Karl Schmidlin

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karl Schmidlin (born May 1, 1805 in Schöntal ; † June 22, 1847 in Wangen, Oberamt Göppingen ) was a Swabian pastor and poet.

ancestry

Karl Schmidlin came from an old Württemberg family of so-called honesty . He was the son of the Württemberg Interior Minister Christoph Friedrich von Schmidlin and his wife Karoline Auguste Enßlin (* 1780, † 1832). Karl's older brother Eduard von Schmidlin was later Württemberg Minister of Culture. Karl also had five younger brothers and two sisters. Schmidlin kept in close correspondence and personal contact with his siblings throughout his life.

Life

Schmidlin attended grammar school in Stuttgart from 1818 and studied Protestant theology at the University of Tübingen from autumn 1823 to September 1827 . There he did not belong to the Evangelical Monastery as usual , but remained a free student. During his studies he was particularly fascinated by Ferdinand Christian Baur's lectures . With devotion he also took part in fraternity life and the socializing and amusements associated with it, until student associations were banned in 1825. After graduating, Schmidlin started his first vicariate as a parish assistant in Uhlbach . There, in addition to the creation of his first poetic works, he developed the desire to become not a priest but an educator. From February 1829 to November 1830 he worked as a tutor for the three sons of this family in the house of the banker de Molin in Lausanne . A very extensive correspondence with his parents in Stuttgart dates from this time. From the spring of 1831 he took up the position of teacher at the newly established educational and training institute for disabled children in Stetten in the Rems Valley . He stayed there until the end of 1834. From January 1834 to October 1835, Schmidlin taught the sons of Marie Weishaar in Köngen , the widow of the politician Jakob Friedrich von Weishaar . Schmidlin got to this point through the mediation of his friend Friedrich Notter , the brother of Marie Weishaar. After this almost seven-year phase as an educator, Schmidlin wanted to become a pastor after all and, after a short activity at the court orchestra in Stuttgart, went to Unterensingen as parish administrator . In September 1837 he became parish assistant and then parish administrator in Hedelfingen . His time as vicar did not end until the summer of 1838. Now he took up his first own parish in Wangen near Göppingen , where he lived as a village pastor for nine years until his untimely death in summer 1847.

Poetic work

Before the hardships of his life ended prematurely in materially poor conditions, Karl Schmidlin developed a multifaceted creative poetry. In this respect he was in some ways related to his compatriot Eduard Mörike . Schmidlin moved in the intellectual and literary world of those circles that cultivated a mixture of idealistic educated bourgeoisie and Swabian Biedermeier after the age of classical and romanticism. That is why Schmidlin did not use grandiose gestures, but rather empathetic caution from the treasure of his everyday experiences and human encounters. These inspired him to write down his poems and texts. During his lifetime, however, these works were not published. It was only after his early death that his friends, including his brother-in-law, the pastor from Beinstein, Karl Wolff (* 1803; † 1869), put together the book Poems and Pictures from Life . The book appeared in a first edition in 1851 and in a second expanded edition in 1853 in the JB Metzler'schen Buchhandlung . The first edition did not come into the regular book trade and is hardly available today. The Schiller National Museum owns one of the rare first edition copies.

family

Karl Schmidlin was married to Julie Pauline, born von Küster (* 1803; † 1873), who was the daughter of the royal Prussian diplomat and real secret councilor Johann Emanuel von Küster (* 1764; † 1833) from Berlin , since 1840 . Julie von Küster was a friend of Marie Weishaar, with whom her future husband taught as private tutor in 1835. Schmidlin's wife had an extraordinary talent as a painter and left a series of impressive testimonies to her stay in Italy and the Biedermeier life of the pastor family in the Swabian village parsonage in Wangen. The marriage of Karl and Julie Schmidlin had four children, including Friedrich von Schmidlin, who was later born posthumously to Württemberg Justice Minister .

literature

  • Berthold Auerbach : A secluded Swabian poet . Deutsches Museum 1853, I, pp. 825–833
  • Karl Weller : The poet Karl Schmidlin . Literary supplement to the Staats-Anzeiger für Württemberg, 1894, pp. 170–179
  • Rudolf Krauss : Swabian Literature History . 2 volumes, JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Freiburg 1897 and 1899
  • Michael Mildenberger: Soul languages ​​- Karl Schmidlin 1805-1847: A Swabian pastor and poet . Einhorn Verlag, Schwäbisch Gmünd 2007, ISBN 978-3-936373-38-7

References and comments

  1. ↑ Eberhard von Georgii-Georgenau: Biographisch-Genealogische Blätter from and about Swabia . Emil Müller Verlag, Stuttgart 1878, p. 840 f.
  2. ↑ Schwäbische Chronik , No. 203, August 28, 1869, p. 2511
  3. ↑ Schwäbischer Merkur , No. 102, May 3, 1932, p. 6
personal data
SURNAME Schmidlin, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swabian poet, pastor
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1805
PLACE OF BIRTH Schöntal
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 1847
Place of death Wangen (near Göppingen)