Nikolaus Lenau

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Nikolaus Lenau, oil painting by Friedrich Amerling Lenau Signature.gif
Nikolaus Lenau, painted by Johann Umlauf , ca.1844

Nikolaus Lenau , actually Nikolaus Franz Niembsch (since 1820) Edler von Strehlenau , (born August 13, 1802 in Csatád , Kingdom of Hungary , † August 22, 1850 in Oberdöbling ) was an Austrian late romantic writer .

Life

The coat of arms given to Lenau's grandfather in 1820

Lenau's father, the Habsburg civil servant Franz Niembsch, was addicted to gambling. When he died in Budapest in 1807, he left the family impoverished. The children remained under the care of their mother, who remarried in 1811. Through the use of her inheritance, the mother made it possible for her son Nikolaus to attend the Piarist grammar school in Pest . His grandfather, Colonel Joseph Maria Niembsch (1752–1822), who was ennobled as “Edler von Strehlenau” in 1820, finally brought his grandchildren to live with him from Hungary and financed Nikolaus' studies. In 1822 Lenau went to the University of Vienna and later to Pressburg and studied philosophy, agriculture and medicine. He couldn't choose a career and began to write verses as a teenager. After the death of his mother in 1829, he sank into melancholy. Lenau's melancholy , however, culminated in a creative phase and an extensive oeuvre between 1832 and 1844. An inheritance from his grandmother in 1830 enabled him to devote himself entirely to poetry. His first poems were published in 1827 in the Aurora magazine by the young publisher Johann Gabriel Seidl .

At the beginning of November 1831 Lenau came to Heidelberg to take his medical doctoral examination. He lived in the "King of Portugal" (Hauptstrasse 146). In Heidelberg he met Gustav Schwab , who arranged for him to have his poems published by Cotta . In 1832 Lenau dedicated his first volume of poetry to him. In Heidelberg Lenau was one of the founders of the Frankonia fraternity , which was approved by the Senate on December 13, 1831 after unsuccessful efforts. He had been in contact with fraternity members in Vienna as early as 1820 and must have resumed and cared for them immediately after his arrival in Heidelberg. He was accepted by a forbidden fraternity, which was named Fäßlianer after its pub at the time, the “Goldenen Fäßchen” (Ingrimstrasse 16), a letter from December 1, 1831 to Karl Mayer attests to.

America trip and literary success

After a bad speculation on the stock exchange, in which he lost half of his great inheritance, and probably also inspired by exuberant travel descriptions from North America, Lenau decided to embark on the US, buy land and let tenants work for him: “I want my imagination to school - to the North American jungle […] ”. On July 27, 1832 Lenau set out on the East Indiaman Baron from the chapels of Amsterdam. The crossing was delayed due to a collision off the Dutch coast near Texel . He landed in Baltimore on October 8, 1832 , where he stayed for only ten days. He lived for a short time in Bedford , Pennsylvania and on his way to Pittsburgh stopped in Old Economy , Pennsylvania (today Harmony, PA, not to be confused with the later early socialist New Harmony commune in Indiana). The German pietist and ascetic Johann Georg Rapp had founded a community of property in the Old Economy with around 700 followers since 1805, but had already moved to Indiana in 1814 because the lands in Ohio were not suitable for growing fruit. Nevertheless, the Old Economy remained an attraction for artists and writers even after its sale (1815).

Lenau bought 400 acres of land in Crawford County, Ohio, which he later looked after only reluctantly until his death. Lenau's destination was Niagara Falls , which really impressed the romantic (Poems Niagara , The Three Indians ). However, life in America and the prevailing materialism disappointed him. Probably in April / May 1833 he embarked from New York City on a sailor and traveled back to Europe. He later spoke disparagingly of the "English Talergelispel" and after his return to Germany referred to the United States to his friend Justinus Kerner as the "swallowed States of America". Ferdinand Kürnberger's novel Der Amerika-Müde (1855) thematizes a. a. Lenau's disappointment with America is not documentary. Rather, Kürnberger drew from contemporary travelogues. When Lenau arrived in Bremen, he discovered that in his absence he had become a celebrated poet. Laurel wreaths were woven for him in Wolfgang Menzel's literary sheet . From then on he lived alternately in Stuttgart and Vienna . His version of Faust was published in 1836 and Savonarola the next year , an epic work in which freedom from political and spiritual tyranny is presented as an essential characteristic of Christianity. His more recent poems , which appeared in 1838, are partly shaped by his hopeless passion for Sophie von Löwenthal, née von Kleyle (1810–1889), the wife of a friend. The Albigensians appeared in 1842 , and in 1844 he began to write his Don Juan , a fragment of which appeared after his death.

In the same year he fell after a stroke in increasing mental derangement, was established in October 1844 in the mental hospital Winnental in Castle Winnental admitted in Stuttgart and in May 1847, the nursery of the Dr. Görgen moved to Oberdöbling near Vienna, where he spent another three years until his death. His grave is in the Weidlinger Friedhof in Lower Austria.

meaning

Lenau is Austria's greatest lyric poet in the 19th century and the typical representative of Weltschmerz in German literature . The term was coined by Jean Paul and was to culminate with Giacomo Leopardi .

Lenau is an important representative of the Biedermeier era and a natural lyricist of high standing (reed lilacs, forest songs). Lenau contributes a unique, melancholy tone to German literature that runs through much of his poetry. Many of his poems have been set to music, including by Robert Schumann , Fanny Hensel , Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , Franz Liszt , Hugo Wolf , Richard Strauss , Othmar Schoeck and Richard Sahla . Lenau's Faust inspired Franz Liszt to write several symphonic poems (2 episodes from Lenau's Faust: 1. The nocturnal procession, 2. The dance in the village tavern, “Mephisto waltz”). Richard Strauss follows Lenau's Don Juan fragment in his symphonic poem Don Juan .

The first edition of Lenau's Complete Works was published by Anastasius Grün in 1855 . From 1989 to 2004 Nikolaus Lenau's works and letters were published in a seven-volume historical-critical edition.

Works

First edition by Faust. A poem
  • Night hike. 1830.
  • The Heideschenke.
  • Winter night. 1848.
  • The inconstant. 1822.
  • Farewell. Song of an emigrant. 1823.
  • The three Indians. 1834.
  • Reeds . 1832.
  • Polish songs. 1835.
  • Fist. A poem . 1836
  • Savonarola. 1837.
  • Voice of the child. 1838.
  • On New Years Eve. 1840.
  • The three. 1842.
  • The Albigensians. 1842.
  • Forest songs. 1843.
  • Look into the stream. 1844.
  • Vain nothing! 1844.
  • Don Juan (fragment), 1844.
  • The postilion 1835.
  • You're welcome. 1832.
  • Loneliness (have you ever found yourself all alone)
  • To the distant one (I pick this rose here).
  • Cimbal and harp. Selected poems, Hans Maria Loew (Ed.), Bergland Verlag, Vienna 1957.

Honors

Tomb of Nikolaus Lenau in the Weidling cemetery

His reputation as a poet is reflected in the naming of many streets and alleys after him, for example in Vienna - Josefstadt , Hamburg , Perchtoldsdorf , Leipzig , Gotha , Graz , Salzburg , Stadl-Paura , Guntramsdorf , Pinkafeld , Munich , Duisburg as well as in Karlsfeld or . Karlsruhe , Frankfurt , Mannheim , Berlin in the district of Neukölln and Berlin-Lichtenrade , in Heilbronn , Lunen and in Winnenden . In Winnenden there is a Lenau memorial in Winnental Castle , the former Winnenthal sanatorium (access via the castle café). Lenauplatz is located in Cologne-Ehrenfeld. Nikolaus Lenau was one of the most famous patients of today's Center for Psychiatry in Winnenden. There are several schools named after Nikolaus Lenau, e.g. B. the German-speaking Nikolaus Lenau Lyceum in Timișoara , Romania, the elementary and special school in Gmunden in Austria, and the Lenau elementary school in Berlin-Kreuzberg; There is also a Hungarian-German cultural center in Pécs (Hungary) called the Lenau House.

Nikolaus Lenau is of particular importance to the Lower Austrian city ​​of Stockerau . In his youth, the poet was from 1818 to 1821, mainly on vacation, with his grandparents in Stockerau, which is also called "Lenau City". The establishment of the International Lenau Society (1964) and the opening of the “International Lenau Archive” (1968) created a center for Lenau research here. In the Museum Stockerau a memorial corner it was set up. The greatest posthumous honor was bestowed on him in 1926 with the renaming of his birthplace Csadát, which is now in Romania, in Lenauheim . Nikolaus Lenau is a figure that identifies the Banat Swabians .

The asteroid 7400 Lenau , discovered by Eric Walter Elst on August 21, 1987 , was named after the poet.

An opera by the Swiss composer Heinz Holliger is dedicated to him with the anagrammatic title Lunea (premiered in Zurich in 2018).

  • Lenaudenkmal in Vienna

  • Lenau monument in Esslingen

  • Nikolaus Lenau on a Romanian postage stamp from 1998

Trivia

The name of the protagonist Lene Nimptsch in the novel Irrungen, Wirrungen by Theodor Fontane alludes to Nikolaus Franz Niembsch, Edler von Strehlenau, i.e. Nikolaus Lenau. The fictional character had taken the surname Nimptsch from the adoptive mother.

Current issues

literature

  • Ulrike Abraham: "Silently the night wrestled with the last rays of the sun". The metaphor of nature Nikolaus Lenau. Haag and Herchen, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-89846-032-0 .
  • Boshidara Deliivanova: Epic and History. Worldview, philosophical and genre-aesthetic problems in the epics of Nikolaus Lenau. (= Hamburg contributions to German studies. 20). Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-631-47674-4
  • Eduard Castle , Lenau and the Löwenthal family. Letters and conversations, poems and drafts , Leipzig: Max Hesse 1906
  • Rolf Engert: Nikolaus Lenau as herald of the third age. 2nd Edition. Verlag edition unica, Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-933287-08-3 .
  • Norbert Otto Eke, Karl Jürgen Skrodzki (arr.): Lenau Chronicle. 1802-1851. Deuticke, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-216-07357-2 .
  • Vincenzo Errante: Lenau. Story of a Martyr of Poetry. Heinrich-Heine-Verlag, Mengen 1948.
  • Horst Fassel (Ed.): Nikolaus Lenau, I am an insolent person on earth. Exhibition catalog and booklet accompanying the exhibition , Weinmann, Filderstadt 1996 (The Germans and their Neighbors in the East, Volume 6), ISBN 3-921262-07-0 .
  • Ernst Fischer (Ed.): Rebel in a dark night. Selected poems by Nikolaus Lenau. Edited and introduced by Ernst Fischer. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1952.
  • Winfried Freund : “Nature! - I want to recommend me to you! ”Nikolaus Lenau - A homage to the poet on the occasion of his 200th birthday. In: Stuttgart work on German studies. No. 423. Stuttgart 2004 [2005], ISBN 3-88099-428-5 , pp. 325-344.
  • Florian Gassner: Nikolaus Lenau. Wehrhahn, Hannover 2012, ISBN 978-3-86525-256-2 .
  • Carl Gibson : Nietzsche's Lenau reception. In: Sprachkunst. 2nd half band. Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1986, pp. 188–205.
  • Carl Gibson: Lenau. Life - work - effect. (= Contributions to the history of literature. Volume 100). Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1989, ISBN 3-533-04206-5 .
  • Harald Grieb: Nikolaus Lenau in Winnental 1844–1847. In: 175 years of the Winnenden Sanatorium. 2009, ISBN 978-3-89735-547-7 , pp. 51-77.
  • Jean-Pierre Hammer: Lenau. Poet and rebel. Schwaz 1993, ISBN 3-85093-033-5 .
  • Günter Häntzschel:  Lenau, Nikolaus. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , pp. 195-198 ( digitized version ).
  • Petra Hartmann : Faust and Don Juan. A merging process, illustrated by the authors: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Nikolaus Lenau, Christian Dietrich Grabbe, Gustav Kühne and Theodor Mundt. Ibidem, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-932602-29-3 .
  • Rainer Hochheim: Nikolaus Lenau. History of its impact 1850–1918. (= European university publications. Series 1, 470). Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-8204-5983-9 .
  • Rainer Hochheim (arrangement): Nikolaus Lenau. German-language personal bibliography (1850–1981). (= Budapest contributions to German studies . 12). Budapest 1983.
  • Stefani Kugler: Art Gypsies. Constructions of the "gypsy" in German literature of the first half of the 19th century. WVT, Trier 2004, ISBN 3-88476-660-0 (= literature, imagination, reality , volume 34, also dissertation at the University of Trier 2003).
  • Ingeborg Koza:  LENAU, Nikolaus. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 4, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-038-7 , Sp. 1414-1417.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive  on 2007-07-16)
  • Antal Mádl, Ferenc Szász (Ed.): Nikolaus Lenau in Hungary. Bibliography. (= Budapest contributions to German studies. 5). Loránd-Eötvös-Univ., Budapest 1979.
  • Antal Mádl: In Lenau's footsteps. Contributions to Austrian literature. Austria. Bundesverlag, Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-215-04794-2 .
  • Wolfgang Martens:  Niembsch von Strehlenau Nikolaus Franz. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 7, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1978, ISBN 3-7001-0187-2 , p. 121 f. (Direct links on p. 121 , p. 122 ).
  • Wolfgang Martens: Image and motif in Weltschmerz. Studies on Lenau's Poetry. (= Literature and life. NF, 4). Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 1957.
  • Emma Niendorf , Lenau in Swabia. From the last decade of his life , Leipzig: Herbig 1853 ( digitized version )
  • Michael Ritter: Time of autumn. Nikolaus Lenau. Biography. Deuticke, Vienna a. a. 2002, ISBN 3-216-30524-4 .
  • Roman Rocek : Demonia of the Biedermeier. Nikolaus Lenaus life tragedy. Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2005, ISBN 3-205-99369-1 .
  • Hansgeorg Schmidt-Bergmann : Nikolaus Lenau. Between romantic and modern. Studies. Edition Praesens , Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-7069-0158-7 .
  • Eduard Schneider, Stefan Sienerth (Ed.): Nikolaus Lenau. "I am an instinct person on earth". Book accompanying the exhibition. Munich 1993, ISBN 3-88356-092-8 .
  • Alexander Stillmark (Ed.): Lenau between East and West. London Symposium (April 19-20, 1990). (= Stuttgart thesis on German studies . 268). Heinz, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-88099-272-X .
  • Günter Kunert : My poor brother in words. In: Günter Kunert discovers Nikolaus Lenau. Hamburg, Vienna: Europa Verlag, 2001, pp. 5-14. (= Poetry in Europa Verlag).

Web links

Commons : Nikolaus Lenau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Nikolaus Lenau  - Quotes
Wikisource: Nikolaus Lenau  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Norbert Otto Eke: Works and Letters. Volume 5, Part 1: Text. Part 2: comment. Deuticke, 1992. ISBN 3-608-95724-3 , p. 20. ( limited preview in Google book search)
  2. ↑ Nikolaus Lenau. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Kindlers Literatur Lexikon. 18 volumes, volume 9. 3rd, completely revised edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8 , pp. 797-801 (biogram and five work articles)
  3. ^ Nikolaus Lenau: Poems. Cotta, Stuttgart / Tübingen 1832. ( digitized and full text in the German text archive ) The dedication “To the poet Gustav Schwab, my friends” can be found on p. III .
  4. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume II: Artists. Winter, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8253-6813-5 , pp. 450–453.
  5. ↑ Gottfried Duden : Report on a trip to the western states of North America. Bonn 1829.
  6. ^ Anton X. Schurz: Lenau's life: largely from the poet's own letters. Stuttgart and Augsburg 1855, p. 161.
  7. ↑ George A. Mulfinger: Lenau in America. In: German American Annals. Volume 1, No. 2, 1899.
  8. ↑ a b Anton X. Schurz: Lenau's life: largely from the poet's own letters. 1855, p. 214.
  9. ↑ George A. Mulfinger: Ferdinand Kürnberger's novel "Der Amerikamüde", its sources and relationship to Lenau's American trip. Philadelphia 1903.
  10. ↑ Patient files in the State Archives Ludwigsburg , inventory F 235 II (Staatliche Heilanstalt Winnental: Patient files ) , Bü 10797
  11. ^ City of Klosterneuburg - Weidling accessed on November 26, 2012.
  12. ↑ Susanne Kübler: Sandpipers at the Sea of ​​Eternity . In: Tages-Anzeiger . March 6, 2018, ISSN  1422-9994 ( [1] [accessed March 26, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Lenau, Nikolaus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau, Nikolaus Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1802
PLACE OF BIRTH Csatád , Kingdom of Hungary
DATE OF DEATH August 22, 1850
Place of death Oberdöbling