Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay

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Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay

Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay (born December 25, 1737 in Strasbourg , † November 18, 1820 on the Monrepos estate near Vyborg ) was a poet and president of the Russian Academy in Saint Petersburg .

Live and act

Nicolay was the son of the Strasbourg archivist Christoph Nicolay (1707–1763) and his wife Sophie-Charlotte Faber (1720–1746). After finishing school at the Protestant grammar school in his hometown, Nicolay studied philosophy and law at the University of Strasbourg . In 1760 he was able to successfully complete his studies with a doctorate in law.

Together with his college friend Franz Hermann LaFermière (1737–1796), Nicolay went to Paris , where he soon made the acquaintance of the encyclopedists Denis Diderot and Jean Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert . Through this, the two also found access to various salons and Nicolay made the acquaintance of Prince Dmitri Mikhailovich Golitsyn , who soon hired him as private secretary. When his employer became the tsarist ambassador in Vienna , Nicolay accompanied him and learned a. a. Pietro Metastasio and Christoph Willibald Gluck know.

Between 1763 and 1765 Nicolay lived and worked in Strasbourg again and taught logic and metaphysics as a private lecturer at the university . One of his students was Count Andreas Rasumofsky , whom Nicolay accompanied as a kind of preceptor on his cavalier tour through almost all of Europe.

In 1769 Nicolay accepted a job at the court in St. Petersburg and became tutor to Grand Duke Paul, who later became Tsar Paul . At the same time, he also acted as his pupil's secretary from 1770 and accompanied him on his travels to Paris, Vienna and Versailles . For a long time, however, teachers and students also stayed at the summer residence of the Gatchina tsarist family .

When Grand Duke Paul took over the government after the death of Tsarina Catherine II , he gave his friend and teacher Nicolay the title of baron (combined with the income from the village of Tambow ) and brought him to his cabinet council. As such, Nicolay was appointed President of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1798 .

Baroness Johanna Margarethe von Nicolay, b. Poggenpohl
Monrepos

Between 1798 and 1803, Nicolay restructured the academy, provided it with a regular budget and, above all, opened it up to enlightenment ideas. Nicolay was in lively correspondence with important enlighteners throughout his life: the writers Johann Baptist von Alxinger , Friedrich Nicolai , Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel , Karl Wilhelm Ramler , Johann Georg Schlosser and Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg .

Nicolay's literary work ranged from poetry to tragedy . His dramatic poems are linked to anacreontics and were among others. a. appreciated by Christian Fürchtegott Gellert . Nicolay could do little with the literary currents of Sturm und Drang and Romanticism . He was oriented more towards authors like Horace , Ovid , Properz and Albius Tibullus ; He also emulated the Renaissance and its representatives Ludovico Ariosto , Francesco Petrarca and Bernardo Tasso .

Nicolay married Johanna Margarethe Poggenpohl, the daughter of a German banker, in Saint Petersburg. With her he had his son, who was named in honor of Tsar Paul. Baron Paul von Nicolay later became Tsarist ambassador in Copenhagen and married the Princess Alexandrine de Broglie.

After Tsar Paul was assassinated in 1801, Nicolay was removed from office. In 1803 he withdrew with his family to his Monrepos estate near Vyborg . He described his life there in detail in 1804 in his poem The Monrepos Estate in Finland . Tsarina Maria Feodorovna made the extensive library of his late friend LaFermière available to Nicolay on his estate.

Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay died on November 18, 1820 on his estate at the age of almost 83.

Works

  • Galvine (1773), digitized
  • Alcinens Island , (1778)
  • Zerbin and Bella , (1779)
  • Reinhold and Angelika , (1781–1784), Volume 2
  • The Monrepos Estate in Finland , (1804)
  • Athalia , translation of Racine's work digitized
  • The learned women translation of Moliere's work digitized

Collected issues

Literature and Sources

Web links

Wikisource: Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay  - Sources and full texts

notes

  1. ^ Russian-Canadian Slavic German language, 1926 - 2004 obituary
personal data
SURNAME Nicolay, Ludwig Heinrich von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German poet
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1737
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH November 18, 1820
Place of death Monrepos (Vyborg)