Paul de Kock
Charles Paul de Kock (born May 21, 1793 in Passy , now Paris , † August 27, 1871 in Romainville , now Les Lilas , Seine-Saint-Denis ) was a French novelist and playwright.
Life
Charles Paul de Kock was the son of the Dutch banker Johannes Conradus de Kock and his wife Anne-Marie Perret, a citizen from Basel. During the reign of terror of the French Revolution , his father, who had entered the army of General Charles-François Dumouriez in 1793 to serve the freedom of his old Dutch homeland, was guillotined on March 24, 1794 and the family's property was confiscated. The widow married a "Monsieur Gaigneau, [...] office manager at the tax office in Paris" around 1800 because of economic hardship. Gaigneau was addicted to games and cared little about his stepson, who was tutored by a tutor. The young Paul de Kock developed an extraordinary hunger for reading, read classical works, but above all novels with great passion. “He was particularly drawn to the Pigault-Lebrun novels , which probably prompted him to write his first novel of his own, which he wrote when he was seventeen.” Before Paul de Kock embarked on literary paths himself, however, he did at his mother's request an apprenticeship in a bank and worked from 1808 to 1813 in a Parisian bank.
His first literary attempts also come from this time. For his first work, the novel "L'enfant de ma femme", he was initially unable to win a publisher. He had it printed in 1813 at his own expense. However, the book found neither buyers nor readers. After this failure, Paul de Kock tried his luck as a stage poet and wrote melodramas that had resounding success on the Parisian stages. Now Parisian publishers were also very interested in his novels and stories, which eclipsed the success of his stage works. With his piquant, often somewhat frivolous depictions of the customs and ailments of Parisian society, Paul de Kock became the darling of the French and, in the decades to come, of the European lending library public.
Paul de Kock was one of the highest paid authors in France and made a fortune with his works. In 1832 he bought a country house and a large garden in the Bois de Romainville , where he held large celebrations in the summer for his numerous friends and admirers. He also organized private theater performances outdoors. However, he kept his rather modest city apartment on Boulevard Saint-Martin in Paris. In 1827 he married and started a family; of his children only two survived. His son Henri (born April 25, 1821, died 1892) also became a writer; his daughter Caroline, who remained unmarried, took care of the father's household, as he had lost his wife in 1842. Paul de Kock worked incessantly, most recently on his memoirs, which however remained unfinished. In the summer of 1870, apparently at the outbreak of the Franco-German War , he stopped his literary work. He spent the last year of his life inactive in Paris. His large estate in Romainville was looted and devastated during the war and uprising of the Paris Commune . He did not live to see the restoration of the house.
His son Henry de Kock was best known for numerous novels and plays. He is also the author of the Souvenirs et notes intimes de Napoléon III à Wilhelmshoehe (1871).
The Dutch general and politician Hendrik Merkus de Kock (1779-1845) was a half-brother of Paul de Kock.
reception
The complete edition of his works (Paris. 1844–45) comprises 56 volumes; his novels, some of which he made into vaudevilles , were almost without exception also translated into German.
Works (selection)
- L'enfant de ma femme (1812)
- Georgette ou la nièce du Tabellion (1821)
- Gustave, le mauvais sujet (1821)
- André, le Savoyard (1826)
- La laitière de Montfermeil (1827)
- Le barbier de Paris (1827)
- La femme, le mari et l'amant (1829)
- Le cocu (1831)
- La pucelle de Belleville (1834)
- Un tourlourou (1837)
- La maison blanche (1840)
- Sans-cravate ou les commissionnaires (1844) (2 vol.)
- La bouquetière du château d'eau (1855)
- La fille aux trois jupons (1867)
- Madame Tapin (1868)
German-language editions
- Wife, husband and lover . Breslau 1837, online vol. 1
- Gustav or his brother Liederlich . Translator: Heinrich Elsner . Leipzig 1837, online
- Neither: never! still: always! is love's watchword. Translator: Heinrich Elsner. Leipzig 1837, online
- This gentleman. Translation: St. Friedrich. Leipzig 1843, online vol. 1 , online vol. 2
- Carotene. Novel. Translator: August Schrader . Leipzig 1846, online
- The Burgundian Postillon. Humorous novel. Translator: August Schrader. Leipzig 1847, online
- Ambroisine, the beautiful bath lady, or Paris in the good old days. Translator: Ludwig Fort. Leipzig 1854, online
- An emancipated. Translation: St. Friedrich. Leipzig 1850, online
- The flower girl of Paris. Translation: GFW Rödiger. Vienna 1855, online
- Frau von Monflanquin, or as the deed, so the reward. Translator: Ludwig Fort. Leipzig 1856, online
- The children of the boulevard. Novel. Translation: A. Kretzschmar. Leipzig 1864, online
- Cartouche's grandson. Continuation of ›The Children of the Boulevard‹. Translation: A. Kretzschmar. Leipzig 1864, online vol. 1
- Women, wine and play! Novel. Translator: Max Stein. Leipzig 1864, online
- Currants. Humorous novel. Vienna 1865, online
- Small brooks - big rivers. Humorous novel. Leipzig 1867, online
- A curious house. Novel. Leipzig 1868, online
- Missed existences (Madame Tapin). Novel. Translator: August Kretzschmar . Leipzig 1868, online
literature
- Friedrich Beyer: The novelist Charles Paul de Kock and his world . University of Cologne, 1928 (dissertation)
- Heinrich Elsner: Paul de Kock . Stuttgart: Rieger 1857
- Julien Lemer: Paul de Kock . Paris: Duriot, 1874
- Gertraut Malik: The cultural-historical and social-historical background in the novel by Paul de Kock . University of Prague, 1941 (dissertation)
- Lectures de Paul de Kock. Sous la direction de Florence Fix et Marie-Ange Voisin-Fougère. Dijon: Éditions universitaires de Dijon, 2011.
Web links
- Literature by and about Paul de Kock in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Paul de Kock in the German Digital Library
- German-language online editions of some of Paul de Kock's works in the Gutenberg-DE project
Individual evidence
- ^ Friedrich Beyer: The novelist Charles Paul de Kock and his world . Cologne, 1928, p. 6.
- ^ Friedrich Beyer: The novelist Charles Paul de Kock and his world . Cologne, 1928, p. 9.
- ↑ Johann Nestroy edited the work under the title Glück, Abuse und Returns
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kock, Paul de |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Kock, Charles-Paul de; Kock, Charles Paul de |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 21, 1793 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Passy (Paris) |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 27, 1871 |
| Place of death | Romainville |