Johann Michael Afsprung

Johann Michael Afsprung (born October 21, 1748 in Ulm ; † March 21, 1808 ibid) was a teacher and publicist as well as a supporter of the French Revolution and the Helvetic Republic .

Life

Afsprung, the son of a locksmith, left Ulm, the city of his birth, at the age of 22, trained as an autodidact and became a tutor in Vienna in 1770 . In 1771 he advanced to professor of German literature in Sárospatak (Hungary). Three years later he had to flee the Habsburg Monarchy due to his publications and traveled via Karlsruhe, where he met Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock , to Johann Bernhard Basedow in Dessau . After a long stay in Holland, whose constitution and history attracted him, he returned to Ulm. There he made influential connections, which brought him a government position in Ulm, but soon gave up this position and founded an educational institution in Heidelberg . In 1791 the waves of the French Revolution , for whose ideas he was initially enthusiastic, moved to St. Gallen and Lindau and deported there again, he became secretary of the Swiss government during the Helvetic Republic, in which capacity he was commissioned with the deportation of Johann Caspars Lavater . Imprisoned in 1799 at the headquarters of General André Masséna and then tutor in Neuchâtel and St. Gallen, he ended his unsettled life as a professor of Greek literature in Ulm.

Afsprung wrote a pamphlet in 1781 against the work "De la littérature allemande" by King Friedrich II. (Prussia) . In his work "Journey through some cantons of the Confederation" (1784, reprinted 1990) comes his appreciation of the rural community cantons of Switzerland , i. H. a direct democratic government. In this sense, he criticized the oligarchic constitution of the Free Imperial Cities ( Free Imperial City ) and suggested enlightenment and democratic reforms. In three pamphlets in 1800 he advocated a democratic constitution for Helveticia .

literature

• Thomas cave: Afsprung, Johann Michael. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Friedrich von Pressel:  Afsprung, Johann Michael . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 136 f.
• Frank Raberg : Biographical Lexicon for Ulm and Neu-Ulm 1802-2009 . Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft im Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2010, ISBN 978-3-7995-8040-3 , p. 5 f .

Web links

• Publications by and about Johann Michael Afsprung in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library
• Patriotic idea to his dear authorities regarding the need for a school improvement, 1776 (PDF file; 159 kB)