Theater.

In 1769, Löwen and his family moved to Rostock. There he worked as the city judicial secretary until his death in 1771. Despite his increasingly deteriorating health, he was able to complete a few smaller poetic works. One of Löwen's legacies has either not been preserved or at least has been lost.

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All in all, the work of Löwen is primarily characterized by the Age of Enlightenment . Often the influence of the English Enlightenment outweighs that of the French. In the narrower sense of the word, Löwen's poetic work encompasses almost exclusively a rich spectrum of lyrical , often Rococo-like forms that can be considered typical of poetry from the mid- 18th century . A large part of it is compiled in the four-part edition of Johann Friedrich Löwen's writings (1765/66). In addition to various romances , odes , bench songs and the text of at least one passion cantata composed by Johann Wilhelm Hertel , there is also socially critical, political poetry. His few verses from the category of the so-called comic hero poem, for example, stand out due to their satirical , socially critical note. Only two plays are known, at least one of which - more or less a plagiarism by Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm - was also performed in the Hamburg National Theater. Within the journalistic work, the Hamburg contributions to wit and morality (1753–1755) are to be regarded as a typical example of the educational, intellectual magazine. Among other things, it contains one of the first theatrical-theoretical discussions of Shakespeare's work in the German-speaking world. The more or less only work by Löwen, which is still sometimes in production up to the present, is the history of the German theater (1766). However, it does not deal with German theater history in general, but primarily with the practical career of the traveling stages of the principals Ackermann and Schönemann. An important substance for this were the records of the actor Konrad Ekhof.

reception

As a result of the understanding of literary history as the history of great personalities, which was developed in the 19th century, the importance of Leo, like that of many other authors, was often misunderstood within the north German poetics of the Enlightenment age. Even Löwen's biographer Potkoff believes in 1904 that he has to justify himself permanently for his work, since Gottsched, Gellert and Lessing were by far the greater poets of the time. As a result of this attitude, there are still occasional one-sided evaluations of Löwen's work, which were taken over from older, outdated representations without reflection. It was not until the second half of the 20th century, when the Enlightenment was understood as a broad-based phenomenon, that not only its outstanding representatives, but also writers from the second row began to be appropriately recognized. In this context, Löwen was given the title of pioneer of the national theater movement. The fact that he was in a certain way involved in the creation of Lessing's Hamburg dramaturgy is usually commented positively. At the same time, Goethe and Faust research also became aware of lions. One of the earliest written references to the puppet shows about Faust is in one of Löwen's poems . In addition, Lion has in his comic epic poem The Walpurgis Night in 1756 about 50 years before Goethe I own a fist-shape with a Walpurgisnacht together and did it in a satirical, absurd context, a brief but very unusual drawing of the prototypical black artist as Muse made . And last but not least, Löwen's history of German theater is considered to be one of the first theater-historical works of the modern age, despite its limited scope . Ultimately, Löwen belongs to a whole group of writers who were indeed perceived by contemporaries as the greats of their art - in the case of Löwen this is due, among other things, to a lament for the dead by Ludwig Hölty , which puts him on a par with Christian Adolph Klotz see. But later these people would have been almost forgotten due to the exclusive interest of posterity in a few outstanding representatives of the era .

literature

  • Alfred Anger: Literary Rococo. 2nd edition Stuttgart: Metzler 1968.
  • Britta Berg: Löwen, Johann Friedrich . In: Horst-Rüdiger Jarck , Dieter Lent et al. (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon - 8th to 18th century . Appelhans Verlag, Braunschweig 2006, ISBN 3-937664-46-7 , p. 453-454 .
  • Hansjoachim Finze: Johann Friedrich Löwen / 1727-1771 / journalist and colleague of Lessing. In: Works on German Philology, XII. Debrecen 1979, pp. 341-347.
  • Hans-Wolf Jäger:  Löwen, Johann Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 88 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Herbert Lommatzsch: Johann Friedrich Löwen. In: Our Harz. Journal of the Harz Club eV Bad Harzburg. 12th vol., H. 4, 1964, pp. 4-6.
  • Günther Mahal: Faust. Research on a timeless subject. Neuried 1998.
  • Burkhard Moennighoff: Intertextuality in the joking epic of the 18th century. Göttingen 1991.
  • Gerhard Muschwitz: Literary treasure hunt in the Harz. Munich: Society of Bibliophiles eV 1993.
  • Ossip D. Potkoff: Johann Friedrich Löwen (1727-1771). With closer consideration of his dramaturgical activity. Heidelberg: Winter 1904, online .
  • Albrecht Schöne : signs of gods, love spells, satanic cult. New insights into old Goethe texts. 3rd ed. Munich: Beck 1993, pp. 145-147.
  • "L. u. “:  Löwen, Johann Friedrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, p. 312 f.

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personal data
SURNAME Löwen, Johann Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet and theater theorist
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1727
PLACE OF BIRTH Clausthal
DATE OF DEATH December 23, 1771
Place of death Rostock