Ludwig Speidel

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Ludwig Speidel, around 1900
Obituary in the NFP
Grave of Ludwig Speidel

Ludwig Speidel (born April 11, 1830 in Ulm , † February 3, 1906 in Vienna ) was a German writer who was Vienna's leading music , theater and literary critic in the second half of the 19th century .

Life

Ludwig Speidel received his first musical lessons from his father, the singer and composer Konrad Speidel (born September 16, 1804 in Söflingen near Ulm ; † January 26, 1880 in Ulm; married to Anna Steiner) and attended high school in Ulm. From 1850 to 1853 he only studied various subjects as a guest auditor at the University of Munich due to a lack of financial means . He also gave piano lessons and from 1852 wrote reviews for the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung , his first ( Musikalisches aus München ) appeared on October 28th. His circle of friends in Munich included Friedrich Kaulbach , Ernst Förster , Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer , Justus von Liebig , Ludwig Steub and Adolf Bayersdorfer .

1853 came Speidel to Vienna, ostensibly to discuss the wedding of Elizabeth with Franz Joseph I. to report. He became friends with Carl Rahl and stayed in Vienna, where he subsequently worked for numerous newspapers and magazines, among others for “ Pester Lloyd ” (1854), “Donau” (1855–1863), “Österreichische Zeitung ”(1855–1858), the“ Jagdzeitung ”and the“ Morgenpost ”(1858), the“ Neusten Nachrichten ”(1859) and the“ Wiener Zeitung ”(1858/59). He wrote on many subjects: theater, music, art, chats, humoresques, travel letters, genre pictures and the like. a. From 1860–1864 he worked for the newspaper “Vaterland”. With the founding of the “ Neue Freie Presse ” in 1864, Speidel became its first features editor for four decades. Around the same time he was also the music critic of the " foreign newspaper ". While he wrote for the “press” rather in a chosen language, in the “foreigner paper” he used a quite popular expression that could be reminiscent of joke papers.

He only signed his articles in very special cases with his full name, otherwise only with the abbreviation “L. Sp. ”, In the“ foreigner sheet ”with“ sp. ”. In addition, he used numerous other ciphers : "§" (also as an art consultant for the "Neue Freie Presse"), σπ ("Wiener Zeitung"), "–l", "□", "X", "*" and the like. a.

Speidel became the most important Viennese critic and columnist of his time and was known and friends of many greats of the Viennese music and theater life of his time. a. Josef Bayer , Ludwig Bösendorfer , Johann von Herbeck , Martin Greif , Ludwig Hevesi , Max Kalbeck , Martin Gustav Nottebohm , Ludwig Porges, Johann Vesque von Püttlingen or Hugo Wittmann . He was one of the first to recognize the importance of Johann Nestroy , Adalbert Stifter and Anton Bruckner and paid tribute to the operettas by Johann Strauss (son) . He had a very negative attitude towards the works of Richard Wagner , which often brought him into violent contradictions with his admirers. Speidel enjoyed the greatest reputation as a theater critic, in 1887 he was even offered the direction of the Burgtheater , which he refused.

He once said of his own work: "I have never proofread and never looked at a printed feature pages again." His wife Leontine (born Ziegelmayer; † January 6, 1903) collected the newspaper clippings that later formed the basis of his 1910 published Works formed.

He is buried in an honorary grave in the Sieveringen cemetery (group 2, row 10, no. 54). In 1953 , the Speidelweg in Vienna's 22nd district, Kagran , was named after him.

His brother was the composer Wilhelm Speidel (1826–1899).

Quotes

The source of these quotations is Ludwig Hevesis article Ludwig Speidel, writer in the Biographisches Jahrbuch and German Nekrolog (1906).

  • "The features section is the immortality of a day."
  • About Ludwig Anzengruber : "As long as Anzengruber wrote, no other German poet has put more solid content into dramatic forms."
  • About Johannes Brahms : “An excellent composer, one of the brightest lights in contemporary German music…”, but also “… a far too worldly, ironic nature that looks far too deeply into people to care for their current applause take care of".
  • About Anton Bruckner : "sacristan figure with the imperator's skull"
  • About Grillparzer's " A Brotherly Quarrel in Habsburg ": "One of the poets seems as magical as an enchanted Habsburg prince who is condemned to be archivist of the court chamber during the day and who writes down memories of his brilliant past at night."
  • About Hans Makart : “The gods know where this young talent is going. Unfortunately it is to be feared that it will lose itself in empty virtuosity. "
  • About Carl Rahl : "For the first time since Schubert, Vienna has produced a great creative artist, but he is treated as if the geniuses in this country were growing like thistle heads."
  • About Ferdinand Raimund : "If there was a poet in Vienna, it was Raimund."
  • About Franz Schubert : "The greatest symphonic composer after Beethoven".
  • About Richard Wagner : "Wagner's music, however, is through and through external, sensual, heartless, just un-German in the bad sense ..."
    "Wagner's artistic thereof is not the expression of the German spirit, but only a caricature [...] it is an innermost unproductive, an artificial, hollow, reflected nature ... ”
    Later Speidel's attitude towards Wagner softened and he wrote:
    “ Apart from the value or disavowal of Wagner's music, it still has a positive quality. The positive thing about it is that it evokes enthusiasm. "
  • About Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller : “ Waldmüller's artistic heyday was short-lived, it barely filled a decade. His best works date back to the 1940s and just as he hadn't succeeded in anything right up to that point, from 1848 he quickly went downhill. "

Trivia

In 1888, on the occasion of the demolition of the old Burgtheater, Speidel's two speakers' seats were sawed out of the rows of seats and honored as a souvenir for many years of use.

When Speidel was already one of Vienna's most important critics, his laziness and his laziness in writing became the talk of the town. B. about premieres before the summer break of the theater in the following season in autumn. He was the strictest critic of himself. Nothing he wrote was enough for him. “Could I just throw the junk in the oven!” He sighed, when he had just finished a feature section that was the literary event the next morning.

Works

Independent publications during his lifetime
  • Rahl’s Athenian frieze . Explained by Ludwig Speidel. Austrian Art Association, Vienna 1867.
  • Pictures from the Schiller period. With unprinted letters to Schiller . Edited by Ludwig Speidel and Hugo Wittmann . Spemann, Berlin 1884.
  • The Vienna theater . In: The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in words and pictures . (Volume 3). K.-k. Hof- u. State printing office, Vienna 1887.
  • Theater . In: Vienna 1848–1888. Memorandum for December 2, 1888 . Edited by the City Council of Vienna. Konegen, Vienna 1888.
  • At the height. In memory of Wilhelm Schenner . OV, o. O 1891.
  • Small writings by Heinrich Natter . With a foreword by Ludwig Speidel. Edlinger, Innsbruck 1893.
  • Ludwig Eisenberg: Adolf Sonnenthal . A career as an artist as a contribution to modern Burgtheater history . With a foreword by Ludwig Speidel. E. Pierson, Dresden 1896.
Posthumous book publications
  • Ludwig Speidel's writings .
    • Volume 1: Personalities. Biographical-literary essays . Meyer & Jessen, Berlin 1910.
      Online
    • Volume 2: Viennese women and other Viennese things . Meyer & Jessen, Berlin 1910.
    • Volume 3. Holy Times. Christmas leaves . Meyer & Jessen, Berlin 1911.
      Online
    • Volume 4. Actors . Meyer & Jessen, Berlin 1910.
      Online
  • Melody of the landscape. Essays . Selected and introduced by Eduard Frank. Volk- und Reich-Verlag, Prague / Vienna 1943.
  • Critical Writings . Selected, introduced and explained by Julius Rütsch. Artemis, Zurich 1963.
  • Fanny Elßler's foot. Viennese feuilletons . Edited by Joachim Schreck. Böhlau, Vienna 1989, ISBN 3-205-05221-8 (Austrian Library; Volume 11) and Volk und Welt, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-353-00542-0 .

literature

  • Felix Salten : Ludwig Speidel . In: Maximilian Harden (Ed.): Die Zukunft Volume 54, 1906, pp. 295-297.
  • Ludwig Hevesi: Ludwig Speidel. A literary-biographical appreciation . Meyer & Jessen, Berlin 1910.
  • Hermann Bahr : Ludwig Speidel (for his seventieth birthday.) April 10, 1900. In: Bildung. Essays. Insel, Leipzig 1910, pp. 145–151.
  • Otto Stoessl : way of life and form of poetry. Essays . Georg Müller, Munich 1914.
  • Wilhelm Bründl: Ludwig Speidel. A contribution to the history of the feature pages . Dissertation University of Vienna, 1931.
  • Charlotte Pinter: Ludwig Speidel as a music critic . Dissertation University of Vienna, 1949.
  • Dietmar Grieser : From the immortality of one day. The critic Ludwig Speidel . In: Julius Kainz (Ed.): A piece of Austria. 150 years of “Die Presse” . Holzhausen, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-900518-83-1 , p. 168ff.
Entries in reference books
Press articles by and about Ludwig Speidel

Web links

Wikisource: Ludwig Speidel  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ludwig Hevesi: Ludwig Speidel, writer . In :: Biographisches Jahrbuch and German Nekrolog . Volume 11, 1906 (1908), pp. 193-223.
personal data
SURNAME Speidel, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, music, theater and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH Ulm
DATE OF DEATH February 3, 1906
Place of death Vienna