Otto Ruppius

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Otto Ruppius

Otto Ruppius (born February 1, 1819 in Glauchau , † June 25, 1864 in Berlin ) was a German writer.

Life

Ruppius was the son of an administrative officer in Glauchau. He spent his school days in Langensalza . He then completed a commercial apprenticeship in Erfurt . Since, according to his own statements, this job offered him “no interesting risk” , he volunteered for the military in 1839. There he made it up to the regimental clerk and was able to debut in 1841 with his first paperback for the Prussian infantryman .

In 1842 Ruppius resigned from the army and settled again in Langensalza. There he learned the trade of bookseller , which did not inspire him either. In 1845 he went to Berlin and together with his friend Adolf Ries founded the North German Folk Writing Association . Together with Jeremias Gotthelf , he published the “organ” of the same. In the same year he married Amalie Ahrends († 1880); later he had two children.

From 1848, Ruppius published the citizens and farmers newspaper , in which he wanted to publish works by Jeremias Gotthelf - in high German translation. This project failed because Gotthelf intended to translate his works into written German himself. During this time, Ruppius' work Eine Weberfamilie was created, among others , in which he - like Gerhart Hauptmann - addressed the misery of the Silesian weavers.

When the Prussian National Assembly was dissolved on December 5, 1848 by order of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV , Ruppius commented on this with a political article in his citizen and peasant newspaper . In it he demanded that Minister Friedrich Wilhelm Graf von Brandenburg should be brought to justice as a traitor . Ruppius was indicted and on June 16, 1849 nine months imprisonment sentenced. According to the court, the small amount of the prison sentence only came about because the defendant “made a very favorable impression through his frank, but extremely decent, moderate behavior” .

When Ruppius was about to begin his prison sentence at the end of 1849, he fled to the USA and settled in Nashville , Tennessee, as a music teacher. Since he did not like the climate there, he went to Louisville in Kentucky and in 1851 brought his wife and children to live with him. The German Musical Society in Louisville often engaged him and his wife for small concerts. In 1853 his house burned down to the ground, the family lost all their belongings.

Ruppius went to New York City for about a year and worked there as an editor for the German-speaking New York State newspaper . In 1855 he settled with his family in Milwaukee in the state of Wisconsin , where he founded the German-language magazine Westliche Blätter with the aim of establishing an independent German literature in the USA. When he moved to St. Louis , Missouri with the editorial team (and his family) in 1859 , he failed due to the conditions of the approaching and finally breaking out civil war in which Missouri was a contested border state.

Since in Prussia in 1861 amnesty was granted for “revolutionary activities” , Ruppius returned to Germany in August of the same year and settled in Leipzig in 1862 . The bookseller Ernst Keil hired Ruppius for his family weekly magazine Die Gartenlaube and later for his periodical Der Leuchtturm . Ruppius' emigration history A German was the first novel , the wedge in the gazebo reprinted; until then he had avoided publishing lengthy prose works that could not be completed within a month. In 1863 Ruppius went to Berlin and founded the Sunday paper for everyone from the people there .

At the age of 45, Ruppius died of a brain tumor in Berlin in 1864. His friend, the writer Otto Girndt , wrote a necrology .

In contrast to Balduin Möllhausen , for example , Ruppius was never in the Wild West . In his numerous novels and stories, he addressed the fate of German emigrants as a perpetual struggle between good and evil. In sometimes quite realistic language, he let the "good emigrants" win over their "bad fate" - almost exclusively in the USA.

Works

Der Pedlar, Erfurt 1886 (title page)
  • Paperback for the Prussian infantryman . 1841
  • The Pedlar . 1857
  • Money and mind . 1860
  • The Prairie Devil , 1861
  • Genre pictures from German-American life . 1861
  • 1861: a German . In: The Gazebo . Issue 10–35 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
  • Two worlds . 1863
  • Collected stories from German and German-American popular life . Th. Knaur Verlag Leipzig, around 1900
  • The legacy of the Pedlar (popular books)

literature

  • Franz Brümmer :  Ruppius, Otto . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 29, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1889, p. 715 f.
  • Theodor Graewert: Otto Ruppius and the American novel in the 19th century . Beck, Eisfeld 1935 (also dissertation, University of Jena)
  • Christoph Hering: Otto Ruppius, the America driver, refugee, exile writer, returnees . In: Sigrid Bauschinger u. a .: America in German literature . Reclam, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-15-010253-7
  • Undine Janeck: Between the Gazebo and Karl May. German reception of America in the years 1871–1913 . Shaker Verlag , Aachen 2003, ISBN 3-8322-1494-1 (plus dissertation, University of Marburg)

Web links

Wikisource: Otto Ruppius  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Goethe and Schiller Archive, Person File GSA 134 / 68.3
  2. ↑ According to statements by Otto Girndt, it was arson.
personal data
SURNAME Ruppius, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1819
PLACE OF BIRTH Glauchau
DATE OF DEATH June 25, 1864
Place of death Berlin