Kristijonas Donelaitis

Christian Donaleitis , also Kristijonas Donelaitis (he called himself Christian Donalitius , born January 1, 1714 in Lasdinehlen , East Prussia ; † February 18, 1780 in Tollmingkehmen ) was a Protestant pastor of a German-Lithuanian congregation in Tollmingkehmen, East Prussia ( Prussian-Lithuania ), where he preached in German and in Lithuanian for 37 years. With his poetry Metai (Seasons) he is considered to be "the outstanding poet personality in Lithuania in the 18th century" and the founder of secular Lithuanian literature. He also wrote in German and spoke or read Greek, Hebrew and French.

Bilingual monument to Donelaitis in the cemetery to Bitėnai ( Bittehnen ) , district Pagėgiai ( Pogegen ) (in the former Memel )

Side view of the monument

Life

Kristijonas Donelaitis was born the son of a Kölmer ( free farmer ) who died early . As a pauper (poor scholarship holder ) he attended the renowned cathedral school (Kneiphof) in Königsberg . His brother Friedrich became a goldsmith and jeweler in Königsberg. His brother Michael inherited the property of the deceased father and the brother Adam became a blacksmith and armorer.

In Königsberg Donelaitis studied theology under Pietist professors and attended the Lithuanian seminar founded by the Prussian king to preserve the Lithuanian language and led by Albert Schulz. The pastors of the many newly founded places in Lithuanian-speaking communities in Prussia were trained there.

From 1740 he worked for some time in Stallupönen (today Russian: Nesterow) as a cantor . He also worked as a mechanic on the side, building pianos and grinding glass for thermometers and barometers. “The barometers and thermometers that he made were famous for a long time.” From 1743 until his death he worked as a pastor in Tollmingkehmen (Tschistyje Prudy). He married Anna Regina, the daughter of the town judge Ohlefant from Goldap ; she was the widow of a teacher from Stallupönen. The marriage remained childless.

plant

Donelaitis' main work Metai (German seasons ) (see below) was created as an occasional poem, presumably initially to design his sermons.

Some poems by Donelaitis have also come down to us in German .

He was referred to as "the first in Western culture" "who wrote a fiction work about ordinary people."

Reception in Germany

At the suggestion of the Prussian Minister of Education, Wilhelm von Humboldt , the Königsberg professor Ludwig Rhesa published Donelaitis' work for the first time. In an appreciation it says:

“He was a great friend of gardening, cut optical glasses, made thermometers and barometers that were famous all over Prussia, built forte pianos, which he himself played excellently; but his sister poetry was even more attractive than music. Hebrew , Greek , Latin , French and German poems can be found among his posthumous papers . But his masterpiece remains the poem about the four seasons, reprinted here for the first time. The poet, for whom poetry had become so much a natural need that he often corresponded with his friends in verse ... "

The reception among his Prussian-Lithuanian compatriots is less enthusiastic. Friedrich Kurschat ruled in 1876:

"Christian Donalitius Littauische Dichtungen ..... are epic-idyllic stories written in completely Lithuanian language, but not popular with the people because they depict everyday prosaic folk life (in hexameters), but sometimes in exaggerated forms and distorted images what the people do not like. "

The most recent complete German-language adaptation is by Hermann Buddensieg (1970). In the mid- 1960s , Johannes Bobrowski (1917–1965) dealt with Donelaitis in the novel Lithuanian Pianos . In 1976 the opera of the same name by Rainer Kunad premiered in Dresden . Hans-Ulrich Werner transferred excerpts in 2002, commenting on the “Lithuanian” and “German” hexameters, in the Perkunas publishing house .

Metai ( The Seasons )

After many years of collecting and editing, it was not until 1818 that Ludwig Rhesa published the leftover Lithuanian poems together with a German translation in an abbreviated version. In 1865 the linguist August Schleicher in Saint Petersburg at the Imperial Academy of Sciences finally published the original verses of Christian Donalitius as the first complete edition with a glossary. During the Tsarist period until 1917 , Schleicher's publication was used, among other things, as a textbook in Lithuanian at Russian grammar schools and universities. Ferdinand Nesselmann criticized some translations of Schleicher in his Königberger edition of 1888. Christian Donalitius remained relatively unknown in today's Lithuania until the beginning of the 20th century, but is now considered to be Kristijonas Donelaitis there as the founder of Lithuanian national literature .

Even before Klopstock wrote in his Messiah , Donelaitis wrote in hexameters . Before him, in addition to dictionaries and grammars, there were Lithuanian texts in Prussia only for religious reasons ( Bibles , prayer and hymn books) and in some oaths. The UNESCO took Metai 1977 in the library of literary masterpieces of Europe on.

In the translation by Ludwig Passarge, 1894:

III. The joys of spring

PAVASARIO LINKSMYBĖS

Jau saulelė vėl atkopdama budino svietą

Ir žiemos šaltos trūsus pargriaudama juokės.

Šalčių pramonės su ledais sugaišti pagavo,

Ir putodams sniegs visur į nieką pavirto.

Tuo laukus orai drungni gaivindami glostė

Ir žoleles visokias iš numirusių šaukė.

Krūmai su šilais visais išsibudino keltis,

O laukų kalnai su kloniais pametė skrandas.

Vislab, kas rudens biaurybėj numirė Verkdams,

Vislab, kas ežere gyvendams peržiemavojo

Ar po savo keru per žiemą buvo miegojęs,

Vislab tuo pulkais išlindo vasarą sveikint.

Again the sun rose and woke the world

Laughed at the works of cold winter and threw them to pieces.

Easily melted away with the ice, what the frost had built fantastic,

And the foaming snow turned into nothing all around.

The air was already blowing lurking and bringing refreshment to the hallways,

Woke the flowers from sad graves to the resurrection.

Bushes and heathens, everything came to life

The fur was quickly pulled off the height and depth of the fields.

Everything that died weeping in the autumn staring pangs,

Everything that spent the winter hidden deep in the ponds

Or what sleeps the winter under the stumps of the forest,

All of this crept out in droves to greet spring.

.......

IV. The works of summer

........

This useless chat, it's been a year since Kaspar's

Invited to talk, he's so senselessly drunk

That in the dark of night, getting lost in the field, the tools

The still new, lost, with its jagged scythe,

And only in the early morning came sneaking home.

When he lay asleep all day,

Did it not occur to him to look for the lost device in the field,

Until the following year the quail called into the hay again.

See, Plautschun missed the scythe at the same time as the sharpening tool,

I ran around wailing, now this way, now there, until finally

He seized a birch stick in excessive fury,

And the woman and the children, the monster, almost struck to death.

When he freaked out, cursing and raging inhumanly,

If in his manner he saddles the wretched nag, the one-eared man,

Then rode straight to Königsberg to buy a scythe.

But here there were so many beautiful things to see

Who he gazed at with open mouth, as a peasant demon,

That he forgot everything, the new scythe, the tools.

But he had also drunk the Klepper there at Mikas;

And so he came home on foot after a fortnight,

Where he's half trampled the meadow - it's a shame to say -

Grumbling and crawling just tried to mow with the sickle.

But the neighbors had all harvested the rye

Some even ate the freshly baked flatbread.

A poem in German

The god of darkness

The god of darkness, the cunning devil,

Willingly build the gate through breathed doubt,

And he immediately ranks the filth in a book;

To the sorrow of the upright, and his own curse.

Hell rejoices in these childhood troubles,

And shout when she sees the consolation of faith kill,

The pestilence drives on it, with the damned writing

From the publisher's hand into the whole world like poison.

Works

• The seasons. A Lithuanian epic . Adaptation and preface by Hermann Buddensieg, Insel, Leipzig 1970.
• The seasons . Translated from the Lithuanian by Gottfried Schneider. Langewiesche-Brandt, Ebenhausen near Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-7846-1230-0 .
• Lithuanian seals . With a Lithuanian-German glossary edited by August Schleicher. Imperial Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg 1865.
• The year in four songs, a rural epic from the Lithuanian by Christian Donalleitis . Published by Ludwig Rhesa. Hartung, Koenigsberg 1818.
• Littauian seals, based on the Königsberg manuscripts , published by GHF Nesselmann, Königsberg 1869.

There are several translations of the Metai : two German from 1869 and 1966 (the last was reissued in 1970), two English (1967 and 1985) and one Swedish (1991).

literature

• Adalbert Bezzenberger : The Lithuanian literature. In the S. ua (Hrsg.): The Eastern European literatures and the Slavic languages . (= The culture of the present. Part 1, Dept. IX). Teubner, Berlin / Leipzig 1908.
• Goetz von Selle:  Donalitius, Christian. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 69 ( digitized version ).
• Friedrich Scholz: The literatures of the Baltic States. Their creation and development . (= Treatises of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Volume 80). Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1990, ISBN 3-531-05097-4 . (On Kristijonas Donelaitis pp. 245–251)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Friedrich Scholz: The literatures of the Baltic States. Their creation and development . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1990, p. 245.
2. ^ ^{A b} Friedrich Scholz: The literatures of the Baltic States. Their creation and development . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1990, p. 246.
3. ↑ Ludwig Rhesa: Introduction. In: Christian Donaleitis: Litthauische Dichtungen. First complete edition with glossary by August Schleicher . Petersburg 1865, quotation p. VII, § 2.
4. ^ Perwomaiskoje - Lasdinehlen / Gut Altkrug at ostpreussen.net
5. ↑ Hermann Buddensieg in the foreword to the German edition 1966.
6. ↑ Jakob Penzel in the Jenaische Allgemeine Literaturzeitung in August 1818.
7. ^ Friedrich Scholz: The literatures of the Baltic States. Their creation and development . (= Treatises of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften , vol. 80). Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1990, p. 177.
8. ↑ See also the extract from Part IV of the Metai (with linguistic explanations in English in a textbook of the Lithuanian language)

Web links

• Literature by and about Kristijonas Donelaitis in the catalog of the German National Library
• The Seasons (English)
• Directory of Lithuanian writers