Ludwig von Brockes

Ludwig von Brockes (spoken: Brokes; around 1767 - September 23, 1815 in Bamberg ) was a lawyer who came from a family of officers and civil servants with roots in Schleswig and Pomerania. He became known through his friendship with Heinrich von Kleist , who was almost ten years his junior , and in whose life he played an important, not fully understood role.

family

Ludwig Brockes' great-grandfather was Barthold Heinrich Brockes , his grandfather was Erich Nikolaus von Brockes, who was ennobled in 1753, the Grand Princely Russian and Holstein Justice Council and secretary at the government council in Kiel . Ludwig von Brockes' father was an officer, but he died early. His mother was née von Eickstedt, an educated woman who took great care in bringing up her son. Ludwig Brockes had a sister Luise, to whom, according to Kleist, he was deeply attached and who was later unhappily married.

Life

Ludwig von Brockes spent his youth partly with his grandfather and partly with his maternal relatives, the von Gloeden family on the Gribow estate in Western Pomerania . In 1787/88 Ludwig von Brockes studied in Göttingen . In 1790 he was in Danish service in Rendsburg . He gave up this position in 1791. By the end of 1796 his track is lost. From 1796 to 1800 he worked as a teacher and court master of a young aristocrat in Göttingen. Probably in the early summer of 1800 he met Kleist and his sister Ulrike on Rügen. At this point in time, Kleist had just broken off his studies and became unofficially engaged to Wilhelmine von Zenge ; Brockes too had no obligations and no conventional livelihood in mind. Kleist picked him up in Coblentz near Pasewalk in August 1800 and took him on a trip to Würzburg , the purpose of which is not clear. Then they separated. On the way back, Brockes spent a short time in Dresden and Berlin . In January 1801 he left Berlin, which was probably what triggered the so-called Kant crisis at Kleist, and took over an office in Dargun in Mecklenburg. Like Kleist, he could not hold his own in any office. Presumably he stayed in letter contact with Kleist while he was in Koenigsberg . Around 1807 Brockes was temporarily back in Berlin.

Brocke's mutual love for Cäcilie von Ziegesar he had to sacrifice in 1788 to reason of the class. Later he was engaged to Cäcilie von Werthern for a long time . Both had to postpone their marriage for a long time due to testamentary provisions. On the way to the wedding, Brockes died in Bamberg - allegedly in the arms of his bride who had hurried up - on September 23, 1815.

Würzburg trip

One of the secrets in Heinrich von Kleist's life is not only the purpose, but also the selection of the travel companion on the Würzburg trip, for which he had agreed to meet Brockes in August 1800. Gerhard Schulz considers Brockes to be a member of the “ Ennui- tinged” generation of young, educated aristocrats, who “found it increasingly difficult to experience earthly pleasure at all”, in which he recognizes Brockes “kinship” with Kleist. Kleist wrote to his fiancée Wilhelmine von Zenge over Brockes that his heart "completely full" was of "this wonderful man": "No one can me quite understand when he and You " - which he immediately restricted in terms of his fiancée again, who may not be able to grasp as high a meaning as he can for “what I consider higher than love .” Whether it was a real project or an emotional need that prompted both of them to set out initially with the goal of Vienna remains unclear. Both traveled under cover names with Swedish passports, enrolled at the University of Leipzig and tried unsuccessfully in Dresden to get false passports for Vienna. On September 12, 1800, both of them arrived in Würzburg and lodged with the city surgeon (without academic training), Kleist perhaps to remedy a sexual emergency, both probably with political or economic espionage assignment from the Prussian finance minister Carl August von Struensee , who was involved in the development of the Textile industry and in the construction of textile machines, and possibly with the ulterior motive of recommending himself for public offices in Prussia. At the same time, French troops were billeted across from Würzburg during an armistice with Austria. Here Kleist practiced as a “sensational reporter”, as a time-critical writer and perfected his art of characterization, but it was not known what both of them spent their time with. The trip to Vienna did not materialize, Kleist returned from Würzburg with no concrete result and decided to become a writer. During this journey full of repressed, probably also homoerotic feelings, Kleist learned "how to say something different than what you mean". Many of the unconscious motifs and gestures that shine through in his letters from the journey reappear in his dramas and stories.

The trip is also associated with Brocke's attempt to bring Kleist to the Constantist Order in Würzburg , whose members harbored democratic ideas and were in some cases close to the Freemasons .

With a view to Kleist's ghostly friends Brockes and Ernst von Pfuel, Adler and Schestag formulate “ that whenever there is talk of Kleist the friend and the friends of Kleist, a strange disconcertment about the friend is not far off ” - “ the friend passes almost like a ghost ".

literature

• Anthony Adler, Thomas Schestag: Friend ... Brockes. In: Eighteenth-Century Studies. Johns Hopkins University Press. Volume 32, Number 2, Winter 1998-99, pp. 261-277.
• Lászlo F. Földényi: Keyword Brockes. In: Heinrich von Kleist: In the network of words. Munich 1999, pp. 71-76.
• Gerhard Schulz: Kleist: A biography. Munich 2007.
• Hermann F. Weiss: Heinrich von Kleist's friend Ludwig von Brockes. In: Contributions to Kleist Research 1996. Frankfurt (Oder) 1996, pp. 102–132.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sigismund Rahmer: Heinrich von Kleist as a person and a poet. According to new source research. Berlin: Reimer 1909, pp. 70-75.
2. ^ Sigismund Rahmer: Heinrich von Kleist as a person and a poet. According to new source research. Berlin: Reimer 1909, pp. 70-75.
3. ↑ Horst Häker: Kleist on Rügen . In: Contributions to Kleist research. Frankfurt / Oder 2000, p. 229.
4. ↑ Földényi 1999, p. 73.
5. ↑ Schulz 2007, p. 119.
6. ↑ Schulz 2007, p. 122.
7. ↑ Hans Dieter Zimmermann: Kleist, love and death. Frankfurt 1989.
8. ↑ Schulz 2007, p. 156.
9. ↑ Schulz 2007, p. 138.
10. ↑ Földényi 1999, p. 72.
11. ↑ Peter Struck: A biographical detail on Ludwig von Brockes. In: Hans Joachim Kreutzer (Ed.): Kleist-Jahrbuch 1986. Berlin 1986, p. 176 ff.
12. ^ Adler, Schestag 1998/99, pp. 262, 261.