Johann Konrad Friederich

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Johann Konrad Friederich (also under the pseudonyms Carl Strahlheim and Karl F. Fröhlich ; born December 5, 1789 in Frankfurt am Main ; died May 1, 1858 in Le Havre ) was a German writer, officer, and adventurer.

Life

Friederich was the son of the Frankfurt merchant Johann Nikolaus Friederich (1762-1834) and the bookseller and publisher's daughter Johanna Marie Wenner (1768-1828). He received a good education from educators in Frankfurt, Homburg and Offenbach , who taught him languages ​​as well as horse riding and singing. Like his father, he was to become a businessman, but preferred to devote himself to acting. A secret trip to Weimar , described in the memoir , in order to win Goethe's support for his acting plans, may have been made up. As a compromise, Friederich became a soldier in the French service in the autumn of 1805 - then 15 years old.

In the following years he led an adventurous life in Italy, Spain and France, was involved in the capture of Pope Pius VII in 1809 and brought the news of the successful coup d'état to Napoleon in Schönbrunn . Wherever he went, he installed amateur theaters, performed Mozart's Don Giovanni for the first time in Italy and played in pieces by Schiller which he himself translated . In addition to his military and acting activities, he experienced numerous gallant encounters and amorous escapades, which he frankly described in his memoirs, which earned him the lasting nickname of a German or Frankfurt Casanova . After the fall of Napoleon in 1814, he returned to Frankfurt, then allowed himself to be recruited by the Prussian army, but retired from service in 1818 after disciplinary difficulties.

In the years after 1818 Friederich worked as a journalist, editor and freelance writer, first in Berlin, Hamburg and other places, from 1821 to 1823 in Offenbach and Frankfurt, then in Cologne, as editor of the Phoenix in Mannheim and Stuttgart. In 1828 he became a citizen of Frankfurt through marriage to Johanna Juliana Scherr and lived in Frankfurt-Rödelheim from 1832 . From 1821 he was the editor of the political-satirical observer on the Rhine and Main , which like most of the satirical magazines of the Vormärz only had a short life and was banned by the censors in 1822 after a cartoon by Metternich was published. In 1823 he caused Johann Ludwig Heller to publish the Didaskalia or Blätter für Geist, Gemüth and Publicity as a supplement to the Frankfurter Journal that he published. The supplement appeared until 1930.

In addition to his journalistic work, from the mid-1820s Friederich was an immensely productive author and editor of, in part, multi-volume popular scientific, mostly historical works of a compilation-encyclopedic character. The history series Our Time , published from 1826 to 1831 alone, comprises 30 volumes. Friederich worked on these extensive historical and geographic compilations without striving for independent scientific achievements, with the aim of arousing the interest of young people and the non-educated audience in particular and of having a general educational effect. Some of these works were published in-house. After a falling out with his partner, Friederich moved to Paris in 1842 .

Friederich is particularly important through his memoir Forty Years from the Life of a Dead , which appeared in three volumes in 1848 and 1849, a sequel appeared in 1854, a third part remained unfinished. In it, he not only describes his adventures as a soldier and his love intrigues, but also mockingly and viciously contemporary society in Frankfurt, which led to the fact that a lawsuit was brought against him for ridiculing the Frankfurt authorities, various private individuals and religion and the sale the memoirs in Frankfurt forbade.

Friederich and his writings were largely forgotten in the decades after his death . The "German Casanova" only came to publicity again through several new editions of the memoirs from 1915 and the biography of Friedrich Clemens Ebrard and Louis Liebmann. Today, despite some exaggerations, these memories are recognized as an image of time of lasting value due to their cultural-historical detail. Also noteworthy are his utopian writings, which astonish by anticipating inventions of the 20th century such as X-rays, aviation and submarines, an example that should be mentioned here is Demonic Journeys around the World (1847).

Friederich died completely impoverished in Le Havre in 1858. His uncle, the rich merchant Johann Friedrich Schultze († 1814), had owned Kleinniedesheim Castle near Worms from 1784 , which Friederich also reports in his memoirs.

Works

  • Our time, or historical overview of the most remarkable events from 1789-1830. 30 vols. Stuttgart 1826-1831.
  • History of the English Revolution from Carl I's accession to the throne to the fall of Jacob II after Guizot. 3 vols. Stuttgart 1829–1830 (adaptation and translation of François Guizot's Histoire de la révolution d'Angleterre 1828).
  • The wonder folder or all the art and natural wonders of the whole globe. 13 vols. Frankfurt am Main 1834–1839.
  • The world theater or general world history from creation to the year 1840. 6 vols. Frankfurt am Main 1834–1840.
  • as C. Strahlheim (Ed.): General Lexicon or complete dictionary of all human knowledge. Frankfurt am Main 1836–1839, No. 1–91 (only from A to Baukunst . More not published.)
  • as C. Friederich: The holy story from the creation of the world to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus […] Comptoir for literature and art, Frankfurt am Main 1839, OCLC 257797837 .
  • as C. Strahlheim: Napoleon Bonaparte's complete biography. Edited from the most reliable sources. Comptoir for literature and art, Frankfurt am Main 1839.
  • as C. Strahlheim: Universal mythology or complete doctrine of gods and myths of all peoples on earth. Edited from the best and most reliable sources. Comptoir for literature and art, Frankfurt am Main 1839.
  • Historical-mythological-geographical youth library, for the youth and the non-scholarly world. 2 vols. Pforzheim 1841/1842.
  • General world history for the more mature youth and the ignorant public. 5 vols. Pforzheim 1841 f.
  • Demonic journeys all over the world. Tübingen 1847.
memoirs

literature

  • Wolfgang Beutin: A German as a Napoleonic officer, as a writer and as an ›emigrant‹ in France: Johann Konrad Friedrich (1789–1858). In: Vormärz and Exile - Vormärz in Exile. Edited by Norbert Otto Eke. Bielefeld 2005, pp. 209-265.
  • Friedrich Clemens Ebrard , Louis Liebmann: Johann Konrad Friedrich, a forgotten writer. Frankfurt am Main 1918.
  • Adalbert Elschenbroich:  Friederich, Johann Konrad. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 448 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Theodor Heuss :  JK Friederich from Frankfurt.  In: Ders .:  Shadow conjuring. Figures on the margins of history . Wunderlich, Stuttgart / Tübingen 1947; Klöpfer and Meyer, Tübingen 1999,  ISBN 3-931402-52-5 .
  • Hans-Wolf Jäger : Goethe's little cousin. Memory of the Frankfurt adventurer Johann Konrad Friedrich. In: Goethe Yearbook 12 (2004), pp. 241–250.
  • Eckart Kleßmann : Johann Konrad Friedrich. In: Ders .: Portraits. Darmstadt 2003, pp. 181–196.
  • Wolfgang Klötzer (ed.): Frankfurt biography. Personal history lexicon. Vol. 1. Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1994, sv Friederich, Johann Conrad .
  • Arno Matschiner: Friederich, Johann Konrad. In: Wilhelm Kühlmann (Ed.): Killy Literature Lexicon . Authors and works from the German-speaking cultural area. 2., completely revised Ed. De Gruyter, Berlin 2009, vol. 4, p. 9 f.
  • Otto Renkhoff : Nassau biography. 2nd edition Wiesbaden 1992, sv Friederich, Johann Konrad .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Albert Leitzmann : Goethe, Schiller and Friederich, a fictional visit to Goethe and Schiller. In: Berliner Tageblatt of December 31, 1915, No. 668, evening edition.
  2. ↑ The Phoenix. Rheinisches Unterhaltungsblatt. Löffler, Mannheim 1825-1830, ZDB -ID 345365-0 , supplement to the Mannheimer Zeitung .
  3. ^ The observer on the Rhine and Main. Offenbach 1821-1822, ZDB ID 977768-4 .
  4. ^ Didaskalia or Leaves for Mind, Mind and Publicity . Frankfurt 1823-1830, ZDB -ID 531944-4 , digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3Dhttps%3A%2F%2Fopacplus.bsb-muenchen.de%2Fmetaopac%2Fsearch%3FView%3Ddefault%26db%3D100%26id%3D531944-4~GB%3D~IA%3D~ MDZ% ​​3D% 0A ~ SZ% 3D ~ double-sided% 3D ~ LT% 3D ~ PUR% 3D , then Didaskalia , ZDB -ID 384371-3 , from 1903 supplement of the Frankfurter Nachrichten , 1930 discontinued.
  5. ↑ Website on the history of Schloss Kleinniedesheim ( Memento of the original from March 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kleinniedesheim.de
  6. ^ Otmar Seemann : Incompletely published lexicons and encyclopedias. An addendum to war: MNE. In: Karl H. Pressler (Ed.): From the Antiquariat. Volume 8, 1990 (= Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel - Frankfurter Ausgabe. No. 70, August 31, 1990), pp. A 329 - A 334, here: p. A 333.
personal data
SURNAME Friederich, Johann Konrad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Strahlheim, Carl (pseudonym); Strahlheim, Konrad Friedrich (pseudonym); Fröhlich, Karl F. (pseudonym); Friedrich, Conrad; Friederich, Johann Conrad
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, officer and adventurer
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1789
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH May 1, 1858
Place of death Le Havre