Johann Jakob Thill

Memorial plaque for the German poet Johann Jakob Thill (1747–1772) in Großheppach, Germany, designed by Ulrich Nuss.

Johann Jakob Thill (born December 22, 1747, presumably in Stuttgart , † March 31, 1772 in Großheppach ) was a German Protestant pastor and poet of sensitivity who was influenced by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock . He stands at the beginning of the literary tradition at the Tübingen monastery and was particularly appreciated by the poet Friedrich Hölderlin , who dedicated the poem An Thills Grab from 1789 to him. Friedrich Schiller praised him in his magazine Wirtembergisches Repertorium in 1782 .

Life

His parents were Marie Justine Andler (1720–1752) and the pastor Jakob Georg Thill (1717–1804). Johann Jakob Thill was probably born in the Stuttgart orphanage, where his father held the position of orphan preacher. The family belonged to the "Württembergischen Ehrlichkeit", a group of families that occupied most of the important ecclesiastical and secular administrative positions at that time. He was envisaged by his father for a career in the church and went through the usual stations in the Duchy of Württemberg at the time in the monastery schools of Blaubeuren (1761–1763) and Bebenhausen (1763–1765). He trained as a theologian at the Tübingen monastery and completed his studies in 1771 with a master's degree.

His first poetic attempts fall during this time. Thill's little valley near Tübingen became famous, a forest valley in which Thill used to write.

After a vicariate with his father in Großheppach, today a district of Weinstadt, he fell ill with typhus in 1772 while visiting sick people and died in 1772 at the age of 25.

Services

The Württemberg writers found an ideal figure to identify with in Thill. His early death and his scattered work were considered an example of the fate of the fine arts in an amusing Württemberg, in which the best minds perished early due to lack of support. Friedrich Hölderlin in particular saw a role model in the poet who died early. In the poem An Thills Grab , composed in 1789, he combines the mourning at Thill's death with the mourning over the death of his stepfather and his biological father, who died in the same year in 1772. In Hölderlin's patriotic song The Hike is mentioned in a text variant of Thill's village , in the undated fragment Your securely built Alps , the poet reminds of Tills Thal . The Roman Hartmann, a Wirtemberg monastery story, written by Thill's friend David Christoph Seybold in 1778, is a fictitious biography of Thill, which is clearly written with the aim of criticizing the Württemberg system of monastery schools.

On April 2, 2017, a memorial plaque was inaugurated at the Großheppach church; It was designed by the Weinstadt sculptor Ulrich Nuss.

Works

Two letters, two fragments of drama and 27 poems have survived, some of them satirical, some romantic, and some patriotic-religious in nature. Two of them are in Latin. They show Thill as a sensitive poet, who sometimes takes a sharp tongue against grievances at the Tübingen monastery. Thill's poem Stauffen founded a whole tradition of Hohenstaufen poems . They come from various Swabian poets and mostly have memories of the former greatness of the Roman-German Empire in view of the ruins of the Staufer ancestral castle.

In the pedigree of the writer and theologian Christian Friedrich Kessler (1742-1801) a drawing and autograph of Thill are obtained, the philologist Reinhard Breymayer discovered.

Nothing was printed in his lifetime. His poems were published posthumously in various anthologies ; the first complete edition appeared in 2000.

literature

• David Christoph Seybold : Hartmann a Wirtemberg monastery history. Leipzig 1778.
• Götz Eberhard Hübner: Hölderlin "At Thills Grave" 1789 in Großheppach. In: traces , number 31, Marbach am Neckar 1995.
• Ulrich Stolte: Early idol of Swabian poets: Johann Jakob Thill (1747–1772). Biography and annotated work edition. Tübingen 2000.
• Ulrich Stolte: Poet in the amusical Württemberg. A new autograph of Friedrich Hölderlin's idol Johann Jakob Thill. In: Suevica. Contributions to Swabian literary and intellectual history , Volume 9, 2004, pp. 95–110.

Notes and individual references

1. ↑ Hans-Georg Kemper: Johann Jakob Thill - On the rediscovery of a poet's talent at the Tübinger Stift , in: Werner Frick, Susanne Komfort-Hein: Enlightenment: On the history of modern literature: Festschrift for Klaus-Detlef Müller on the 65th birthday , Verlag Walter de Gruyter , 2003, ISBN 3110939266 , pp. 1-13; (Digital scan)