Johanna Sebus

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Johanna Sebus , illustration by Roland Risse for the magazine Die Gartenlaube , 1872
Monument to Johanna Sebus ( 51 ° 49 ′ 39.5 ″  N , 6 ° 8 ′ 14.4 ″  E )

Johanna Sebus (born December 28, 1791 in Brienen ; † January 13, 1809 ) from Brienen near Kleve on the Lower Rhine first saved her mother from the floods of the Rhine when a dam broke and then died when she wanted to help other people. Her body was found while the water drained and was buried in cattle in the cemetery. In 1872 her grave was integrated into the building when a new church was built.

Posthumous honors

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dedicated a ballad to Johanna Sebus in 1809 , in which he described her selfless commitment and her dramatic death. This ballad was set to music by Carl Friedrich Zelter in 1810 at the poet's own request . There is also a version by Franz Schubert (D 728) composed in April 1821 ; the song was first published in 1894/95. In the 1860s, the Düsseldorf history painter Roland Risse took on this material and created an oil painting entitled Johanna Sebus at the break of the Clever Damm in 1809 , which, after the Berlin academic art exhibition, was also shown at the Düsseldorf exhibition of the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen that year Was shown in 1871. A lithograph based on this original was published in 1872 as an illustration in the journal Die Gartenlaube .

White rose for Johanna Sebus

In 1811 a memorial was erected in her honor in Wardhausen . At the same time, she was posthumously awarded the White Rose , an honor donated by the French Emperor Napoleon I on the occasion of his accession to the throne on December 2, 1804. This honor goes back to a tradition in northern France and was to be given to a particularly virtuous girl every year in all places under Napoleonic rule, which included Kleve as the main town in the Arrondissement de Clèves . In addition to a rose with golden leaves, these girls, selected by an electoral committee, also received a golden ring and a trousseau . The monument to Johanna Sebus bears an inscription in French on the front. Above the inscription is a white marble rose floating on the water, surrounded by twelve stars. The German translation on the back is from 1953. The house of Johanna's mother Helene Sebus, née van Bentum, was also rebuilt on behalf of the French government, which is documented by a plaque with a Latin inscription in the nearby inn.

In Kleve, the Johanna-Sebus-Gymnasium , which was closed in 2010 and originally a girls' school, remembered the 17-year-old heroine in its name. In Duisburg , too, there was a Johanna-Sebus-Gymnasium until the end of the 1970s , which was also a girls' school. The Catholic primary school in cattle is also named after her.

In Kleve, Xanten and Emmerich streets are named after Johanna Sebus. She is also the namesake of inns and lifeboats in the immediate vicinity of her home village.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Johanna Sebus in the Gutenberg-DE project
  2. ^ Eusebius Mandyczewski (Ed.): Franz Schubert's works . Series XX: All songs and chants . Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1894/95, No. 601
  3. ↑ Risse, Roland. . In: Friedrich von Boetticher : painter works of the nineteenth century. Contribution to art history . Volume II, Dresden 1898, p. 488

Web links

Commons : Johanna Sebus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Johanna Sebus  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Sebus, Johanna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lifesaver
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1791
PLACE OF BIRTH Brienen (today: Kleve )
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 1809
Place of death Brienen (today: Kleve )