Margareta Klopstock
Margareta "Meta" Klopstock (born Moller ; born March 16, 1728 in Hamburg ; † November 28, 1758 ibid) was a German writer whose correspondence is considered a unique realistic description of the Rococo period and sensitivity. Works by her appeared under the pseudonym Margaretha . In 1754 she married the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock , who immortalized her in the Cidli odes , among other things . From 1757 she corresponded with Samuel Richardson .
Life
Meta Klopstock was born as the youngest daughter in the second marriage of the Hamburg businessman Peter Moller. She was exceptionally talented and well educated, speaking French, English, Italian and Latin. After her father died in 1735 and his mother remarried, Meta Klopstock lived with her eldest sister Elisabeth (1722–1788), the wife of the merchant Benedict Schmidt, until she got married.
Meta Klopstock was enthusiastic about reading the first three chants of the Messiah in 1750, and met the author Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock in spring 1751 through her childhood friend Nikolaus Dietrich Giseke . They married on June 10, 1754 and moved to Copenhagen. The marriage was very happy and is generally regarded as the high point in Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's life.
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock immortalized Meta Klopstock in numerous odes that revolve around the figure of Cidli. At the same time, he also attached great importance to his wife's criticism of his writings, such as the Messiah , Von der heiligen Poesie (1755) or the treatise About the imitation of the Greek syllable measure in German (1756).
The long-awaited pregnancy prompted Meta, who had visited her sister Elisabeth with her husband in Hamburg in autumn 1757, to return to her sister Elisabeth from Copenhagen. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock went back to Copenhagen alone in the summer of 1758 and arrived back in Hamburg shortly before the birth in November 1758.
Meta Klopstock died in childbirth on November 28, 1758 at the age of 30, the son was born dead. She was buried with him on June 15, 1759 in the cemetery of the Christian church in Ottensen . Her sisters Elisabeth Schmidt and Catharina Margaretha Dimpfel geb. Moller (1724–1773) planted two linden trees on December 6, 1759, one of which is still on the grave today.
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock processed the death of his wife a. a. in the 15th song of the Messiah. The death of Cidli is modeled on the death of Meta, which Klopstock reported in a letter to Johann Andreas Cramer in December 1758. After his death in 1803 Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock was buried next to Meta Klopstock and his son.
Literary meaning
Meta Klopstock was a Rococo woman . The only portrait of Dominicus van der Smissen known of her shows her as the woman of her time: the hair pulled back raises her forehead, the blue-gray dress is cut low and the laced waist enhances the impression of the crinoline . The typical features of the Rococo can also be found in Meta Klopstock's letters, which, in contrast to the gravity of the Baroque, produced playful forms. The vocabulary of the letters to her husband includes zephyrs , graces and sylphs , and the anacreontic dove is a recurring motif. Winter was discovered to be delightful in the Rococo, and Meta Klopstock describes in her letters the joys of ice skating and sledding. The letters often have a playful character, Tändeleyen are the basis of numerous love letters between Meta and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock.
At the same time, Meta Klopstock's work is a mix of sensitivity and sentimental poetry, which is expressed, for example, in the accumulation of emotional exclamations. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock had read Richardson's Clarissa and called Meta Klopstock in numerous letters before the marriage Clärchen or Cläry , and Meta also signed her letters in the following or with Cl. Klopstock . Edward Young's Night Thoughts with Reflections on Life and Death had both read as early as 1751. Meta Klopstock maintained an exchange of letters with Samuel Richardson from 1757 until her death, in which, for example, she deals with his "heavenly book" Clarissa .
In the course of the correspondence, the naturalness of the descriptions increases. Realistically described situations of everyday life not only create an almost unique picture of everyday life, but also paint an extremely human picture of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and the common world through numerous anecdotes.
“My letters are strange things, and I sometimes make them even stranger for some foolish cause. For I think that one of our grandchildren's grandsons, who would find my letters (I've been threatened with them sometimes), might think of printing them ... if only they are too natural; so the villain will probably stop printing. "
Even if Meta Klopstock did not intend her letters to be printed, they are, like almost all traditional letters of their time, artistically formed works that one used to read to friends in circles and elsewhere. Her natural tone was also appreciated by contemporaries.
"I have never seen letters like this, what would have meant so much nature in the strictest sense, namely so much good nature."
Meta Klopstock created by combining letter elements from the Rococo and sensibility through its own, partly religious realism, a letter work that is unique in its time.
Her only major literary work was the drama The Death of Abel , which was written in 1757 and is in the context of sensitivity. It can be understood as a side piece to Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's tragedy The Death of Adam , which was also written in 1757. In the same year Meta Klopstock wrote her letters from the deceased to the living . Her complete works, which first appeared posthumously in 1759, also contain hymns and dialogues, for example the fragment of a conversation in which she discusses the motifs of literary production with Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. In 1816 she published her essay A Letter on Fashions , Sharp-tongued About Human Vanities.
Meta Klopstock was a well-respected woman in cultural circles during her lifetime. Her friends included Johann Adolf Schlegel , Karl Christian Gärtner , Johann Arnold Ebert and Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim . After her death, however, it was soon forgotten and only rediscovered in 1950. In that year the estate of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock passed into the possession of the Hamburg State and University Library . This contained the exchange of bridal letters and other correspondence from Meta Klopstock, which were believed to be lost, as well as other records that appeared in three volumes in 1956 together with individual letters that had already been published by Meta Klopstock.
Works
- Abel's death. Frankfurt / Leipzig 1757. (8 digitized edition 1776 )
- Letters from the dead to the living (1757)
- Leave Writings (1759)
- A letter on fashions (1816)
-
Meta Klopstock born Moller: Correspondence with Klopstock, her relatives and friends (1956)
- Volume 1: 1751-1754
- Volume 2: 1754-1758
- Volume 3: Explanations
literature
- Ludwig Brunier : Meta and Klopstock . Perthes, Besser & Mauke, Hamburg 1860.
- Carl Christian Redlich: Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1882, pp. 211-226. (in the article on her husband Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock from p. 218)
- Hermann Tiemann (Ed.): Meta Klopstock. Correspondence with Klopstock, her relatives and friends . 3 volumes. Maximilian Society, Hamburg 1956.
- Franziska and Hermann Tiemann (ed.): History of the Meta Klopstock in letters . Carl Schünemann, Bremen 1962 (new edition as "There are wonderful things my letters" correspondence with Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and with her friends . CH Beck, Munich 1980, new edition 1988.).
- Gérard Dautzenberg: Mon coeur aurait encore tant de choses à vous dire. Meta et Klopstock, a couple celèbre de la littérature allemande . Sedes, Paris 1990.
- Tanja Reinlein: The letter as a medium of sensitivity . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2003.
Web links
- Literature by and about Margareta Klopstock in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. Dagmar Hebeisen: The Cidli Odes. On Klopstock's poetry around 1750 . Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1998.
- ↑ See for example ADB, p. 218.
- ^ Klopstock Briefe, Volume 2: Apparat / Commentary (Hamburger Klopstock-Ausgabe, Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe, Briefe IV 2), de Gruyter 2004, pp. 327, 342 f. ISBN 978-3-11-018173-9
- ^ Letter from Meta Klopstock to Samuel Richardson; Letter of November 29, 1757. Quoted from F. u. H. Tiemann (1988), p. 431.
- ↑ Quoted from F. u. H. Tiemann (1988), p. 484.
- ↑ Quoted from F. u. H. Tiemann (1988), p. 485.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Klopstock, Margareta |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Klopstock, Meta; Moller, Meta |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 16, 1728 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hamburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 28, 1758 |
| Place of death | Hamburg |