Karl Isidor Beck

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Karl Isidor Beck, lithograph by Johann Stadler , 1858

Karl Isidor Beck (born May 1, 1817 in Baja , Bács-Bodrog County ; died April 9, 1879 in Währing near Vienna ) was an Austrian poet, journalist and writer.

Life

Karl Isidor Beck, son of Jewish parents, first attended schools in his hometown before completing his training in Budapest, where the family had moved in 1829. A younger brother was the cartoonist Wilhelm Beck . In 1833/34 he began studying medicine at the University of Vienna , but soon returned to Budapest to work in his father's shop.

In 1835 he went to the University of Leipzig and studied philosophy to the doctorate Dr. phil. Through Gustav Kühne , the then editor of the “Newspaper for the Elegant World”, he came into contact with the literary movement of Young Germany by popularizing his peppy casual poem Die Eisenbahn . As a result, he was especially friendly with Georg Herwegh , Ottilie von Goethe and Nikolaus Lenau . Beck began to write socially critical and political poems himself. He also joined the old Leipzig fraternity . In 1838 he published the poetry collection Nights, Armored Songs , which was very well received.

Subsequently, for example, Stille Lieder (1839) and the tragedy Saul (1841), which was performed in Pest in 1840, and Jankó, the Hungarian horse-shepherd , a novel in verse in which he devoted himself to describing the landscape of Hungary with patriotic enthusiasm, appeared in 1842 . In 1843 he converted to Protestantism and began working on the Pest newspaper "Der Ungar". Living alternately in Berlin and Vienna, he also made contact with Anastasius Grün , Friedrich Halm , Friedrich Hebbel , Franz von Dingelstedt and others. a.

When he published his Gesammelte Gedichte in 1844, Beck came into conflict with the Prussian censors ; after a confiscation the book was released by the higher censorship court with the exclusion of two poems. His songs from the poor man , published in 1846, contained socially critical tendencies influenced by Ludwig Börne , but were viewed critically by Friedrich Engels .

After the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution in 1848 , Beck moved from Berlin to Vienna. From 1854 he worked as a feature editor for Pester Lloyd . He married in Vienna in 1850, but his wife died after a few months. As a poet, his fame had faded greatly since the Revolution. Nevertheless, from 1868 he still received grants from the German Schiller Foundation . After further stays in Berlin and Weimar , where he received an award from Grand Duke Carl Alexander and socialized with his compatriot Franz Liszt , he lived in Vienna again in the last years of his life. In 1876 he married a second time: the novelist Friederike Meister. Beck could no longer complete the work on his favorite work, Master Gottfried . After a stroke, he suffered from chronic encephalitis, which required a stay in a sanatorium in Währing, where he then died.

His literary estate was to be published by Adolph Kohut , who in 1898 had part of it appear as unprinted items by Karl Beck in the "International Literature Reports".

His grave is in the Matzleinsdorf Evangelical Cemetery (Group 10, No. 75) in Vienna. In 2001, Karl-Beck-Gasse in Vienna- Donaustadt (22nd district) was named after him.

Poetry

His still ongoing awareness owes the poet said from the band Quiet Songs originating poem

At the Donau

And I saw you rich in pain
And I saw you young and graceful
Where loyalty grows in the heart
As in the shaft the precious gold,
On the Danube,
On the beautiful, blue Danube
.

It was written in the stars
that I had to find you
In order to love you forever,
And I read it with pleasure,
On the Danube,
On the beautiful, blue Danube
.

Probably, even if it is no longer verifiable today, Johann Strauss knew these words which inspired him to choose the title for one of his most famous waltzes, An der Schöne blau Donau . In any case, the poet meant the southern Hungarian Danube near his hometown and not the Danube in Vienna.

In the songs of the poor man as well as in the other collections, Beck also sings about the millennial world pain of Judaism. B. in:

The junk Jew

You have to create, you have to get hold of,
In constant greed for goods and money;
They don't grant you any handicrafts,
they don't grant you a field.
You are not allowed to speak to the youth of
a teacher high den;
No asterisk shines on the brave bosom,
which proves itself in the fray.

You are not a man in office and dignity,
your oath is weak, your heart is lukewarm;
But gold, child, you can give that
for a pious church building.
You can heal the sick in the country
, bread and wine are enough for the beggars
And like me and your brothers you can be
a bad junk Jew
.

Works

  • Nights, armored songs . Leipzig 1838.
  • The traveling poet . Leipzig 1838.
  • Silent songs . Leipzig 1840.
  • Saul . Leipzig 1841.
  • Jankó . Novel in verse. Leipzig 1842, 3rd edition 1870.
  • Collected poems . Berlin 1844, 3rd edition 1870.
  • Songs from the poor man . Leipzig 1846.
  • Monthly roses . Berlin 1848, a re-blooming of the silent songs .
  • Armored songs . Berlin 1848.
  • To Franz Joseph . Vienna 1849.
  • From home . 2nd edition, Dresden 1852.
  • Mater dolorosa . Novel. Berlin 1854.
  • Jadwiga . A verified narrative. Leipzig 1863.
  • Still and moving . A second collection of poems. Berlin 1870.
  • Unprinted by Karl Beck . In: International literature reports . Berlin 1898.

literature

Web links

Part of the estate in the catalog of the Austrian National Library: [1] [2]

Wikisource: Karl Isidor Beck  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. Horst Grimm, Leo Besser-Walzel: The corporations. Handbook on history, dates, facts, people . Umschau-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-524-69059-9
  2. Irmgard Maya Fassmann: Jüdinnen in der Deutschen Frauenbewegung, 1865-1919 . Olms, Hildesheim 1996, ISBN 3-487-09666-8 , p. 159.