Johann Michael Hamann

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Johann Michael Hamann (born on September 27, 1769 in Königsberg ; died on December 12, 1813 there ) was a German poet and pedagogue.

Life

Hamann was the son of Johann Georg Hamann , the philosopher and writer known as the “Magus of the North”. After a thorough, especially ancient language, home tuition, Hamann began studying philosophy and philology at the University of Königsberg in 1786 . In 1787, together with a doctor, he accompanied his father on a trip to Westphalia, on which he fell ill and died in Münster in June 1788 . After further studies and a position as court master in the house of Count Keyserling in Blieden in Courland (today Blīdene in the Brocēni district , Latvia), he became an assistant teacher at the Königsberg Cathedral School in 1793 and, with the support of Theodor Gottlieb von Hippels, Vice-Rector at the Old Town Latin School in 1794 .

In 1796 he became its rector and devoted himself tirelessly to the development and reform of this school until his death at the age of 43. As deputy principal he created a new lesson plan, gave 28 hours a week, corrected 220 German, Latin and French papers every week for years, tried to improve the very meager teacher salaries and also wrote textbooks. In 1811 the school was converted into a humanistic grammar school in accordance with the Königsberg school plan . After his death, a memorial was donated to him by his students.

In 1791 Hamann had published two volumes of poems ( poems of a dilettante and poetic experiments ), another volume followed in 1799 ( leaves of feeling and memory ). In his poetry, which was trained on ancient examples, he orientated himself on the sensitive tradition, on Klopstock and occasionally on Goethe , without leaving the framework of the convention. As an example, the opening poem of the last volume of poetry:

Where Apollo's laurel groves wave
from the spring of Delos, I would drink;
Angrily, Apollo rejected me.
Venus spoke with a pained look:
Young man, here where myrtle groves beckon,
You may drink from the spring of Paphos!
And obediently I drank from the spring;
The wave of the song flowed only with love.

Suddenly
the goddess of pure truth approached me in the clearness of the sun, masculine serious:
Young man, she said, consecrate your feeling
Not to jokes, not to love games! Cover the figure of naked truth
under images of poetic
truth!
Write what you feel, pressed by me,
On the pages of memories!

Works

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sheets of Feeling and Memory . Königsberg 1799, p. 1 f.
personal data
SURNAME Hamann, Johann Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet and pedagogue
DATE OF BIRTH September 27, 1769
PLACE OF BIRTH Königsberg (Prussia)
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 1813
Place of death Königsberg (Prussia)