Meïr Aron Goldschmidt

Meïr Aron Goldschmidt

Meïr Aron Goldschmidt (born October 26, 1819 in Vordingborg , † August 15, 1887 in Copenhagen ) was a Danish publisher , journalist and writer with a Jewish background. Goldschmidt grew up in Copenhagen in a strictly Jewish-Orthodox family. His encounter with Greek classical culture brought about a change in his attitude and prompted him to look for approaches to harmonize Jewish and non-Jewish ideas. He was particularly impressed by the Greek conception of nemesis and shaped many of his later works.

After receiving his doctorate in 1836, he founded Præstø Amts Tidende in 1837 , which merged with Callundborg Ugeblad in 1839 to form Sjællandsposten . He sold this in 1840 and in the same year founded the political and satirical weekly Corsaren ("Der Korsar"), in which he criticized the king under the pseudonym of various publishers. He was sentenced to (six times four days) prison and placed under censorship by the Supreme Court on June 7, 1843 as the real editor. Corsaren is a lasting innovation in the history of Danish journalism.

Goldschmidt praised Søren Kierkegaard for his either-or , but the mutual friendship broke when Corsaren launched continued attacks on Kierkegaard - partly through attacks provoked by Kierkegaard himself.

Goldschmidt sold Corsairs in 1846 and published the political magazine Nord og Syd ("Nord und Süd") from 1847-1859 .

Politically, Goldschmidt was initially an innovator with republican sympathies and inclinations towards the utopian-socialist outlook (a novelty in Danish literature), but from the 1850s onwards he approached a more traditional liberal ideology, so that his attempts to play a political role as editor , Sparking accusations of opportunism . Approx. In 1860 he ended his career as an opinion maker and concentrated on literature.

His literature shows an interest in metaphysics and philosophy. The novel En Jøde ( A Jew ) describes the Copenhagen Jewish milieu for the first time from an internal perspective: A partially assimilated Jew is excluded because of the prejudices of his environment and is exposed to the feeling of insecurity. The great novel Hjemløs deals with the idea of ​​the nemesis, as does the important Arvingen (“The Heirs”), the first Danish literary treatment of the subject of divorce . His stories and novels , which describe Jewish characters with a special mixture of irony and sympathy, are particularly valuable . It is not uncommon for realism to be broken by a variety of mysticism .

A short marriage resulted in a son (1846) and a daughter (1848).

Posterity considers Goldschmidt to be an ambivalent author. His novels show weaknesses through long passages of pure plot and descriptions of minor issues, but in the concentrated form (especially in the age novels) he turns out to be the last great Danish prose author of the Romantic era. As a romantic, his interest turns to problems and he anticipates certain questions in psychology, not least the writings of Henrik Pontoppidan . As the first Danish-Jewish writer, he contributed to a growing openness between the two cultures by describing his milieu of origin. After all, he is considered one of the pioneers of modern and independent Danish journalism .

Novels

• 1846 - En Jøde , published under the pseudonym Adolph Meyer
• 1853–1857 - Hjemløs
• 1863 - Arvingen
• 1867 - Ravnen
• " Livs-Erindringer og result "

Secondary literature

• Andreas Blödorn: "With me there is always something behind it". Jewish life and poetic realities in Meïr Aron Goldschmidt's deeply ironic realism, in: Schriften der Storm-Gesellschaft 55 (2006), pp. 65–77
• Mogens Brøndsted: Goldschmidts fortællekunst , 1967
• Kenneth H. Ober: Meïr Goldschmidt , Boston, 1976