Wilhelm Friedrich von Meyern

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Wilhelm Friedrich von Meyern

Wilhelm Friedrich von Meyern (born as Wilhelm Friedrich Meyer on January 26, 1759 in Frauental near Creglingen ; died on May 13, 1829 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German writer, Austrian military and diplomat.

Life

His parents were the customs officer Christoph Andreas Meyer and Friederika Regina, née Herbst, daughter of a chamber councilor and custodian in Cadolzburg, Franconia . Up to the age of twelve he received private lessons from the pastor and naturalist Johann Friedrich Esper in Uttenreuth near Erlangen , which he later remembered kindly. Around 1780 he was a student of law at the University of Altdorf near Nuremberg . In 1783 he joined the Austrian army as a volunteer, from which he took his leave in 1786 as a sergeant. What he did in the following years, when he was in Vienna and Prague , and how he found his livelihood remains unclear. From 1787 to 1790 he appeared as a member of a Prague Masonic Lodge . At the beginning of the 1790s he probably undertook a trip to England and Scotland, which is reflected in his novel The ruins at the mountain lake (1795) , which was supposedly translated from English . 1796/1797 Meyern had with Wenzel Graf couple and Hugo Franz Altgraf zu Salm-Reifferscheidt Freikorps against the troops of Napoleon set up and adhere to the fighting in northern Italy involved.

In 1802/1803 he accompanied two noble young gentlemen on their grand tour , which brought him to Greece, Asia Minor and Italy. After one of the two died on the trip, it was canceled and Meyern stayed in Sicily for a while. The colonization project he was pursuing there did not materialize. In 1809 Meyern returned to Austria, where he worked out a plan for a Landwehr, i.e. a general people's army , which was not implemented. After all, he rejoined the Austrian army with the rank of captain and took part in the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 on the staff of Field Marshal Prince Schwarzenberg . In 1815, on behalf of Austria, he organized the return of the art treasures stolen by Napoleon from Paris to Italy. He then became a member of the Austrian embassy at the Spanish court under Count Kaunitz and stayed in Madrid for a few years . In the 1820s he was a member of the Austrian legation to the Federal Assembly in Frankfurt am Main .

plant

As a writer, Meyern already dealt with political issues from the perspective of the Enlightenment in his first novel, Abdul Erzerum's new Persian letters , published anonymously in 1787 . The authorship of Meyern was initially unclear, but is now considered certain, the letter novel, however, remained without any noteworthy echo.

This is different with his main work, the utopian, in a fantastic past - according to the subtitle it is a translation from the " Sams-kritt " - based novel Dya-Na-Sore, or Die Wanderer , which appeared in 1787 in three volumes. A version expanded to 5 volumes and adapted to Meyern's changed position was published in 1800 as the third edition.

The "wanderers" named in the subtitle are the four sons of the priest Athor who are sent out into the world, namely Tibar, Dya, the hero of the title, Altai and finally and in contrast to the three first heroic sons, the rather soft Hamor. On their hike they encounter natural obstacles of various kinds, it goes through cave paths and over mountain passes, on the way you meet strange hermits who give mysterious instructions to (still) unknown secret societies. Tibar and Altai finally come into contact with the core of the secret society or the conspiracy whose goal is to free the enslaved people from the rule of the tyrant Ilwend. After various exams, Tibar and Altai are accepted into the Bund. In the end, the coup succeeds, among other things because Dya, who had previously been separated from the brothers, fell on the enemy with a “holy band” in the back. Hamor the wimp, who had joined Ilwend's regime, falls victim to the shame it deserves.

The liberated people, however, do not prove themselves worthy of the heroes and reject the system of spartan rigor and defensiveness that has now been set up; they would rather live in peace than just be there for constant war preparation and military training. The liberators are driven out, Dya sacrifices herself in the final battle and the decimated remnants of the Hero League move away to distant lands somewhere on the edge of the world.

The novel went through several editions and was received quite favorably as a product of noble, idealistic thinking. Friedrich Schiller did not discuss the first volume in a friendly manner, but during the war of liberation the ideology formulated in Dya-Na-Sore proved to be entirely contemporary. From today's point of view, with his high regard for war as the engine of social progress and moral renewal, with his absolute male society, he is fatally close to what a National Socialist ideology of the people propagated. This provided for even Arno Schmidt in his broadcast Dialog 1958 sore Dya na, of all beasts blondest note of the novel as a "2,500-page prophetic description of a 'third Super = = Empire>" classified. Schmidt also said: “A reprint would be overdue! A book like this, which would be part of the iron inventory of every international military district library, will sooner or later be served again. ”In fact, the novel was reprinted in 1979, but ironically in the Haidnische Antiquities series dedicated to the pious memory of Schmidt .

To classify it must be said that Dya-Na-Sore is a so-called theses novel . Central is the concept of a people's army. For a long time, Meyern was not only concerned with the idea, but also specifically with its implementation, initially together with his friends Wenzel Graf Paar and Hugo Franz Altgraf zu Salm-Reifferscheidt in the mid-1790s, then again after 1809 when he gave the Emperor Franz I. presented a corresponding project. You have to take into account that at the time of the appearance of Dya-Na-Sore in 1787, a popular army in the modern sense was unknown, the French levée en masse did not come until 1793, popular armies were only known from antiquity and just like very idealized ideas from antiquity, the ideas of a general civil army were antiquated and heroic. In addition, Meyern is documented as a member of a Masonic lodge at this time, which explains the important role played by the secret societies and their machinations in Dya-Na-Sore . In contrast to Schmidt, who almost demonized the book and the author in his radio essay, for the Goedeke of 1893 Dya-Na-Sore is a relatively simple novel that treats Masonic ideas in “lyrical, dreamlike ecstasy”.

Of the other writings of Meyern, in particular the extensive scientific and state-theoretical writings that he is said to have written after 1805, only a small part has been published in three volumes, “Hinterlassunger kleine Schriften”. Most of the estate, however, is lost.

bibliography

literature

Monographs and Articles
  • Günter de Bruyn : Deeds and virtues: "Dya-Na-Sore", Meyern and Arno Schmidt. In: ders .: Reading joy: About books and people. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-596-11637-6 , pp. 72-108.
  • Günter de Bruyn: Deeds and Virtues, M. u. his German revolutionary model. In: Wilhelm Friedrich von Meyern: Dya-Na-Sore or the Wanderer. Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 1979, pp. 935-95.
  • Wolfgang Griep: Abdul Erzerum's New Persian Letters: A Political Travel Novel of the Late Enlightenment and its Author. In: Herbert Zeman (Ed.): The Austrian literature. Your profile at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century (1750–1830). Akademische Druck- und Verlags-Anstalt, Graz 1979, pp. 805–828.
  • Johannes Kunisch : The "puppet work" of the standing armies: a contribution to the reassessment of the soldier status and war in the late Enlightenment. In: Journal for historical research 17, 1990, pp. 49-83.
  • Reinhold Lorenz: People's Armament and State Idea in Austria (1792–1797). Österreichischer Bundesverlag for Education, Science and Art, Vienna 1926, pp. 33–43, 72–76, 166–169;
  • Claudia Michels: The ideal state without a people: The skeptical utopia of Wilhelm Friedrich von Meyern. Kohlhammer, Berlin & Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-17-015897-X .
  • Editha Narath: Friedrich Wilhelm von Meyern's poetic life's work. With special consideration of the novel "Dya-Na-Sore". Dissertation Vienna 1934.
  • Joseph Pauscher: Dya-Na-Sore. A state novel by Friedrich Wilhelm von Meyern. State secondary school, Jägerndorf 1911.
  • Arno Schmidt : Dya na sore, blondest of all beasts. In: ders .: Dya na sore, conversations in a library. Stahlberg, Karlsruhe 1958, pp. 14-53.
  • Thomas Stettner: Meyern, Wilhelm Friedrich von; Officer and writer; 1759-1829. In: Publications of the Society for Franconian History / Series 7. CVs from Franconia No. 5 (1936), pp. 214–23;
  • Winfried Weißhaupt: Europe sees itself from a different perspective: works based on the scheme of "Lettres persanes" in European, especially German, literature of the 18th century. Part II, 1. Lang, Frankfurt a. M. 1979, pp. 286-324.
Lexicons

Web links

Wikisource: Wilhelm Friedrich von Meyern  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to the NDB, this was the lodge “For Truth and Unity”. However, due to the Masonic patent of Emperor Joseph II. In December 1785, this was combined with the lodge "To the Three Crowned Pillars". Cf. Rüdiger Wolf: The Protocols of the Prague Masonic Lodge “On the Three Crowned Pillars” 1783-1785. Löcker, Vienna 2013.
  2. ↑ The 2nd edition from 1791 and 4th edition from 1840/1841 are reprints of the 1st and 3rd edition.
  3. ^ Wilhelm Frels : Deutsche Dichterhandschriften von 1400 bis 1900. Complete catalog of the handwritten manuscripts of German poets in the libraries and archives of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the ČSR. Hiersemann, Leipzig 1934, p. 200.
personal data
SURNAME Meyern, Wilhelm Friedrich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meyer, Wilhelm Friedrich (real name); Meyern, WF (alternative spelling); Meyern, Wilhelm Friedrich (alternative spelling); Meyer, Wilhelm Friedrich von (alternative spelling); Meyern, Friedrich Wilhelm von (alternative spelling); Mayern, Wilhelm Friedrich von (alternative spelling); Mayer, Wilhelm Friedrich von (alternative spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, Austrian military and diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1759
PLACE OF BIRTH Frauental near Creglingen
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1829
Place of death Frankfurt am Main