Matthias Koch (local poet)

Matthias Koch (born June 11, 1860 in Tieringen , today a district of Meßstetten ; † October 1, 1936 in Tübingen ) was a Swabian native poet and dialect author.

biography

Matthias Koch's birthplace in Tieringen

Matthias Koch was born on June 11, 1860 as the fourth child of a poor family in Tieringen. While the father succumbed to a lung disease before his son was born, Koch maintained an intimate relationship with his mother throughout his life, which was also reflected in many of his literary works. As Koch soon found himself under-challenged in this profession after an apprenticeship as a mechanic, he attended the Lilienstern seminar for private teachers near Weinsberg when he was 18 . After he had passed the second service examination in 1884, he received a permanent position at the Tieringer elementary school the following year . He stayed there until he was transferred to Waiblingen in 1892, where he met his future wife Klara Fischer. Koch dedicated his first volume of poetry, Schlichte Lieder , to her and created a small literary memorial for her with the poem “Klärchen am Fensterbrett”. The marriage resulted in 12 children. After Koch moved to Tübingen, he got to know the aesthetics lecturer Erich Heyfelder, who in future promoted the poet as a mentor. Koch's poems were initially printed in various newspapers and received positively. In his birthplace Tieringen, where some citizens felt ridiculed by Koch's verses, his poetry was initially received with reserve. In 1913, Kohlraisle Koch's most successful work was published, the fourth edition of which was published in 1980. The work of the local poet, who was awarded the honorary citizen's letter of the community in 1927, was also increasingly recognized in Tieringen . At Koch's explicit request, he found his final resting place in his mother's grave after his death in Tieringen in 1936.

Works

High German poems

With the Schlichte Lieder collection (1893), Matthias Koch presented his first and only volume of High German poems. Despite the positive response to the songs, Koch was persuaded, especially on the advice of his mentor, Erich Heyfelder, to write poetry in his Swabian dialect in future.

"Kohlraisle"

Dialect poems

As a result, Koch wrote poems in Swabian dialect and achieved his greatest success with the volume Kohlraisle (1913). With his poems he set a monument to his homeland (cf. the poem Diarenga ). The literary pastor Karl Hesselbacher judged: “These delicious dialect poems are much more than the usual dialect poetry literature. Instead of funny, rhyming anecdotes, this poet gives something great: village images from which the character of the people can be seen clearly and sharply outlined. ” Thematically , the volume of poetry Dondrisch druf falls outside the scope of other works by Koch. These Swabian war poems appeared in 1915 and gave a memorable expression to an almost general enthusiasm for war at the beginning of the First World War.

prose

After the end of the First World War, Koch became increasingly prosaic. In the texts published from then on, he described village life in the Swabian Alb. Koch's prose was published under the titles Albleut (1917), In den Bubenhosen (1918) and Allerhand Kostgänger (1921). In these "village pictures" and "village stories", rural life is not only portrayed as an idyll, but also illuminated in a socially critical way. B. in the poem D Klei'häusler , which satirically describes the patronizing treatment of the local large farmers with the poorer inhabitants of the village as a questionable political practice. The main themes are the agrarian and religious life of the village population in the Swabian Alb.

language

Koch's literary work, which was thematically always linked to his homeland Tieringen and the Zollernalb, is closely linked to the Swabian dialect . With the exception of Schlichte Lieder, the poems are in the native dialect of the Balingen area, which can be assigned to the dialect group of Southwest Swabian. The documentation of the regional dialect thus provided makes the poems an interesting source for research into dialectology .

Effect and afterlife

The writer Ludwig Finckh stated in the Stuttgarter Neue Tagblatt in 1913 that since Michael Richard Buck “we have not had such a strangely strong poet in our dialect. Matthias Koch's volume Kohlraisle brings Matthias Koch to the very first place in Swabian dialect history. ” Bruno Wille also praised In the Propylaea after the publication of In den Bubenhosen (1918):“ There is something classic about this depiction because it is honestly functional and lively . "And Wilhelm Schussen commented on the volume Albleut (1917) in the Schwabenspiegel with the words:" A piece of the most intimate, delightful local art that can also exist in literary terms. The blessing and scent of happily endured external poverty lies like a heavenly breath over the happy little book. ”In Tieringen, Koch's souvenirs are dedicated to Matthias-Koch-Weg and a section of the local history museum. Matthias-Koch-Weg is also named after him in the Österberg district of Tübingen .

Catalog raisonné

• Kohlraisle. Poems from the Balinger Alb . Stuttgart (Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt) 1913; 2nd increased edition Stuttgart (Bonz & Comp.) 1930; 3rd edition Tübingen (Schlichtermeyer) 1957; 4th edition Reutlingen (Knödler) 1980 (increased new edition, title now: Kohlraisle. Poems and stories from the Hohe Schwabenalb .)
• Dondrisch Druf! Swabian war poems. Tübingen (Verlag der Buchhandlung Kloeres) 1915.
• Albleut '. Stories from the Heuberg. Stuttgart (Strecker and Schröder) 1917; 2nd and 3rd edition 1918.
• My key box. In: Thirteen from Swabia. Happy stories from Swabian storytellers. Stuttgart (Strecker and Schröder) 1917, 69-73.
• In the boyish pants. Cheerful stories. Stuttgart (Strecker and Schröder) 1918.
• All kinds of boarders. Stories from days gone by. Stuttgart (Strecker and Schröder) 1921.
• I greet you my silent valley a thousand times! A selection from my writings. Tübingen (publishing house of the Swabian Youth Hostels) 1925.
• Where a 'klei's Hüttle is. Introduction by Adolf Daniel. Balingen (Daniel) and Stuttgart (Koch, Neff & Oetinger) 1930.
• Christkindles stories. Tübingen (Höhn) 1933; Grafenau (Walter publishing institution) ² 1976.
• Village stories. Compiled by Hildegard Hagmayer and Klara Sauer. Meßstetten (Sicoff-Druck) 1998.
• Folklore tradition in Thieringen - idioms, greetings and answers, politeness formulas. Complicated handwriting, also dialect, the text is partly indecipherable.

literature

• Bernhard Sowinski, Lexicon of German-speaking Dialect Authors, 1997, p. 313
• Hildegard Hagmayer, Klara Sauter (eds.): Matthias Koch. Uf am Heubearg. Village stories, self-published 1998.

Web links

Wikisource: Matthias Koch  - Sources and full texts

• Page of the Heimatverein Kohlraisle with picture

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Koch, Matthias Dondrisch druf . Verlag der Buchhandlung Kloeres, Tübingen: 1915.
2. ↑ Local history sheets for the district of Balingen ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Issued January 1966. Retrieved June 5, 2014. 
3. ↑ Publishing house advertising in Allerhand Kostgänger, Stuttgart 1921, p. 104.
4. ↑ ibid.