My life (seume)

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Johann Gottfried Seume, chalk drawing by Wilhelm von Kügelgen (1806)
Title page of the first edition, Göschen, Leipzig 1813

Mein Leben is the title of the autobiography of the German writer Johann Gottfried Seume (1763–1810). The unfinished work describes the first twenty years of life and was first published in 1813 with a sequel by Georg Joachim Göschen and Christian August Heinrich Clodius . My life is one of the most famous autobiographies in German literature and has had a decisive influence on the Seume picture.

Seumes memoirs

Seume spent his childhood in Poserna and Knautkleeberg (today Leipzig ) and after the early death of his father attended the Latin school in Borna , where he arrived as a "half huron" but soon became top of the class. The support of Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenthal zu Städteln made it possible for the gifted to attend the Nikolaischule in Leipzig, and in autumn 1780 he began studying theology in order to become a pastor at the wishes of his sponsor. But the eighteen-year-old doubts about faith soon plagued him: “It was beginning to ferment terribly in me. I understood that as an honest man I could not walk on the way. ”Seume made the decision to leave Germany to attend the artillery school in Metz .

At the end of June 1781 he made his way to France, but on the third day "despite all the protests, the Landgrave of Kassel , the great man broker at the time, took over the procurement of [his] distant night quarters through his recruits" Seume was supposed to be a soldier for the American War of Independence to Great Britain and was first brought to the fortress Ziegenhain , the assembly point for the recruits, and in the spring of 1782 to Bremerlehe .

After a twenty-two week crossing in the crowded confines of an English transport ship, “layered and cured like herrings”, the Hessian soldiers arrived in Halifax , where they remained stationed and were no longer deployed in the war. Initially, in addition to his military service duties, Seume had to be “yoked as a clerk”, but during his time off duty he also had the opportunity to hunt and fish. His forays through the Canadian wilderness brought him into closer contact with the Indians , “only friendly people”, whom he describes with great sympathy.

The four-year-old officer Karl Ludwig August Heino von Münchhausen was impressed by the classical education and poetic talent of the farmer's son Seume . A friendship developed between the two, through which Seume was accepted into a small circle of officers. After the signing of the Peace of Paris in September 1783, the troops were transported back to Europe and Seume used the arrival in Bremen to try to escape. "And now -", at this point the manuscript breaks off.

Continuation of Göschen and Clodius

Friedrich II. , Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel
Georg Joachim Göschen

Two of Seeum's friends, the publisher Georg Joachim Göschen (1752–1828) and the Leipzig university professor and poet Christian August Heinrich Clodius (1772–1836), wrote a sequel. Göschen describes how Seume escaped the Hessian military and then fell into the hands of Prussian soldiers recruiting, made two unsuccessful attempts to escape, avoided running the gauntlet twelve times, finally returned to Leipzig, studied, entered Russian service and survived the uprising in Warsaw as an officer in April 1794 , returned home after seven months of imprisonment, went for a walk to Syracuse in 1801/02 and made a Nordic trip through Poland, Russia and Scandinavia in 1805.

The supplement written by Clodius describes Seeum's last days of life in Töplitz , where the terminally ill had hoped for relief from his excruciating pain. Only “the duty of example” prevented him “for the sake of the weak and foolish” from putting an end to his own life. Seume died on June 13, 1810 at the age of forty-seven.

Emergence

Contemporaries such as Schiller , Herder or Gleim encouraged Seume to record his life story, but it was only a severe and extremely painful bladder and kidney disease and his rapidly deteriorating state of health that prompted the forty-six year old to start writing it towards the end of 1809. In January 1810, he reported in a letter to his fatherly friend Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813): "I made some bows with great effort, and have brought myself back from America happily."

A few days before his death, Seume gave the remaining fragment of the manuscript to his Leipzig doctor Christian Gottfried Braune (1765–1814). As a result, the manuscript changed hands several times until it was sold by the writer Stefan Zweig to the collector Martin Bodmer in 1937 . Today the manuscript is in the possession of the Bodmer Foundation in Cologny .

reception

  • Georg Joachim Göschen describes the autobiography as a legacy in which Seume lived on with his friends, "because his life was just as undemanding and true, just as cheerful and indifferent in words and actions as he described it during a painful illness."
  • For Ludwig Storch (1803–1881) - around fifty years later - the description of his life is one of the most valuable things Seume wrote, because "although he did not get beyond the adolescent years, his picture emerges from it with a wonderful freshness."
  • The literary scholar and co-founder of the Johann Gottfried Seume Society in Leipzig, Jörg Drews (1938–2009), sees the appeal of the autobiography in the fact that Seume “does not deal psychologically and dissectively with himself, so does not analyze himself as much as portray himself.” On the other hand, he misses linguistic and psychological sophistication and points to some inconsistencies and imprecise representations.
  • Eberhard Zänker, the author of a Seume biography, describes Mein Leben as one of the most interesting and famous autobiographies of the Goethe era and German literature in general. He sees Göschen and Clodius' continuation, however, shaped by sentimental memory and admiration, which "gave rise to a Seume legend, in which Seume himself contributed during his lifetime."

expenditure

See also

literature

  • Eberhard Zänker: Johann Gottfried Seume . Faber & Faber Verlag, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-936618-65-8 .

Web links

Wikiquote: Johann Gottfried Seume  - Quotes
Wikisource: Johann Gottfried Seume  - Sources and full texts

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Johann Gottfried Seume: My life . 1991, p. 24 .
  2. ↑ Johann Gottfried Seume: My life . 1991, p. 51 .
  3. ↑ Johann Gottfried Seume: My life . 1991, p. 53 .
  4. ↑ Seume comments on this decisive event in just one sentence. Jörg Drews: "It is conceivable that Seume, when he met the Hessian recruits in the pub in Vach, saw an acceptable way out of his unclear life situation [...] he could also become an officer in the Hessian army [...], and it appealed to him - he was only 18 years old after all - the prospect of a trip to America. "
  5. ^ According to another statement by Seeum, seventeen weeks.
  6. ↑ Johann Gottfried Seume: My life . 1991, p. 62 .
  7. ↑ Johann Gottfried Seume: My life . 1991, p. 77 .
  8. ↑ Johann Gottfried Seume: My life . 1991, p. 80 .
  9. ↑ Münchhausen reports on it in retrospect on the days passed (1822).
  10. ↑ p. 183 of the first digital version of the first edition published by Georg Joachim Göschen, Leipzig 1813
  11. ^ During the uprising in Warsaw on 17./18. April the Russian garrison there was destroyed and more than 4,000 Russian soldiers and civilians killed. Seume reports on it in: Some News of the Incidents in Poland in 1794. (1796)
  12. ↑ p. 184 to p. 264 of the first edition (beginning) , (end of the part written by Göschen, marked in the first edition with "- n." )
  13. ↑ p. 265 to p. 285 of the first edition
  14. ↑ Johann Gottfried Seume: My life . 1991, p. 135 .
  15. ↑ In doing so, he relied, among other things, on his travelogue letter from America to Germany , published in 1789 .
  16. ↑ Johann Gottfried Seume: My life . 1991, p. 145 .
  17. ↑ Johann Gottfried Seume: My life . 1991, p. 157 .
  18. ↑ Johann Gottfried Seume: My life . 1991, p. 92 .
  19. ↑ Ludwig Storch: On Seume's centenary birthday, January 29, 1863 . In: The Gazebo . Issue 4. Ernst Keil's successor, Leipzig 1863, p. 60 ( Wikisource [accessed May 11, 2012]).
  20. ↑ Johann Gottfried Seume: My life . 1991, p. 200 .
  21. ↑ Johann Gottfried Seume: My life . 1991, p. 202-209 .
  22. ↑ Eberhard Zänker: Johann Gottfried Seume . 2005, p. 378 .
  23. ↑ Eberhard Zänker: Johann Gottfried Seume . 2005, p. 379 .