Karl Morgenstern

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lithograph by Josef Kriehuber , 1828

Johann Karl Simon Morgenstern also Karl von Morgenstern (* August 28, 1770 in Magdeburg ; † September 3, July / September 15,  1852 greg. In Dorpat ) was a German philologist and librarian . The term " Bildungsroman " goes back to him .

Life

Karl Morgenstern was the second son of the city physician Friedrich Simon Morgenstern , who had moved from Halle to Magdeburg and his wife Johanna Katharina Morgenstern , née. Brömme, author of a text later known as the “Magdeburg Cookbook”, “Lessons for a young woman who wants to do the kitchen and housekeeping herself, given from her own experience by a housemother”. August Morgenstern was his brother. At the age of ten he moved from the sexton school in St. Ulrich to the cathedral school in Magdeburg, whose rector Gottfried Benedict Funk became his mentor.

From 1788 he studied at the University of Halle , he heard philosophy from Johann August Eberhard and entered the philological seminar of Friedrich August Wolf . In May 1794 he received his doctorate and in 1797 associate professor of philosophy. In 1798 he was appointed professor of eloquence and poetry at the Athenaeum in Danzig .

Oil portrait of Karl Morgenstern by Gerhard von Kügelgen , 1808

In 1802 he went to the re-established Imperial University of Dorpat in Livonia , where he worked as a professor of aesthetics, eloquence and classical philology . In 1833 he retired , but held lectures until 1836. At the same time, he was the first director of the Dorpater University Library until 1839, for which he had rooms in the cathedral ruins prepared. After his death he bequeathed her his extensive private library (12,000 volumes).

He also worked as a school commissioner and museum curator. In 1803 he got his mentor Funk an honorary doctorate. Morgenstern was also an honorary member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. In 1811 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

In Dorpat the character of his work changed. He did not continue his studies of Plato , which were highly regarded by his contemporaries , in which he encouraged a moral-philosophical reading of the “ Politeia ”, and continued his scientific work in favor of “writing about all possible areas of belles-lettres, the visual arts, and philology and philosophy ”. Wolf was disappointed by this development and wrote in 1808 that his pupil had fulfilled a few of the hopes he had made for himself and had become “more and more elegant, vain and bland” over the years.

Morgenstern coined the term “ Bildungsroman ” in some of his celebratory lectures; he described it as “the most elegant and, in contrast to the epic, the most profoundly special kind of the novel”.

In 1808/09 Morgenstern undertook an extensive journey through Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy, which also took him to his native Magdeburg. He later published a description about it, but it remained a fragment.

Morgenstern's grave monument in the Tartu Raadi cemetery
Medal Karl Simon Morgenstern 1856
Karl Morgenstern's monument in Dorpat, which was erected by the university for its long-time professor (1802–1836)

From 1810 Morgenstern was Imperial Russian Councilor ( 6th class ), from 1822 State Council (5th class) and from 1819 Knight of the Order of Vladimir IV class. This also explains why he sometimes used the title of nobility . He was also a knight of the Order of Anne II. Class and the Order of Stanislaus III. Class.

From 1817 he was born with Wilhelmine (Minna). von Lesedow (1798–1874) married, a good piano player, but left no children behind. Minna was the second daughter of the Prussian major Johann Woldemar Christoph von Lesedow (1760-1832) at Münkenhof in Estonia, whom he had met while socializing with Karl von Kügelgen on his neighboring Kurküll estate. Her father, of the Scottish family Lesedown, came to Estonia in 1795 through Count Paul von Tiesenhausen . She, the widowed "Frau Staatsrath Wilhelmine von Morgenstern", sold her house in Dorpat for 8,600 rubles to Ludwig Mühlenthal on May 29, 1873 and died on October 16, 1874 in Wesenberg , where she was also buried.

Morgenstern's brother-in-law Karl von Lesedow

Her brother, the military doctor Karl Peter August von Lesedow (1810-1892), who was retired in 1878 as the Imperial Russian Real State Council, also lived there. Other of her brothers were the theologian and titular counselor Heinrich Ferdinand von Lesedow (1802–1879) and the lawyer and farmer Wilhelm von Lesedow (1814–1857). He emigrated to North America in 1840, was a farmer near St. Louis in Missouri , took part in the United States Army in the " War of the Liberation of Texas ", then moved to Illinois , where he finally drowned in the "Snake River".

Honors

Four years after his death, a medal was struck in memory of Morgenstern. The Gothic stamp cutter Ferdinand Helfricht was commissioned , who created seven copies in silver and 200 in bronze. In addition to his employment, the lapel also names the date and place of birth and death. The dates are given according to both the Julian and the Gregorian chronology , as the latter was only introduced in Estonia in the 20th century and thus also Dorpat .

Works

  • De Platoni's Republica commentationes tres (1794)
  • Excerpts from a traveler's diaries and papers (1811–1813)
  • On the spirit and context of a number of philosophical novels (1817)
  • On the nature of the educational novel (1820)
  • On the history of the educational novel (1824)

The two lectures on the Bildungsroman from 1820 and 1824 are re-edited together in:

  • The Bildungsroman . The two fundamental lectures on a globally used term. With afterword and bibliography. Lumpeter & Lasel, Eutin 2020, ISBN 978-3-946298-20-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eduard Thraemer :  Morgenstern, Karl Simon . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1885, pp. 231-233.
  2. ↑ James Trainer: The Knorrings In Estonia: With Six Unpublished Letters To Karl Morgenstern in German Life and Letters Vol. 51,4. 1998. S-443-454.
  3. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 172.
  4. ^ Wilhelm Süss, Karl Morgenstern (1770-1852). An attempt at cultural history, 1928/29
  5. ↑ Johann Friedrich von Recke : General Writers and Scholars Lexicon , Volume 3, p. 247 ff .
  6. ↑ Das Inland , No. 23 of June 6, 1844, Col. 371.
  7. ↑ Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung , Jena 1833, p. 171 f .
  8. ↑ Humanities and Journalism in the Baltic States in the 19th and early 20th Century , p. 96 .
  9. ↑ Im Spiegel der Theatergeschichte , p. 92 .
  10. ^ Humanities and Journalism in the Baltic States of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, 2011, p. 98.
  11. ^ Erik Amburger database: Dorothea Margarethe Luise Kilchen and Intellektivenblatt No. 13 of the St. Petersburgische Zeitung on January 16, 1835, p. 1 .
  12. ↑ Hans Rothe: Gottfried Ernst Groddeck and his correspondents (Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, New Series, Volume 39), 2015, p. 295 (Letter from Karl von Morgenstern to Gottfried Ernst Groddeck on March 7, 1818).
  13. ↑ Ludwig Mercklin : Karl Morgenstern commemorative speech , Dorpat 1853, p. 24 .
  14. ↑ On the Genealogy Lesedow see in the article Wahl in: Genealogisches Handbuch der Baltic Ritterschaften , Görlitz 1930, pp. 258–261 .
  15. ↑ Livonia Gouvernemets Newspaper No. 81, July 18, 1873 ( digitized version )
  16. ^ Revalsche Zeitung on December 12, 1874 ( digitized version )
  17. ^ Baltic Historical Commission (ed.): Entry on Peter August von Lesedow. In: BBLD - Baltic biographical lexicon digital and Album academicum of the Imperial University of Dorpat , p. 197 .
  18. ^ Erik Amburger database: Heinrich Ferdinand von Lesedow
  19. ↑ Humanities and Journalism in the Baltic States of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, 2011, p. 97.
  20. ^ Album academicum of the Imperial University of Dorpat , p. 238 .
  21. ↑ Stefan Krmnicek, Marius Gaidys: Taught images. Classical scholars on 19th century medals. Accompanying volume to the online exhibition in the Digital Coin Cabinet of the Institute for Classical Archeology at the University of Tübingen (= From Croesus to King Wilhelm. New Series, Volume 3). University Library Tübingen, Tübingen 2020, p. 78 f. ( online ).

literature

  • Eduard Thraemer :  Morgenstern, Karl Simon . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1885, pp. 231-233.
  • Wilhelm Stieda : Johann Simon Karl Morgenstern . In: Mitteldeutsche Lebensbilder , Volume 2, Lebensbilder des 19. Century, Magdeburg 1927, pp. 82–91.
  • Kiira Schmidt: Karl Morgenstern and his private library in: Library. Research and Practice Vol. 18, 2 (1994), pp. 384-387.
  • Dorothee von Hellermann: Weimar and Erfurt in October 1808 - described by Karl Morgenstern from Dorpat . In: Goethe-Jahrbuch 121 (2004), pp. 283–303, and 122 (2005), pp. 302–315.
  • Dirk Sangmeister: "His appearance made me happy, but also restless." Seume in the letters and diaries of Karl Morgenstern (1805–1810) . In: Ders .: Seume and some of his contemporaries . Erfurt u. Waltershausen: Ulenspiegel, 2010. pp. 270–323.
  • Carola L. Gottzmann / Petra Hörner: Lexicon of the German-language literature of the Baltic States and St. Petersburg . 3 volumes; 1 Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2007. ISBN 978-3-11-019338-1 . Volume 2, pp. 926-929.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Morgenstern, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Morgenstern, Johann Karl Simon (full name); Morgenstern, Karl von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German philologist and librarian
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1770
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH September 15, 1852
Place of death Dorpat