Ludwig Rellstab (poet)

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Ludwig Rellstab
Signature Ludwig Rellstab (poet) .PNG

Heinrich Friedrich Ludwig Rellstab (born April 13, 1799 in Berlin ; † November 27, 1860 there ) was a German journalist , music critic and poet . At times he used the pseudonym Freimund Viewer .

Life

Rellstab was the son of the musician and publisher Johann Carl Friedrich Rellstab (1759-1813) and his wife, the singer Caroline Charlotte Richter (1769-1820). He had eight siblings (three sisters, five brothers), including the singer Caroline Rellstab (1794-1813), who died early .

Rellstab received his first musical training from his father; later he was tutored by the composers Bernhard Klein and Ludwig Berger . At the age of 16, Rellstab came to the cadet school in his hometown in September 1815 . There he became an officer in 1818 and in April 1821 Rellstab left the army.

In the summer of the same year Rellstab hiked on foot via Dresden and Weimar to Bayreuth . The writer Jean Paul had invited him . In Dresden Rellstab visited the composer Carl Maria von Weber and the writer Ludwig Tieck ; in Weimar the writer Johanna Schopenhauer and the musician Carl Friedrich Zelter . Through the latter two, Rellstab made the acquaintance of Ottilie von Goethe , in whose salon he was warmly received. Contact with her father-in-law, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , remained cool and kept to a minimum.

From 1822 to 1823 Rellstab worked as an intern at the universities in Bonn and Heidelberg and returned to his hometown at the end of 1823. There he founded a bookstore together with a friend, with which he could not earn a living. He had to earn this as a critic at the Berlin general musical newspaper .

In the spring of 1825 Rellstab took a trip to Vienna to meet the composer Ludwig van Beethoven . Rellstab's poems, which he presented to Beethoven, later reached Franz Schubert , who set nine of them to music in 1828, the year he died; seven of them appeared posthumously in his Schwanengesang cycle , two outside of this cycle. In Vienna, Rellstab became friends with the playwright Ignaz Franz Castelli , who introduced him to several members of the Ludlamshöhle , including Heinrich Anschütz and Johann Gabriel Seidl .

At the end of the same year, Rellstab returned to Berlin and became a music critic for the Vossische Zeitung at the beginning of the following year . As such, he succeeded his father, who had worked there between 1806 and 1813. On the occasion of a moonlit boat trip on Lake Lucerne , he was reminded of the 1st movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata in C sharp minor, Op. 27/2 (1801). He gave it the name "Moonlight Sonata", under which it became famous.

With his novel Henriette or the beautiful singer , Rellstab also made his debut as a writer in 1826. In this work he processed the career of the singer Henriette Sontag in a satirical way . Since he also mocked the British ambassador in Berlin, this book became a political issue, which Rellstab had to atone for with twelve weeks of imprisonment at the Spandau citadel .

In 1827 Rellstab published a satire in which he ridiculed the Italian composer Gaspare Spontini . After several lawsuits and trials, Rellstab was sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment by the Berlin Court of Appeal on January 17, 1835. The verdict became final in October 1836, and in January / February 1837 Rellstab served the sentence in the Berlin city voigtei on Molkenmarkt .

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In 1830 Rellstab founded the weekly magazine Iris in the field of Tonkunst , which lasted until 1841 and which he ran almost exclusively on his own. In it he reported on all sorts of current musical events, making himself the most influential music critic of his time. His own musical works were based on Christoph Willibald Gluck , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.

As a critic, he rejected almost the entire work of Gaetano Donizetti , Gioachino Rossini and Frédéric Chopin . With the exception of his Rienzi and Tannhäuser , he considered the work of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner to have actually failed. His own works from this period - e.g. B. Karl der Kühne (1824) or Franz von Sickingen (1843) - all were unsuccessful.

Rellstab also emerged as a powerful critic of the then unrivaled success of the great operas by his compatriot Giacomo Meyerbeer in Berlin . His attacks on Robert le diable and Die Huguenots , which were performed more frequently in Paris than any other opera, paved the way for Richard Wagner's anti-Semitic inflammatory criticism . However, the skillful tactician Meyerbeer withdrew this very ground from his Berlin adversary Rellstab by offering him the libretto of an opera commissioned by the Prussian king to rebuild the burnt down Knobelsdorff opera house Unter den Linden, which was finally called Ein Feldlager in Schlesien on December 7th It premiered in 1844. Rellstab felt flattered and accepted the assignment, although in truth Meyerbeer's proven librettist Eugène Scribe provided the template and, in return for the payment of 3,000 francs, undertook to maintain strict silence about this unusual assignment.

“Rellstab, the Philistine par excellence”, with its narrow-minded and narrow-minded manner, was the trigger for Robert Schumann to found the New Journal for Music in 1834 . The “Philistines” became the main opponents of the “ Bundestag ”. Nevertheless, Rellstab discussed the early works of Schumann very positively.

Rellstab married Emma Henry in Berlin as early as 1834. With her he had a daughter and two sons; including the later chemist Ludwig Rellstab.

At the beginning of the March Revolution in 1848, Rellstab wanted to convince King Friedrich Wilhelm IV at an audience to mediate between the military and the citizens; in vain.

He died in Berlin on November 27, 1860 at the age of 61. He found his final resting place in the St. Petri cemetery in Berlin.

Rellstab and the writer Willibald Alexis were cousins, Alexis' mother Juliane Louise Charlotte Rellstab a sister of Rellstab's father. The chess master Ludwig Rellstab was his great-grandson.

effect

Rellstab's novellas certainly found their audience, but were always overshadowed by ETA Hoffmann , whom Rellstab knew personally and with whom he was in lively artistic exchange. Among the narrative works, his historical novel 1812 about Napoleon's Russian campaign was very popular and was still widely read at the beginning of the 20th century (34th, illustrated edition Leipzig 1923).

In addition to historical novels, short stories, dramas and travel descriptions, poetry is strongly represented in Rellstab's literary work. Many of his poems were a. set to music by Franz Schubert ; to be mentioned here (with the numbers of the German directory ) Auf dem Strom (D 943), Herbst (D 945), Liebesbotschaft (D 957/1), Kriegers Amerung (D 957/2), Frühlingssehnsucht (D 957/3 ), Serenade (D 957/4), stay (D 957/5), in the distance (D 957/6) and farewell (D 957/7).

Works

  • Henriette or the beautiful singer. a story of our day (1826)
  • About my relationship as a critic with Mr. Spontini as the first composer and general music master in Berlin (1827)
  • Algiers and Paris in 1830. Two novellas (3 vols., Berlin 1831)
  • 1812. A historical novel (4 vols., Leipzig 1834)
  • Collected writings (20 vols., Leipzig 1843–1848. New edition, 24 vols., Leipzig 1859–1861)
  • From my life (2 vols., Berlin 1861)
  • In the footsteps of Napoleon. Historical novel . Area-Verlag, Erftstadt 2004, ISBN 3-89996-090-4

Operas and dramas

  • Dido. Opera (1823), music by Bernhard Klein
  • Charles the Bold. Historical tragedy (1824)
  • The Venetians. Drama in five acts (1837)
  • Eugene Aram. Drama (1839, based on Edward Bulwer-Lytton )
  • Franz von Sickingen. Historical tragedy (1843)

Secondary literature

Web links

Wikisource: Ludwig Rellstab  - Sources and full texts

Remarks

  1. ↑ KJ Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singer lexicon . Unchanged edition. KG Saur, Bern, 1993, second volume M – Z, Sp. 2438, ISBN 3-907820-70-3
  2. ↑ Cf. the records of the court trainee Adolf Berthold in the Secret State Archives of Prussian Cultural Heritage , VI. HA, Berthold Family Archives, No. 12–22
  3. ↑ Schumann in a letter to Franz Brendel, February 20, 1847, see: Gustav Jansen: Die Davidsbündler , Leipzig 1883, p. 192.
personal data
SURNAME Rellstab, Ludwig
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rellstab, Heinrich Friedrich Ludwig (full name); Spectators, Freimund
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist, music critic and poet
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1799
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 1860
Place of death Berlin