Veit Warbeck

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Final note of the Gotha manuscript, which is considered to be the autograph of Veit Warbeck

Veit Warbeck (* around 1490 in Schwäbisch Gmünd ; † June 4, 1534 in Torgau ) was the translator of the French novel The beautiful Magelone .

family

Veit Warbeck was the son of Gmünder scythe dealer Thomas Warbeck († 1524) from a rich Nördlingen family. The grandfather Thomas Warbeck d. Ä. († 1500) was a landlord in Nördlingen. The father, married to Anna, the daughter of Gmünder councilor Ulrich Hack, was six times mayor of the imperial city from 1506 to 1517 and in the second decade of the 16th century also Federal Councilor of the Swabian Federation . The intensive economic contacts of the Gmünder scythe dealers in France explain Veit Warbeck's good French language skills and his studies in Paris.

Veit Warbeck married the Torgau councilor's daughter Barbara Wager, widowed Waldner, in 1527. The marriage resulted in two sons, Emanuel and Ernst, and a daughter Anna, who married Paul Luther , the reformer's son , in 1553 .

Life

In 1506 Veit Warbeck began studying at Paris University . As a licentiate and master's degree , he moved to Wittenberg to study law in 1514 , where he became a student of Luther and formed a close friendship with the humanist Georg Spalatin , who had worked as a prince educator , secretary and librarian at the Electoral Saxon court since 1508 . From the years 1517 to 1526, 90 letters written in Latin in the humanist style have come down to us from Spalatin to Warbeck. Another correspondence partner of Warbeck was Philipp Melanchthon . Warbeck's stepdaughter Katharina Waldner was supposed to marry the son Philip the Reformer in 1550.

At the court of Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, who soon entrusted Warbeck with secretary services because of his knowledge of the French language, humanistic and Reformation currents, education and politics intersected. In 1519 Warbeck was ordained a priest in order to be able to take a canon beneficiary at the St. Georg monastery in Altenburg . The elector took the canon with him on his travels and left him with important diplomatic negotiations. Warbeck was present at Luther's disputation with Johannes Eck in 1519 as well as at the Worms Reichstag in 1521. He was a man of the court, without being constantly present at the court or being paid by him.

Prince Johann Friedrich , the nephew of the elector, was probably taught in French by Warbeck. He dedicated his translation of the Magelon novel (1527) to the prince. In the same year Warbeck, who had long since broken away from the old faith, married Barbara Wager (despite ordination). From 1524, Spalatin and Warbeck tried to reform the Torgauer Georgsstift. When his former pupil became elector in 1532, he appointed Warbeck to the Electoral Saxon Council and Vice Chancellor in Torgau. But just two years later Warbeck died there.

plant

Title page of Die schön Magelona , Augsburg 1535

On November 5, 1527, Warbeck dedicated his translation of the French Ystoire du vaillant chevalier Pierre filz du conte de provence et de la belle Maguelonne to Prince Johann Friedrich, who had celebrated his wedding to Sibylle von Jülich-Kleve-Berg in Torgau that summer . The dedication copy has been preserved (Gotha Research Library, Cod. Chart. B 437) and was published in 1894 by Johannes Bolte . The template, which has been translated from Provençal into French, is in the Coburg State Library (Ms 4). Warbeck adhered closely to the template, but erased Catholic features. His work is considered a rare example of “courtly” prose. It is characterized "by astonishing lightness and clarity" (Roloff, epilogue to his edition, p. 91). Joseph Görres had already expressed himself similarly in his work Die Teutschen Volksbücher (1807): “Everything is told with agility and a light, cheerful spirit” (quoted ibid., P. 86).

The translation was posthumously printed by Warbeck's friend Spalatin in 1535 and was published by Steiner in Augsburg under the title: The beautiful Magelona. An almost funny vn (d) brief history, of the beautiful Magelona, ​​one of Künig's daughter of Neaples, of a knight, called Peter with the silver keys, one of the counts but also of Prouincia, by Magister Veiten Warbeck, In addition to French speaking, interpreted into the Teütsche (n), with a letter from Georgii Spalatini (VD 16 H 3867). The beautiful Magelone was a very successful folk book . Steiner alone printed eight editions up to 1545.

The most famous is the arrangement by Ludwig Tieck (1797). Johannes Brahms set 15 romances from it to music . For more information on the fabric tradition, see in the article The beautiful Magelon .

literature

  • Johannes Bolte :  Warbeck, Veit . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 41, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, p. 165 f.
  • Klaus Graf : Veit Warbeck, the translator of the “Beautiful Magelons” and his family . In: Einhorn-Jahrbuch Schwäbisch Gmünd 1986, pp. 139–150 ( uni-freiburg.de )
  • Martin Mostert: Veit Warbeck and the brief history of the beautiful Magelone : catalog for the exhibition. Municipal Museum, Schwäbisch Gmünd 1985
  • Bartscherer, Agnes: (Veit von Warbeck) Georg Spalatinus helper with Frederick the Wise. To the home country. Supplement to the Torgauer Zeitung. Born in 1925 No. 7.
  • Hans-Hugo Steinhoff : Magelone . In: Encyclopedia of Fairy Tales , Vol. 8, 1996, Col. 1414-1418
  • Walther Killy : Literature Lexicon: Authors and works in the German language . (15 volumes) Bertelsmann-Lexikon-Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich 1988–1991 (CD-ROM, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-932544-13-7 )
  • Ilona Hubay : The manuscripts of the Coburg State Library . Coburger Landesstiftung, Coburg 1962, pp. 19-20. Digital full text at bvbm1.bib-bvb.de
  • Hans-Joachim Böttcher : "Warbeck, Veit", in: Important historical personalities of the Düben Heath, AMF - No. 237, 2012, p. 105.

Web links

Wikisource: Veit Warbeck  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Warbeck, Veit
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Translator of the novel The beautiful Magelone
DATE OF BIRTH around 1490
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwäbisch Gmünd
DATE OF DEATH June 4, 1534
Place of death Torgau