Johann Jakob Engel

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Johann Jakob Engel. Painting by Anton Graff , 1773
Johann Jakob Engel. Painting by Ferdinand Collmann after Anton Graff , 1789 ( Gleimhaus Halberstadt)

Johann Jakob Engel (born September 11, 1741 in Parchim ; † June 28, 1802 there ) was a German writer , theater director and philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment .

Youth and student days

Engel was one of six children of the pastor Karl Wilhelm Christian Engel (1704–1765) and his wife Marie Elisabeth b. Brasch (1724–1803) born. He was the oldest son. At the age of nine, Johann Jakob came to his uncle Johann Ludwig Engel (1699–1758), who taught philosophy as an academic in Rostock . Through him, the young Johann Jacob achieved such a level of education that on April 26, 1757, at the age of not yet sixteen, he was able to begin his father's degree in theology at the University of Rostock . In the same year he returned to Parchim due to illness. It was there that Engel wrote his first literary text, namely a “memorial of love and awe” for the Rostock foster father , who died surprisingly . It was not until 1759 that the young angel resumed his studies in Rostock, which he continued with little single-mindedness there and then in May 1762 in Bützow due to the closure of the university in 1760 . In 1763 Engel was promoted to Dr. phil. PhD. After the death of his father in 1765, he went to Leipzig and was initially completely occupied with exploring this new metropolitan world. He did not enroll at the university until 1766 and first studied theology, but then turned to philological, philosophical and mathematical studies.

First literary successes and teaching

However, his professional future did not emerge from these studies, but rather went back to the influence of the poet and writer Christian Felix Weisse . Engel now began to work literarily himself. Initially these were historical essays, reviews and translations, then he found his own profile as a playwright .

In the winter of 1767/68 he participated in a performance of the play " Minna von Barnhelm " in the role of Tellheim . When Heinrich Gottfried Koch, who had been ousted from Dresden , opened his theater in Leipzig soon afterwards , Engel fell under the spell of the art of acting . His first attempts were followed by the comedy “The Grateful Son”, printed in Leipzig in 1771. This was extremely successful throughout Germany, as was “The Noble Boy” (1775), a comedy for children. Abel Seyler also performed the latter play with his theater troupe in Thuringia and Saxony. After the publication of his collection of essays “The Philosopher for the World” in 1776, he became professor of philosophy and the fine sciences at the Joachimsthal School in Berlin . The office required him to teach moral philosophy , logic and history five hours a week . The popular enlightener gained a very good reputation, which is why wealthy citizens used him to give private lectures for their descendants. So in 1785/86 the Humboldts, about which Wilhelm von Humboldt later reported to his bride:

“I got my first better education through angels. He is a very fine head full of light, perhaps not very deep, but grasping and representing as quickly as I have never found it again, is only understood in intellectual matters. With him I only heard philosophy with a few others and then taught my brother (Alexander) again in his presence. He became extremely dear to me, and I had an attachment to him, an esteem - so in the perceived sense of the word - a love that turned into the highest enthusiasm . "

Berlin Enlightenment , literary theory, literary work

Johann Jakob Engel, portrait by Daniel Chodowiecki

A little later (1787), because of his work on physics, Engel was appointed a member of the Academy of Arts and a teacher of Prince Friedrich Wilhelm (later Friedrich Wilhelm III. ) And soon assumed an important and prominent position in the Berlin literary community of that time. Engel was one of the most talented and capable among the group of those writers who took their intellectual views from enlightening and moralizing rationalism , but who strived for the form of Lessing's model , and who were concerned above all with maintaining clear prose . His dramatic beginnings, the comedies: "The Grateful Son", "The Diamond" and others. a., the play “The Noble Boy” and his “Ideas for Mimicry” (Berlin 1785–86; new ed. by B. Dawison , Berlin 1869), brought him the management of the after Friedrich Wilhelm II (1786) came to power newly built Berlin National Theater, which he led until 1794. In the meantime, his “Eulogy of Frederick II” (Leipzig 1781) and “The Philosopher for the World” (Leipzig 1775–77), the last outstanding moral weekly based on the once popular Addisonian “Spectator” model, had it in large circles of the public. , made known. In it he defended the point of view of moralizing poetry and sober realism with consistency and acuteness in relation to the beginning Sturm und Drang period . In popular-philosophical ( women's philosophy ) and poetic works he tried to influence his contemporaries in his spirit and was able to assert himself for a long time against the genius of Bürger , Goethe and Schiller .

With his writings “About Action, Conversation and Story” (1774) and the “Beginnings of a Theory of Poetry” (with a preface by Friedrich Nicolai , Leipzig 1783), Engel, an important forerunner of well-known literary theorists, is one of the pioneers of modern narrative theory.

His “Kleinen Schriften” (Berlin 1785), his “Fürstenspiegel” (Berlin 1798), but above all his poetry-free character painting “Herr Lorenz Stark” (first in Schiller's “Horen” 1795 and 1795), which is distinguished by its fine observation of the small and everyday 1796, Berlin 1801) found, especially in Northern Germany, deserved and exaggerated admiration.

Vicissitudes of life

Johann Jakob Engel (after the painting by FG ​​Weitsch, engraved by JJ Freihof)

By taking over the management of the National Theater, Engel took on a burden with an annual income of 800 thalers that actually overwhelmed him. Because he was responsible for the selection of the plays and actors, had trouble with the stage staff and the audience, and even brawls were not unusual. One day he announced: "The angel gave laws, but no devil wants to keep them!"

King Friedrich Wilhelm II did not approve his request for dismissal, submitted in 1790, only to chase him away four years later without a pension. This was preceded by a strange dispute about the performance of Mozart's "Magic Flute" desired by the king, which Engel rejected for various, mainly economic reasons. When the work was successful all over Germany, he could no longer refuse. But Engel put the Berlin premiere on a day when he knew that the king would be absent, which he recognized as impropriety and punished.

Since Engel now only had income from his literary work at his disposal, he could no longer afford life in expensive Berlin and he left the Prussian metropolis. The lifelong bachelor moved to Schwerin and stayed with his younger brother Karl Christian, who was a doctor but also had literary ambitions. In this situation, Engel did not even disdain the collaboration on the literary magazine "Die Horen". The offer came from the publisher Friedrich Schiller , for whom Engel had once been a "declared enemy" (1787) and also a "poor dog" (1788).

Memorial plaque in Parchim

Now in 1794 Schiller wrote to the publisher Johann Friedrich Cotta : "Four excellent men have already joined our society, Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder , Christian Garve and Engel". Two years later, in Schiller's " Horen ", Engels' sequels appeared as a "character painting" family novel "Herr Lorenz Stark". In Schwerin, Engels' collection of essays "Der Fürstenspiegel" was also created, which had to tell those "who are destined to rule some useful truths to them". These were the thoughts he once presented to the Crown Prince in his private lectures.

In 1798 Engel was taken over by his pupil Friedrich Wilhelm III. recalled to Berlin after the latter came to power and died in Parchim in 1802, where he had visited his mother at the request of his mother. A collection of his “Complete Writings” was started while Engels was still alive (Berlin 1801–1806, 12 volumes; new edition, Berlin 1851, 14 volumes).

literature

  • Christoph Blatter: Johann Jakob Engel. Pioneer of modern storytelling. Narration. Vol. 9. Verlag Peter Lang. Bern; Berlin; Frankfurt am Main; New York; Paris; Vienna. Dissertation University of Zurich. 1993, ISBN 3-906751-45-7 .
  • Adalbert Elschenbroich:  Engel, Johann Jakob. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 504 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Alexander Košenina (ed.): Johann Jakob Engel, correspondence from the years 1765 to 1802 . Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 1992. ISBN 3-88479-665-8
  • Alexander Košenina (ed.): Johann Jakob Engel (1741–1802) . Philosopher for the world, esthete and poet. Laatzen: Wehrhahn, 2005. ISBN 3-86525-037-8
  • Joseph Kürschner:  Engel, Johann Jakob . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, pp. 113-115.
  • Pütt 1991/2 , series of publications des Heimatbund eV Parchim, 1991, pp. 19-23.
  • Pütt 2002 , series of publications by the Heimatbund eV Parchim, 2002, pp. 18–21.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Entry in the Rostock matriculation portal
  2. ↑ Entry in the Rostock matriculation portal
  3. ↑ Christoph Blatter: Johann Jakob Engel. Pioneer of modern storytelling. Narration. Vol. 9. Verlag Peter Lang. Bern; Berlin; Frankfurt am Main; New York; Paris; Vienna. Dissertation University of Zurich. 1993, ISBN 3-906751-45-7 . (in the foreword)

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personal data
SURNAME Engel, Johann Jakob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Engel, Johann Jacob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and literary theorist
DATE OF BIRTH September 11, 1741
PLACE OF BIRTH Parchim
DATE OF DEATH June 28, 1802
Place of death Parchim