Peter Philipp Wolf

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Peter Philipp Wolf (born January 28, 1761 in Pfaffenhofen ; died August 9, 1808 in Bogenhausen ) was a German historian , journalist , publisher, and educator.

Life

Wolf was the son of a master locksmith and graduated from the electoral high school in Munich (today Wilhelmsgymnasium Munich ) in 1779 . He was supposed to be trained as a clergyman, but fled the alumni of the Weihenstephan Monastery and instead did an apprenticeship as a bookseller in Munich. Disputes with the teacher ended with the fact that he was imprisoned in Munich city prison for a year because of a diatribe. In 1784 he published the novels Lilienberg and Salvator as well as the stories about the consolation of unhappy people , dedicated to the secret archivist and court councilor Karl von Eckartshausen , who was known to the Bavarian police as the Illuminat . It is not certain whether Wolf himself was a member of the Illuminati.

Wolf continued his training in Zurich in 1785 with Hans Heinrich Füssli in the Orell, Füssli & Co publishing house and learned French, English and Italian. He became the sole editor for the Zürcher Zeitung, which appears twice a week . On February 15, 1792, he married Elisabeth Sytz in Ehrendingen , and their children included the writer Barbara Sendtner and the painter Louise Wolf .

In the Zurich city library there was a large collection of documents and writings on the Jesuits , which Wolf now began to process as an unskilled historian and which he published in 4 volumes as the History of the Jesuits between 1789 and 1792. Between 1793 and 1802 he wrote the seven-volume history of the Roman Catholic Church under Pope Pius VI . In 1795 he moved to the German book trade center in Leipzig , where he founded a publishing house with financial support from the Swiss enlightenment expert Paul Usteri . The historian Michael Huber wrote in the journal Klio , which he edited , and his son Ludwig Huber informed the German reading public about the progress of the revolution in the articles on the French Revolution, also published by Wolf . In 1803 Wolf returned to Munich and worked for the regent Elector Max Joseph on a story of Elector Maximilian I of Bavaria , the third and fourth volumes of which he did not have time to complete. In between he wrote a history, statistics and topography of Tyrol , since the County of Tyrol had become Bavarian through the Peace of Pressburg and literature about profits was now needed in the Bavarian government.

In 1807 Wolf acquired the printing company and the license to publish the Münchner Zeitung , which remained in family ownership after his death. After bureaucratic obstacles, Wolf did not get a permanent position at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences until January 1808. Wolf became mentally ill, probably through overwork, and was admitted to an institution on August 6, 1808 . He committed on August 9 in the Isar suicide .

Fonts (selection)

  • Proposal for a reformation of the Catholic Church . Leipzig: Gessner, Usteri & Wolf, 1800
  • Magister Skriblerus: a funny novel . Leipzig: Wolf, 1803 (microfiche edition: Munich: Saur 1994)
  • History of the Jesuits. General history of the Jesuits from the origins of their order to the present day . Breslau: Pötsch, 1937 [The 2nd edition, published in 1803. Original work was used.]
  • History of Maximilian I and his time: pragmatically edited from the main sources; First volume: With Maximilian's portraits . 1807 (Ed. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Breyer )
  • Brief history, statistics and topography of Tyrol . Munich: Lindauer, 1807
  • About the probability of the existence of Popess Joan . 1809 (microfiche edition: Munich: Saur 1994)

literature

  • Sigmund Ritter von Riezler :  Wolf, Peter Philipp . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 43, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1898, pp. 781-785.
  • Mark Lehmstedt : About the share of the Leipzig book trade in the literary exchange between France and Germany: the example of the Peter Philipp Wolfschen bookstore in Leipzig (1795 - 1803) . In: Culture transfer in the epochal change France - Germany 1770 to 1815 . Leipzig, 1997.
  • Urs Hafner: Angry young men. How the first NZZ editors made a good newspaper under adverse circumstances , in: NZZ , July 18, 2015, p. 25.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Max Leitschuh: The matriculations of the upper classes of the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich , 4 vol., Munich 1970–1976; Vol. 3, p. 163.
personal data
SURNAME Wolf, Peter Philipp
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian, journalist, publisher and educator
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1761
PLACE OF BIRTH Pfaffenhofen
DATE OF DEATH August 9, 1808
Place of death Bogenhausen