Solomon Michaelis

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Solomon Heinrich Karl August Michaelis (born May 13, 1769 in Hameln , † June 8, 1844 in Tübingen ) was a German court master, court bookseller, Romanist and early Germanist.

Life

Title page of the first edition of Schiller's Muses-Almanach published by Michaelis in Neustrelitz

Michaelis came from a Jewish family in Hameln and grew up as an orphan with relatives from the age of four. He studied with the private scholars Johann Jacob Engel in Berlin and Christian Garve in Breslau the fine sciences as well as natural sciences .

He then got his first job as court master in Neustrelitz and accompanied Prince Georg on trips to the grandparents' court of Hessen-Darmstadt . Encouraged and financially supported by Duke Karl zu Mecklenburg-Strelitz and especially by Princess Friederike von Mecklenburg-Strelitz , he became a court book dealer there in 1795 and thus gained access to the leading representatives of Weimar Classics . From 1796 he published the first volume of Friedrich Schiller's Musenalmanac . There were many rumors about the reasons for the cessation of his activity in Neustrelitz in 1798, according to the files of the main archive there, after he had enjoyed the favor of the ducal house against the advice of the privy council president Otto Ulrich von Dewitz , due to fraudulent bankruptcy sentenced to a shorter prison term and expelled from the country after serving.

In any case, Michaelis was in France from 1799 to 1807 and perfected his knowledge of French language and literature in Paris as an employee of the magazine Décade philosophique , which later assumed the title Revue and was merged with the Mercure de France in 1807 . In 1805 he was arrested in France and was held in the citadel of Bitsch in Lorraine until his successful escape in 1807 .

At his request from 1807, he became a lecturer in French at the University of Heidelberg the following year without a formal habilitation in 1808 . The skills required for this had been confirmed to him by Johann Heinrich Voss . He also did his doctorate in Heidelberg from Heidelberg. phil. at the University of Jena with Heinrich Karl Eichstädt ; In Jena, at Michaeli's request, the submission of a dissertation was waived. In Heidelberg, probably because of his good relations with the Württemberg State Minister Ulrich Lebrecht von Mandelsloh , he was offered an appointment at the University of Tübingen for French and French literature in 1810 , which he accepted. With the Organic Law of the Kingdom of Württemberg of September 27, 1811, a first chair for the German language was created at the University of Tübingen and transferred to Michaelis. The appointment is said to go back to his sponsor, the curator of the University of Karl August von Wangenheim . Michaelis gave up his chair in Tübingen in 1817, which remained vacant for 13 years until Ludwig Uhland was appointed as his successor. Michaelis took over the editing of the Württemberg State and Government Gazette in Stuttgart from 1817 to 1824 and then withdrew from the public. A renewed appointment as a teacher for French was brought up for discussion at the university by the Württemberg government under the privy council president Hans Otto von der Lühe , but was deliberately ignored by the university's senate .

Adolph Michaelis (1797–1863) from Hameln, who was also appointed to a chair at the University of Tübingen under his friend and sponsor von Wangenheim with his protection as a legal scholar, was his nephew and wrote the benevolent necrology for him . Both of them, each in his own way, paved the way for Jewish assimilation in the German scientific community.

Fonts

  • The rules for the French Participes, along with a collection of phrases taken from the best French works and accompanied by notes: An appendix to all previously published French language teachings , Schwan and Götz, Mannheim and Heidelberg 1809

literature

  • Ursula Burkhardt: German Studies in Southwest Germany: The History of a Science of the 19th Century at the Universities of Tübingen, Heidelberg and Freiburg , Franz Steiner Verlag, 1976, p. 9/10
  • Max Miller : Salomo Michaelis, colleague and friend of the Frrn. v. Wangenheim in: Journal for Württemberg State History 3, 1939, pp. 158–211. (Critical note: Contains facts from the south-west German archives, presented and commented on in the anti-Semitic diction of the National Socialist era of the publication; Hans Witte's 1923 work on the holdings of the Neustrelitz main archive was obviously not available to him.)
  • Hans Witte : Also a Schiller publisher, court bookseller Salomon Michaelis in Neustrelitz and his courtly relations, according to papers from the Neustrelitz main archive in: Year Books of the Association for Mecklenburg History and Archeology, Vol. 87 (1923), pp. 1–26 ( digitized version )
  • Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania. The dictionary of persons . Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-3-356-01301-6 , p. 6623 .
  • Hans-Joachim Lang : Solomon and Adolph Michaelis: the baptismal certificate as an entrance ticket for a university career. In: Tubingensia , Ostfildern, 2008, pp. [445>] - 458
  • Bernhard Gelderblom : The Jews of Hameln: from their beginnings in the 13th century to their extermination by the Nazi regime, Mitzkat, Holzminden 2011 ISBN 978-3-940751-39-3 pp. 55–57 ( Der Verleger, Hochschullehrer, political writer and convert Solomon Heinrich Michaelis )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1935 taken up in the main state archive in Schwerin .
  2. ↑ Grete Grewolls, p. 6624
  3. ↑ Burkhardt (1976), p. 9
  4. ↑ Georg May : Professorships to be filled with Catholics at the University of Tübingen from 1817 to 1945 , John Benjamin Publishing, 1975, p. 160 ( digitized version )
  5. ↑ Georg May: Professorships to be filled with Catholics at the University of Tübingen from 1817 to 1945 , John Benjamin Publishing, 1975, p. 160, footnote 13 with reference to Max Miller: Salomo Michaelis, colleague and friend of the Frhrn. v. Wangenheim (1939), p. 194
personal data
SURNAME Michaelis, Solomon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Michaelis, Solomon Heinrich Karl August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German court master, court bookseller, Romanist and formerly Germanist
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1769
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamelin
DATE OF DEATH June 8, 1844
Place of death Tübingen