Johann Joachim Christoph Bode

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Johann Joachim Christoph Bode, engraving by Eberhard Siegfried Henne after Johann Ernst Heinsius

Johann Joachim Christoph Bode (born January 16, 1731 in Braunschweig , † December 13, 1793 in Weimar ) was a German military robber, music teacher , journalist , Hamburg publisher and one of the most important translators of the Enlightenment . The friend and publisher's bookseller Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstocks and Gotthold Ephraim Lessings was himself an enlightener and leading figure in Freemasonry and the Illuminati .

Life

Johann Joachim Christoph Bode was the son of Johann Jürgen Bode, an invalid soldier from Braunschweig. His mother was born etiquette. He came to his grandfather in Barum to tend sheep. He learned music in Braunschweig since 1744 and went as a military musician in a Braunschweig regiment that was stationed in Helmstedt . Here he became an oboist in 1750 . The clergyman Professor Johann Christoph Stockhausen (1725–1784) from Helmstedt gave him French lessons ; He also learned the English language here and devoted himself to deepening his knowledge of the history of German-language literature . In addition, he continued to develop his musical skills. He did not pursue another academic career and otherwise remained self-taught .

In 1752 he entered the Hanoverian service in Celle, where he composed several concertos and solo pieces for the bassoon and published compositions for songs ; he also began to write and published in the Braunschweigischer Intellektivenblatt . After the death of his wife - all of his seven children from the three marriages he had entered into during his life all died after a short lifetime - he went to Hamburg in 1757, where he worked as a language and music teacher and also translated from French and English.

From 1759 he worked for the Hamburg theater, directed by Johann Heinrich Koch (1703–75), and met Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock . 1762–63 he was the editor of the Hamburg impartial correspondent . The republican sentiment of the Enlightenment grew up in this city of the North German merchants and cities, and the local mayor Nicolaus Schuback (1700–1783) opened doors to Hanseatic society for him.

In 1766 he founded a printing company. In that year the foundation stone for his friendship with Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was laid, who was in charge of Abel Seyler 's Hamburg National Theater from December 1766 to May 1770 as dramaturge . Both agreed to do a “common cause” in Bode's print shop (Lessing letter to Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim of 1767), and after Lessing's partnership there followed a company of considerable size called the “scholarly bookstore”. Lessing had recommended to Bode that Laurence Sternes Yorick's sensitive journey should be translated into German, which actually resulted in such a great success in Germany (published in four volumes in 1768 and 1769) that this literary epoch was called the time of sensitivity . “Sensitive” was a neologism that Lessing had recommended. The cooperative project only existed until 1768 because Lessing was planning to go to Rome. But Bodes Verlag expanded noticeably, and he printed z. B. Lessing's Hamburg Dramaturgy , Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenberg's Ugolino and Johann Ludwig Schlosser's Neue Lustspiele . Johann Bernhard Basedow and Klopstock agreed to contribute articles. Together with Matthias Claudius he founded the Wandsbecker Bothen . He also published writings by Gleim, a collection of essays by Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1833) ( Von deutscher Art und Kunst. Some flying leaves, 1773), the controversial theologian Karl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741–1792) ( Curiosities from the life story of Jesus ) and work on commission, for example for Friedrich Nicolai from Berlin.

Through Bode's further field of activity, the theater, he got to know Georg Philipp Telemann , the city's music director, and as an active musician - later Bode was temporarily concertmaster at the Hamburg concert hall "Auf der Kamp" - Telemann's successor (since 1767) Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach , who became a close friend of his, as well as the guest actor Friedrich Ludwig Ulrich Schröder in Hamburg , who is counted among the most famous actors of the time.

Through his second marriage to a wealthy student (Simonette Tamm), he came into possession of an important fortune. When Simonette died after a few years - two of his wives died in childbed and one suffered a fatal accident - he married for the third and last time in 1768 in Hamburg, namely the daughter of his widowed friend, the Hamburg bookseller and publisher Johann Carl Bohn (1712 –73), Metta Maria (1743–1777; three children together died in the first years of life) and built a printing press with her fortune , which he entrusted to Matthias Claudius . He published his own and other works, such as Lessing's dramaturgy , Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen , Klopstock's Oden and Friedrich Ludwig Schröder's Hamburgisches Theater . In 1768 he founded a “scholarly bookshop” with Lessing. Since he knew as little about the commercial business as Lessing, the company soon failed, but this should not hide the fact that Bode had reached his first creative peak in the 1770s, which he, however, against a career in Freemasonry around 1775 exchanged. According to documents from the Hamburg Freemason Lodge "Absalom zu den Drei Nesseln" he was master of the chair in this lodge from 1765 to 1768 and from 1773 to 1778 . At Heinrich Christian Boie , who since 1770 co-editor of Göttingen Muse almanac was (ie, the magazine of the Hainbund ), he wrote this year about his plan, a Masonic almanac to write. In the years 1776 to 1779 he put this into practice, and as an almanac or pocket book for the Freymäurer brothers of the united German lodges , in which all articles came from him, this periodical became the forerunner of all German Masonic, regularly published printed works ; however, the publication was discontinued because his Freemason brothers imposed censorship regulations on him, which he was not prepared to comply with.

At Gut Borstel in 1775 he made the acquaintance of the rich Countess Charitas Emilie von Bernstorff, widow of the famous Danish minister Johann Hartwig Ernst Graf von Bernstorff , whom he received via Meiningen - where he was given the title of Ducal Saxon-Meining Councilor from the ruling Duchess Charlotte Amalia received - 1779 as managing director and quasi- court marshal to Weimar followed. He had already been in Weimar in 1776, where he had met among others Goethe, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz , Christoph Martin Wieland , Friedrich Johann Justin Bertuch , the chamber president Johann August von Kalb (1747-1814) and the relatively poor noble Duke Karl August . Bode tried only partially successfully to exert a friendly, restrictive influence on Goethe, because he jeopardized his good reputation nationwide because of an unbridled way of life. B. is said to have encouraged his younger ducal master to shoot the Bible with a pistol . It cannot be ruled out that this concern was brought to him by Ferdinand von Braunschweig , a federal brother of Bode and uncle of Carl August's mother Anna Amalia . The Hamburg print shop ran an extra Bodes from then on, and Georg Joachim Göschen took care of the remaining stock on commission.

Bode's tombstone in the Jakobsfriedhof in Weimar

After living with Ernst Carl Constantin von Schardt for a short time , he moved into the feudal three-winged building of the Countess von Bernstorff and became a frequent and popular guest at Carl August's. Bode later set up a private print shop in the Bernstorffschen Palais, a late baroque building barely 100 meters from Goethe's "Haus Am Frauenplan" (later Schaller'scher Hof , today Hotel Am Frauenplan , Brauhausgasse 10), where he wrote the publications on the "Bund der Deutschen Freemasonry ”. He was in correspondence with Johann Heinrich Merck , Elisa von der Recke, (1754-1833) and Christine Hess. He developed a friendship with Sophie von La Roche , whose writings he published ambitiously, and met Friedrich Schiller , who was visiting Weimar. He accompanied societies of the Weimar, Gothaer or Meininger courts, at which Herder and Goethe were also present at times, on their trips to various spas . Due to the fortune of Countess Bernstorff, he was also able to devote himself to his own journeys. B. led back to Hamburg or Braunschweig. His most famous excursion was to be the one to France in 1787, although he did not get a good impression of that country. In a letter to Christian Gottfried Körner , Schiller reported how Bode had informed him "that he had brought something important from Paris regarding masonry " (Schiller National Edition 24, No. 100).

He became court counselor in Weimar and later a Saxon-Gotha legation councilor and privy councilor in Hesse-Darmstadt .

Bode died on December 13, 1793 in Weimar and was buried in the Jacobsfriedhof Weimar .

Translations

Bode's private work

  • Masonic writings and personal papers , the so-called Swedish chest ; it was bought after Bode's death by Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. The inventory, together with other materials, then had an eventful fate.

Honors

literature

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Bode, Johann Joachim Christoph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German translator
DATE OF BIRTH January 16, 1731
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1793
Place of death Weimar