Johann Jakob Willemer

Johann Jakob Willemer. Miniature by Joseph Nicolaus Peroux , 1793

Johann Jakob Willemer , von Willemer since 1816 (born March 29, 1760 in Frankfurt am Main ; † October 19, 1838 ibid) was a Frankfurt banker and author.

life and career

Willemer received his first name Johann Jakob from his Evangelical Lutheran uncle and godfather. He came from a humble background, had worked his way up to the Privy Council as a 29-year-old and, as a 33-year-old, his patent for the Royal Preuss. Hofbanquier received. He wrote to Goethe on December 11, 1808 about his origins and his arduous ascent:

“I grew up without an education and learned nothing. Boring poor and therefore looked over the shoulder by everyone in the Franckfurt manner and that cuts deep furrows in a tender mind, awakens life's torment, I have to earn everything I own for myself, and beyond that the most beautiful part of my life passed, and I couldn't deal with anything but making money, striving for nothing but sham honor. "

Willemer is likely to have exaggerated his poverty. His father, Johann Ludwig Willemer, ran the Franck & Co. bank until his untimely death. His mother then continued to run the company until her son could take it over. Not least because of the dowry of his first wife Magdalena Lange from a wealthy Berlin merchant's house, he was already a wealthy man as a 24-year-old. He leased a country estate on the banks of the Main, the Gerbermühle . In addition, after selling his parents' house at Töngesgasse 49, he bought the house Zum Roten Männchen at Fahrtor .

With his wife Maria Magdalena geb. For a long time, called Meline, Willemer had four daughters, Rosette, Käthe, Meline and Maximiliane. After her death in 1792, nine months later, he married Jeannette Mariane born 17 years younger than him. Chiron, who died in childbed three years later at the age of only 20. From this connection came the son Abraham, called Brami.

The young Viennese actress and dancer Marianne Jung became Willemer's third wife. He had just been elected to the senior management of the theater when she began her Frankfurt engagement at the age of 14 in 1798. One of her admirers was Willemer. He took 16-year-old Marianne off the stage and took her over for 2000 guilders and a pension from her impoverished mother as a foster daughter in his household, where she and his children received an education in music and language. When she was 18, she was believed to be the 42-year-old's partner. After 12 years, in 1814, the childless connection was legalized.

To promote the military career of his only surviving son Brami, Willemer had the ennobling endeavor. In 1816 he was raised to the nobility by Emperor Franz I of Austria. His son Brami died in 1818 as a result of a gunshot wound sustained during a duel with his fellow officer Theodor von Borkum-Dolffs. To alleviate the pain, the nextborn in the family should be named “Brami” in memory. When Maximiliane von Willemer, who was married to Jean Andreae, gave birth to a son in 1819 - the later mechanical engineer Abraham Maria Andreae - he was given the first name Abraham and was called Brami.

In 1836 - at the age of 77 - Willemer suffered a stroke. Marianne cared for him in the last two years of his life until his death. On October 22, 1838, he was buried next to his first wife at the church in Frankfurt-Oberrad . Marianne von Willemer outlived her husband by 22 years.

Friendship with Goethe

Willemer was not only engaged as a businessman, but also as a sponsor of the Frankfurt theater and literary. In addition to educational and moral writings on the spread of morality , he wrote five dramas, among other things, but received little recognition for them. His great role model was Goethe, whom he first met as a seventeen-year-old bank apprentice in 1777. Four years later he visited him again with his first wife Magdalena. In 1814 and 1815 Johann Jakob and Marianne often met with Goethe and continued to maintain contact through letters. The focus was on the literary collaboration between Goethe and Marianne.

The tanner's mill. Drawing by Sulpiz Boisserée , 1817

The time of intensive personal encounters began when Goethe was in Wiesbaden and Willemer visited him there on August 4th. He introduced him to Marianne and invited him to visit the tanner's mill. A few days later, Goethe wrote to his wife Christiane that Willemer had visited him with his "little companion", and he raved about the stay on August 12:

“Moonlight and sunsets; the one on Willemer's mill ... endlessly beautiful. "

On October 18, 1814, the Willemer couple met with Goethe in the Willemer-Häuschen , a summer house acquired in 1809 on the Mühlberg, to watch the bonfires on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig.

In a letter dated April 10, 1815, Willemer again invited Goethe to travel to Frankfurt:

“You will soon recover from the complaints of the winter in Weimar on the banks of the Main. You could initiate the pre-treatment for Oberrad and live with us on the mill. There is enough space, and my wife and I would never have felt more joy than to see you as our guests. When you are tired of the sun and of work, she sings your songs to you. "

He lived at the Gerbermühle until September 18, with the exception of a temporary stay in Willemer's townhouse from September 8 to 15. In the mornings, Goethe mainly worked on the West-Eastern Divan , which he had started the previous year. At lunchtime they dined together and in the afternoon strolled through the rural surroundings. In the evening Goethe recited the verses he wrote during the day, and Marianne not only sang his songs, but increasingly entered into a lyrical dialogue with him.

On September 18, Goethe traveled on to Heidelberg, where the Willemers visited him on September 23. Marianne had brought her friend a poem that was to be included in the divan as a song from the east wind . In their further correspondence, the two continued their joint poetry and their platonic love affair.

Fonts

• To my fellow citizens on the right bank of the Rhine on the question: Do the French have the freedom they offer us? , o. O. 1798.
  • New edition, edited by Hermann Traxut: Moritz Diesterweg, Frankfurt am Main 1924.
• Of the advantages of a national costume . Andreä, Frankfurt am Main 1814.
• On the merits of the Christian moral principle and its influence on education . Frankfurt am Main 1828.

literature

• Walter Weisbecker : The banker on the edge of the “West-Eastern Divan”: Johann Jakob Willemer was more than just Suleika's husband . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine , H. 204 of September 3, 1977, p. 48
• Günter Jacobs: Johann Jakob Willemer (1760–1838): Politics and pedagogy in his writings. Frankfurt am Main, 1971
• Adolf Müller: Johann Jakob von Willemer: man and citizen. Englert and Schlosser, 1925
• Rudolf Jung (historian) :  Willemer, Johann Jakob . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 43, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, pp. 265-267.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hans-Joachim Weitz: Marianne and Johann Jakob Willemer: Correspondence with Goethe. Insel Verlag, 1965, page 533.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Isabel Gotovac: To: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe- "West-Eastern Divan" 2008, ISBN 978-3-640-15972-7 , p. 9.
3. ^ Dagmar von Gersdorf: Marianne von Willemer and Goethe. Story of a love . Insel-Verlag, Berlin 2011 ISBN 3-458-17176-2 , p. 185.
4. ↑ Rudolf Jung: Willemer, Johann Jakob . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie , Vol. 43, p. 266.
5. ↑ Horst Conrad: "Tomorrow at 4 am it will be decided". The duel death of Abraham von Willemer and the von Bockum-Dolffs zu Sassendorf family. United Westphalian Aristocratic Archives , Münster 2005, ISBN 978-80-00-30558-5 , p. 4ff.
6. ^ Dagmar von Gersdorf: Marianne von Willemer and Goethe . P. 228.
7. ^ Günter Jacobs: Johann Jakob Willemer (1760-1838). Politics and Education in His Writings . Diss. University of Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, 1971, p. 139.
8. ^ Adolf Müller: Johann Jakob von Willemer. Man and citizen . Englert and Schlosser, Frankfurt am Main 1925, p. 21.
9. ↑ Konstanze Crüwell: Willemer house in new splendor. on: FAZ-Online. May 29, 2006, accessed July 11, 2012.
10. ^ Björn Wissenbach: Willemerhäuschen. In: Hiking trail around Sachsenhausen. No. 3, p. 11.