Sesenheim songs

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The Sesenheimer Lieder are a collection of poems, some of which were written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe while he was visiting the house of Pastor Brion in Strasbourg and in the Alsatian Sessenheim in 1770/71 . Some of them were supplemented around and after 1772 by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz in imitative enthusiasm.

Origin and literary classification

Sessenheim in Alsace

Together with the term folk song , which goes back to Johann Gottfried Herder , one can refer to the popular art song , which was often inspired by the former. Goethe met Herder during his time in Strasbourg from April 1770 to August 1771 and was inspired by Herder for the folk song (see also folk ballad ). During this time, from October 1770, Goethe came several times to Sessenheim in Lower Alsace, about 40 km northeast of Strasbourg. There he met one of his great childhood loved ones , the pastor's daughter Friederike Brion , who was then 18 years old (he was 21). Goethe dedicated several poems to her or these were inspired by that love affair. Some of them come from letters to Friederike, and practically all of the texts are available in different versions that Goethe later revised several times. They are a prominent testimony to the literary epoch of Sturm und Drang and their style is partly based on the folk song.

Goethe's main part in the "Sesenheimer Lieder"

Goethe himself included the following three poems in his “Writings” and editions of works: [Title] “With a painted volume” ([beginning] “Small flowers, small leaves ...”), “ Welcome and farewell ” (“It struck my heart ... ")," Mailied "(" How wonderfully nature shines for me ... "). The " Heidenröslein " ("saw a boy stand a rose ...") was also created during this time (and its content is fatally reminiscent of Goethe's relationship with Friederike). This famous poem with the melody by Franz Schubert became one of the most famous German art songs.

Goethe and Friederike Brion

The documents about Goethe's love for Friederike and his poems from this time are sparse. Goethe broke off the connection in 1771 when he suddenly returned to Frankfurt; perhaps he dealt with his own problems partly in the Gretchen material of “Faust” and in other works. Most of the allegedly thirty letters that Goethe wrote to Friederike were later burned by Friederike's sister Sophie. Goethe himself is only vague. In his autobiographical work “ From my life. Poetry and Truth ”, he describes the time with Friederike in the tenth and eleventh books of the third part, and then it says there (3rd part, 11th book) that he“ suddenly felt like writing ”. “For Friederike I put some songs under well-known melodies. You would have given a nice ribbon; few of them are left, you will easily find them out of my rest. ”And:“ Painted ribbons were only then fashionable; I immediately painted a few pieces for her and sent them ahead with a little poem ... ”For example, the outstanding Goethe expert Erich Schmidt (1853–1913) concluded from this in his edition of Goethe's works on the three above-mentioned poems. Was that really all?

Lenz

The uncertain evidence gave rise to speculation early on, which was also fueled by the almost tragically interwoven fate of the poet Lenz. Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz , born in Livonia in 1751 (and died in Moscow in 1792), accompanied aristocrats on a journey and met Goethe in Strasbourg in 1771. In his admiration for the hardly older poet, he fell in love in the summer of 1772 (one year after Goethe's departure) in Friederike in Sessenheim (but was turned away). He also followed Goethe to Weimar, where he was finally turned away and returned to the Rhine. In 1779 the first signs of mental disorder began to show and he returned to Livonia. After many journeys he died “in the greatest misery” in Moscow, while in Strasbourg around 1775 he was celebrated as a brilliant poet (including for the drama “ Der Hofmeister ” in 1774; edited by Bert Brecht, 1950).

Lenz or Goethe? Goethe and Lenz

Lenz's poems from the time in Sessenheim are definitely "Where are you now, my unforgettable girl ...", June 1772 ("Kruse transcript" [see below] No. 3), in which Lenz clearly refers to Friederike relates. The same goes for “Are you gone? from what golden dreams ... ", also June 1772 (Kruse copy no. 4), probably also for" girlfriend from the cloud "(" Where, you Reuter mean you go? ... "), between 1772 and 1775 (not with Kruse). There remain other poems like "Awake Friedericke, drive away the night ..." (Kruse copy No. 1; here perhaps some verses are from Goethe, some from Lenz), "Now the angel feels what I feel ..." ( Kruse copy no. 2; “from Friederiken's estate”, printed in 1838 in the “Deutsches Musenalmanach”; attributed to Goethe) and “Balde see Rickchen again ...” (Kruse copy no. 8; attributed to Goethe).

The so-called "Sesenheimer songbook"

Lenz also became an admirer of Goethe's married sister Cornelia Schlosser in Emmendingen near Freiburg (about whom he also wrote). He returned to Sessenheim several times and looked for Goethe's manuscripts; what he did not find, he added and “completed”. Lenz is thus the enthusiastic creator of other Sesenheim songs, which he expanded in the style of Goethe's texts to such an extent that all eleven poems were then incorrectly attributed to Goethe. - Lenz died in 1792, Friederike in 1813, Goethe in 1832. In 1841 Freimund Pfeiffer published “Goethe's Friederike” with the alleged “Sesenheimer songbook” as an appendix. However, it is unfair to Lenz and in the spirit of its time to simply speak of a “forgery”; In 1871 J. Leyser called it a “clever mystification”.

Just one year after Pfeiffer, the correction by the Strasbourg writer August Stöber appeared in 1842 . As early as 1835 the young student Heinrich Kruse (under the guidance of the classical philologist August Ferdinand Naeke , 1788–1838) tried to unveil the secret with an almost criminalistic instinct. This remained controversial in German studies.

Lenz and Goethe's "Folksongs from Alsace"

The share of Lenz and Goethe in the Sesenheimer Lieder has been judged differently over time; there will hardly be any final clarification. As a rule, you stick to the ones that Goethe later included in his work editions and "leave" others to Lenz. There are no reliable criteria for a distinction, but some are definitely verifiable for Lenz (see above). In the older literature (and in modern reprints of it) appears on the basis of the above-mentioned "discovery" of the young student Kruse, who allegedly had a handwritten collection from Friederike shown and copied it (that could have been a poetry album by Friederike with self-copied Poems by Goethe from his letters and by Lenz), the "Kruse transcript". There are eight texts by Goethe opposite two Lenz poems; a certain uncertainty remains.

As a parallel to the fundamental doubt about the “facts”, one can refer to Goethe's so-called “folk songs from Alsace”, which the latter allegedly “collected” in Alsace in 1770 and 1771 and, as he himself states, the songs “by the oldest mother genes “Sang. This small Goethe collection of eleven (or 9 with “encore”) folk ballads (first published by Louis Pinck, 1932 and 1935) exists in two different Goethe manuscripts (a third, lost, must have been owned by Goethe's sister Cornelia Schlosser) . There are even melodies for some texts, and there are actually some early examples of those folk ballads, but it is very likely that Goethe copied a handwritten book of songs, as was often the case with singers. And at one point he noted a variant from the current song. So he actually heard at least some of these songs being sung, but there is no question of a “collection of folk songs from Alsace”, as he himself claims (and as Herder suggested perhaps in the modern sense).

Goethe obviously loved the “mystification” of his work history. Another instructive example is the early history of Goethe's “Heidenröslein” mentioned above. The text first appeared anonymously in 1773 in: JG Herder, "Von deutscher Art und Kunst" (correspondence about Ossian) and, also anonymously, in Herder: "Volkslieder", Volume 2, 1779 ("Fabelliedchen", "aus dem Gedächtnis") . In Herder's "Correspondence about Ossian" the text is called a "childlike ritornello" [repeated refrain words], in Goethe's works in 1789: "A boy saw a rose, rose on the heath ..." after Goethe's "sending". Here, the mystification of a “folk song” is used, as loved by the romantics (the “ Des Knaben Wunderhorn ” collection, 1806–1808, is full of it).

It seems almost typical that we don't have an authentic picture of Friederike either, although the widespread one fits Goethe's description well. Her tombstone in Meißenheim in Baden with another, youthful portrait was not rebuilt until 1866.

Further texts in the so-called "Sesenheimer songbook"

Fr. Pfeiffer's 1841 publication on Goethe's Friederike was apparently so successful, among other things, because the “Sesenheimer Liederbuch” cited in the appendix made a dream come true, which Goethe himself had promoted through his mystification of the sources, which Lenz had through his Zu - and vigorously nourished new poems and which the student Kruse's "find" seemed to fully confirm. Other song texts got into Pfeiffer's book, adding to the confusion. Pfeiffer quotes the retouching of a folk ballad with the beginning of the text "A beautiful boy advertises there over the wide lake ..." Achim von Arnim continued to write this text himself after an older song and in Des Knaben Wunderhorn Volume 1 (1806), p. 236, released. With sources dating back to the 15th century, the text belongs to the song type There were two royal children . Until 1895, scholarly editions of this song refer to Goethe's “Sesenheimer Liederbuch”.

The same reservation applies to “Ask all acquaintances, ask all relatives ...”, that is “in praise of German loyalty”, as it was first published in 1818 and distributed anonymously in Berliner Liedflugschriften around 1820/1830. A text that Pfeiffer also took up, “Hand in Hand! and lip on lip! Dear girl, stay true ... “, is actually by Goethe, but again has nothing to do with Sessenheim. More fatal is Pfeiffer's “forgery” for the famous song “O Strasbourg, o Strasbourg, you beautiful city, buried therein is such a manly soldier ...”, which has been documented since the beginning of the 19th century, but in various, older scientific editions and in popular books of utility songs (for example in the song book Der Zupfgeigenhansl , edition 1919, p. 166 f.) with the source reference “before 1771”, which is what this “Sesenheimer song book” is supposed to mean. Pfeiffer also quotes a widespread quatrain, "I come from the forest, where it's pitch dark ...", which was wrongly ascribed to Goethe, is actually documented from 1824 (and possibly goes back to the time around 1800 with similar variants), but to in any case not from Goethe.

Literature (selection)

  • Gero von Wilpert : Goethe-Lexikon (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 407). Kröner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-520-40701-9 .
  • The young Goethe in his time . Complete works, letters, diaries and writings up to 1775, 2 volumes and CD-ROM, editors: Karl Eibl, Fotis Jannidis and Marianne Willems, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 1998 (Volume 2, p. 583 f. Article “Brion “), ISBN 3-458-33800-4
  • JMR Lenz, works . Facsimiles of the first editions of the texts he published independently during his lifetime. Editor: Christoph Weiß, 12 volumes, Röhrig Verlag, St. Ingbert 2001, ISBN 3-86110-071-1
  • Otto Holzapfel : Liedverzeichnis , Volume 1–2, Olms, Hildesheim 2006 (entry in the song files for the mentioned songs "Kleine Blumen, kleine Blätter ..." and "Sah ein Knab ein Röslein ..." by Goethe, which have become popular “art songs in the vernacular”); in the lexicon files entry for the “Sesenheimer Liederbuch” with references and further information; ISBN 3-487-13100-5 ; see. Otto Holzapfel: List of songs: The older German-language popular song tradition . Online version since January 2018 on the homepage of the Folk Music Archive of the District of Upper Bavaria (in PDF format; further updates planned), see lexicon file “Sesenheimer Liederbuch”.

Theo Stemmler: Goethe and Friederike. Inselbücherei, No. 1471 Frankfurt / M. 2019

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ comparisons Herder collection folk songs , 1778/1779, in the second edition in 1807 voice of the peoples of songs called
  2. ↑ today's French spelling; In the Wikipedia article under “Individual evidence”, the sensitive presentation by Klaus Günzel: “Girl that feels like me”, Die Zeit 14/2002
  3. ^ At A. Bielschowsky, 1880, digitally under "Literature about Friederike Brion " one can read, among other letters and references on the subject, two letters from Goethe from October 1770 to Friederike in which he addresses her as "Dear new friend".
  4. ↑ Compare to Georg Büchner's novella "Lenz" ( Lenz (Büchner) , 1836)
  5. ↑ Freimund Pfeiffer: Goethe's Friederike . Engelmann, Leipzig 1841
  6. ↑ August Stöber: The poet Lenz and Friedericke von Sesenheim: from letters and simultaneous sources together with poems and other things by Lenz and Goethe . Schweighauser, Basel 1842
  7. ^ August Ferdinand Naeke: Pilgrimage to Sesenheim . Duncker and Humblot, Berlin 1840 (published posthumously by the chronicler Karl August Varnhagen von Ense , who anonymously wrote Goethe in the testimonies of those who lived with him in 1823 ). Newly published by Klaus H. Fischer: Pilgrimage to Sessenheim: the first research into the love idyll of Goethe and Friederike . Fischer, Schutterwald / Baden 2008, ISBN 978-3-928640-79-4
  8. ^ Theodor Maurer: The Sesenheimer songs: a critical study . Heitz, Strasbourg 1907 (Contributions to the geography and folklore of Alsace-Lorraine, Volume 7, Issue 32)
  9. ↑ "[...] comprehensive copy by H. Kruse, who made this in 1835 from a manuscript from F. Brion's estate, which has now been lost" Sturm und Drang. Seals and theoretical texts , Volume 2, Winkler Verlag, Munich undated / Book Club Ex Libris Zurich undated, p. 1809
  10. ^ Louis Pinck : Folksongs collected by Goethe in Alsace with melodies and variants from Lorraine . Metz 1932 / “Volksausgabe” Saarbrücker Druckerei, Saarbrücken 1935. The second “Weimar Manuscript” of these folk ballads from Goethe's transcripts was published by Hermann Strobach in 1982. Incidentally, Pinck refers to Goethe's remark that he left Friederike “some songs with well-known melodies” and left them to this collection, not to the Sesenheim songs. Pinck's work is adorned with a woodcut by the Lorraine artist Henri Bacher (1890–1934), which empathetically shows Goethe and Friederike and, despite the (today's) silhouette of the Protestant church in Sessenheim with the onion dome, is of course fictitious.
  11. ↑ For this text (and the following lyrics in this section) see also O. Holzapfel: Liedverzeichnis , 2006 [see: Literature (selection)], with further information.