Journal from Tiefurt

The Journal von Tiefurt was published between 1781 and 1784 at the Weimar court of Duchess Anna Amalia .

history

In August 1781 the following announcement appeared, a so-called advertisement :

A society of scholars, artists, poets, and people of state, beyderley sexes, has come together, and has resolved to produce what politics, wit, talents, and understanding, in our dermally so remarkable times, produce, in a periodic writing, to the eyes of oneself to the chosen audience.

The initiator was the Duchess Anna Amalia. The journal named after Schloss Tiefurt is in this respect a kind of playful addition to the conviviality around Anna Amalia and went down in the legend of the Weimar court of muses .

The journal von Tiefurt appeared between 1781 and 1784 in 49 issues. In advance, it was only intended to be distributed among the inner circle of the Duchess Anna Amalia. The few handwritten copies of each issue were passed on after reading.

purpose

In addition to the pure entertainment of the circle around the Duchess, it also served as a counter-program to the Prussian King Friedrich II. In his pamphlet De la littérature allemande , published in 1780, he claimed that there was no such thing as beautiful German literature. He was expressly aiming at Goethe :

How can such an incongruous mish-mash of the mean and the sublime, of the antics and the tragic please? One can see Shakespeare's strange aberrations; for the hour of birth of the arts is never the time of their maturity. But now a “Götz von Berlichingen” appears on the stage, a hideous imitation of these bad English pieces ... I know that the taste is not debated, but please allow me to tell you that those who like tightrope walkers and Puppets find just as much pleasure as they do with Racine, they just want to kill time, they give preference to what appeals to the eyes and is only a mere display of what stimulates the mind and goes to the heart.

The Weimar people felt that this was an insult. The Prussian king denied their city and thus the ducal court the status of a place of culture. The journal of Tiefurt should (also) show which esprit worked in Weimar . But the Prussian king was right about one thing. The journal was also a means of passing the time against the boredom that certainly prevailed at the Musenhof in Tiefurt.

Authors

In addition to Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Johann Gottfried Herder and Christoph Martin Wieland , the authors of the Journal von Tiefurth also included the Chamberlain Karl Siegmund von Seckendorff , writer and composer, as well as Friedrich Hildebrand von Einsiedel , Goethe's “great friend” Karl Ludwig von Knebel and Darmstadt's friend Johann Heinrich Merck . Because the authors remained anonymous, high-ranking personalities could also take part, such as Duke Carl August von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach (1757-1828), Prince August von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg and Karl Theodor von Dalberg , the Mainz governor in Erfurt . Like those named, the following contributed as authors or translators to the Journal von Tiefurth : Duchess Anna Amalia, Countess Emilie von Werthern, Luise von Göchhausen , Sophie von Schardt and Caroline Herder .

reception

Bernhard Suphan and Eduard von der Hellen published a first printed edition in 1892 on behalf of the Goethe Society Weimar. In 2011 a new edition of the journal was published, also at the initiative of the Goethe Society Weimar.

The Elbhang-Kurier magazine, which has been published since 1992, cites in its self-portrayal a statement by Duchess Anna Amalia about the Tiefurter Journal that she publishes: an “enchanting mixture of high culture and banal news”.

Trivia

Since 2013, a magazine has been published for the Tiefurt district in memory of the journal of Tiefurt .

expenditure

• The journal of Tiefurt , Eduard von der Hellen , introduction Bernhard Suphan . Series: Writings of the Goethe Society, 7. Weimar 1892 digitized
• "It started as a weekly joke." The journal of Tiefurt . Ed. Jutta Heinz, Jochen Golz. Wallstein, Göttingen 2011 ISBN 978-3-8353-0957-9

literature

• Emmy Wolff: The women of Weimar and their literature; The 1st circle: Anna Amalia and the Tiefurter Journal. In dies., Ed .: Generations of women in pictures. Herbig, Berlin 1928, pp. 35-39
• Gerhard R. Kaiser: Tiefurt: Literature and life at the beginning of Weimar's great time , Wallstein-Verlag Göttingen 2020. ISBN 9783835336599

Web links

• Weekly paper for summer days. In: Die Zeit , August 21, 1981, accessed April 11, 2015
• The first “newspaper” appeared at the Weimar court 230 years ago. In: Thüringische Landeszeitung , October 20, 2011, accessed on April 11, 2015

Individual evidence

1. ↑ About the German literature, the defects that can be accused of, what their causes are and what means can be used to remedy them . In: Friedrich II of Prussia: Writings and Letters , ed. by Ingrid Mittenzwei , translated by Herbert Kühn. Leipzig 1983, pp. 364-397, here pp. 382f.
2. ↑ Katharina Mommsen : Duchess Anna Amalia's “Journal von Tiefurth” in response to Frederick II's “De la littérature allemande” , Weimar 2008, p. 8 ( online ).
3. ↑ Das Journal von Tiefurt , Eduard von der Hellen , Introduction Bernhard Suphan . Series: Writings of the Goethe Society, 7. Weimar 1892, digitized p. 26.
4. ↑ Katharina Mommsen: Duchess Anna Amalia's “Journal von Tiefurth” in response to Frederick II's “De la littérature allemande” , Weimar 2008, foreword (second, unpaginated page).
5. ↑ Thüringische Landeszeitung, December 7, 2013: Tiefurt has its own journal - Anna Amalia is the role model
6. ↑ Tiefurt Journal ( Memento of the original from June 16, 2015 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. , accessed June 13, 2015.