Johann Georg Jacobi

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Johann Georg Jacobi

Johann Georg Jacobi (born September 2, 1740 at Gut Pempelfort near Düsseldorf ; † January 4, 1814 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German poet and publicist and the older brother of the philosopher, lawyer, businessman and writer Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi .

life and work

Johann Georg Jacobi was born as the son of the wealthy sugar merchant Johann Konrad Jacobi on the Pempelfort estate, now the seat of the Malkasten artists' association , near Düsseldorf. Contrary to his poetic inclinations, he studied theology in Göttingen from 1763 to 1766 as well as law and philology in Helmstedt , Marburg , Leipzig and Jena . In 1766 he received the professorship for philosophy in Halle , but when he made the acquaintance of Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim (1719–1803) from Halberstadt in the same year , his poetic inclinations broke out again, especially when the latter encouraged him in his poetic endeavors. In order to bind the talent to himself, Gleim got him in 1769 the sinecure of a canon at the cathedral in Halberstadt . Like his patron, Jacobi wrote love and drinking songs in Halberstadt in the style of the ancient Greek poet Anakreon . These works were probably the decisive factor in Jacobi's later call to the University of Freiburg, but after an initial friendship they also led to quarrels with the great writers of the time, who dismissed anacreontic poetry as superficial delusion.

In 1774 Jacobi returned to his home in Düsseldorf. He became co-editor of the literary magazine " Teutscher Merkur ", which was edited by Christoph Martin Wieland from 1773 to 1789, and founded the women's magazine Iris , a "literary quarterly for women", for which Wilhelm Heinse was hired in April 1774 in Düsseldorf.

Johann Georg Jacobi

Despite Joseph II's patent of tolerance from 1781, which guaranteed the toleration of denominations within Austria, the appointment of the Protestant Jacobi to the Freiburg Chair for Fine Arts and Sciences (1784) was considered a deliberate provocation by the emperor for many citizens of this city - Freiburg and his university had remained purely Catholic until then. Nevertheless, the Jacobi brothers had connections to Catholic circles and Jacobi's lectures soon became very popular, so that not only students, but also listeners of all classes and women were often present, and the lecture halls could often no longer accommodate those interested. He was repeatedly dean of his faculty and in 1791 was unanimously elected the university's first Protestant rector. Once again entrusted with this office during a difficult time in 1803, his excellent knowledge of French helped him in particular.

Maria Ursula Jacobi

Jacobi's so-called stair marriage caused a sensation in 1791 , when the Protestant university professor married the Catholic maid Maria Ursula Müller (1764–1840), daughter of the monastery butcher of St. Peter , 25 years his junior . Their only son, Johann Friedrich Wilhelm (Fritz) Jacobi (1792–1811), who was gifted as a visual artist, died at the age of 17.

Jacobi found his entry into the predominantly Catholic Freiburg society through the female audience. He set up a literary wreath for the educated women in his apartment on Herrenstrasse. The poet Maria Therese von Artner told a friend about it : “So what do we do in our little wreath? We gather around the convivial tea pot, sip its steaming cast, chat this and that, we are not a bit precocious either, and I can laugh as much and heartily as it gives my mood, tout comme chez nous ... are the most popular stuff Traits from the life of excellent people, of which Jacobi is able to deliver the most. ”In this context, Jacobi also had his Iris resurrected in 1802 as an annual“ paperback ”. This periodical served in particular as a forum for the Upper Rhine poet circle he founded , which included Goethe's brother-in-law Johann Georg Schlosser , Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel from Colmar and Johann Peter Hebel .

Jacobi himself wrote numerous poems, wrote prologues to theatrical performances, composed singing and plays and promoted regional awareness with his own Black Forest poetry around 1800. Many of these songs were later set to music by Schubert, Haydn and Mendelssohn. In 1806 Jacobi was one of the co-founders of the Freiburg Reading Society, initiated by Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Friedrich von Drais von Sauerbronn . After the final annexation of the Breisgau to Baden in the course of the restoration, he wrote the leitmotif of the Baden Grand Dukes, who wanted to popularize this change of power by referring to their Zähringian descent: “The shields, which have been separated for centuries, will reunite and become a prince's gentleness now the souls of good citizens / separate countries equal / wed. "

Memorial plaque on his house in Freiburg at Herrenstrasse 43

A little later, in 1814, Jacobi died; his pupil Karl von Rotteck gave the funeral oration for the tender poet and lover of the beautiful. The whole university took part in the funeral in the Old Cemetery: “The mourning was general, the funeral procession was very solemn. The coffin was carried to the cemetery by students. On the black shroud was a white cushion, on top of which was the well-deserved laurel wreath . A girls' choir that preceded the coffin sang the poet's Ash Wednesday song. It happened by chance that the train passed the house where [the Prussian King] Friedrich Wilhelm III. was relegated at the time; the king stepped onto the balcony and greeted sympathetically ”.

Since 1808 he was a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

On the 200th anniversary of Johann Georg Jacobi's death, on January 4, 2014, a memorial plaque was unveiled on the house where he lived and died at Herrenstrasse 43.

reception

Klopstock had nothing but ridicule for Jacobi, Herder described his works as bland nonsense. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg called Jacobi a “Doctorem Jubilatum, a professor who for some time served most gloriously and [in Halberstadt] has finally settled down on a canon,” and parodied his poetry with the following verses: “Always spoke tenderly like that like / The night thought enemy Jacobi ... wrote lovely letters to every maid / full of love and with diminutive genes, / never everything full, always just a bit, / bud became a button, foot a foot, / and like trimmings of pygmies / stand there the marzipan Ideas. / Oh you exclaim, that is certainly von / Gleim or even Anakreon? "

Goethe also criticized Jacobi's poems and attributed their success primarily to his female admirers, who find a poem beautiful “and only think of the sensations, the words, the verses. But nobody thinks that the real power and effect of a poem lies in the situation, in the motifs. And for this reason thousands of poems are made where the motive is absolutely zero and which merely simulate a kind of existence through sensations and sounding verses. "

On the other hand, numerous settings of his poems by well-known composers such as Joseph Haydn , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , Franz Schubert , Robert Schumann and others show that he was one of the most important poets towards the end of the 18th century.

literature

Web links

Commons : Johann Georg Jacobi  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Johann Georg Jacobi  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. Achim Aurnhammer: Johann Georg Jacobi in Freiburg (=  traces . Issue 107). German Schiller Society, Marbach am Neckar, ISBN 978-3-944469-04-1 , p. 7.
  2. ^ Achim Aurnhammer, CJ Andreas Klein: Johann Georg Jacobi in Freiburg and his circle of poets from the Upper Rhine 1784 to 1814. Exhibition in the Goethe Museum Düsseldorf [...] March 4 to April 15, 2001. Catalog, second, expanded and improved edition ( =  Writings of the University Library Freiburg im Breisgau , edited by Bärbel Schubel. Volume 25). Freiburg i. Br. [2001], ISBN 3-928969-11-0 , pp. 69 f.
  3. Remembrance of the poet's rector: memorial plaque for Johann Georg Jacobi . In: Badische Zeitung of January 7, 2014.
  4. Achim Aurnhammer: Johann Georg Jacobi in Freiburg (=  traces . Issue 107). German Schiller Society, Marbach am Neckar, ISBN 978-3-944469-04-1 , p. 3 f.