Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder

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Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder

Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (born July 13, 1773 in Berlin , † February 13, 1798 in Berlin) was a German lawyer . As a writer , he was one of the founders of German Romanticism .

Life

Raised in the spirit of late Enlightenment rationalism , the son of the first Berlin Mayor of Justice, Christoph Benjamin Wackenroder, attended the Friedrichwerder grammar school between 1786 and 1792 , where he became close friends with Ludwig Tieck . In the following year the musically gifted Wackenroder started studying law at the request of his father . On the side, however, he continued to attend lectures on the history of culture and studied the art of the Italian Renaissance intensively .

During a summer trip to Bamberg , Nuremberg and Pommersfelden he got to know the landscape of southern Germany and the works of art by the “German European” Albrecht Dürer , about which he enthusiastically expressed himself in letters that already reveal Wackenroder's position on early romanticism. It was under such impressions that an art-loving friar's heart was poured out in 1795/1796 , a collection of art-theoretical treatises and partly fictitious biographies, in which , using the example of Michelangelo , Raphael , and Dürer, among other things, a sacred reception of painting is advertised, as it can exert a similar contemplative effect like devotion or prayer. Because, as an expression of free creativity, art is building “a new altar in honor of God”; At the same time, thanks to her “divine assistance”, she could heal the desperate inwardness on the part of the audience. In the final, autobiographical tale of Joseph Berglinger , Wackenroder broke with the previously sketched image of a still influential generation of artists and, in return, addressed the existential crises of the modern musician, whose sacred ideals fail because of ordinary needs. With this double intention, the pourings of the heart, published anonymously in Berlin in 1796, had a lasting effect on the problem of finding artistic identity and creating meaning, which was discussed in the philosophy and literature of Romanticism . The anti-enlightenment gesture with which Wackenroder turned away from the increasingly utilitarian building culture of his time behind the mask of the fictional monastery brother also influenced the painting of the Nazarenes .

In addition to Ludwig Tieck , Wackenroder is considered the founder of romantic musical aesthetics ; Both authors believed in a transcendent character of music, in the ecstatic moments of which people rise above themselves. In the specialist literature, her statements have often been interpreted as a theory of absolute music ; As Alexandra Kertz-Welzel pointed out, Wackenroder and Tieck were at least as interested in the emotional and sensual experience of music.

In 1797 Wackenroder returned to Berlin as a trainee lawyer. The fantasies about art , probably written down together with Tieck in the same year , appeared a year after the death of Wackenroder, who died of typhus in 1798 at the age of 24 .

His grave, which has not been preserved, was in one of the cemeteries in front of Hallesches Tor . It is not known exactly which one.

Works

Wackenroder left behind only a narrow oeuvre; it is mainly about theorising writings:

Wackenroder was probably involved as a source of ideas for " Franz Sternbald's Walks " (1798, edited by von Tieck), but Tieck was probably the only one who worked on the novel.

Several philological works, six travel reports and numerous letters have also come down to us from Wackenroder .

Work edition

  • Silvio Vietta, Richard Littlejohns (ed.): Complete works and letters. Historical-critical edition . 2 volumes. Heidelberg 1991

As a CD

literature

  • Emil Sulger-Gebing:  Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 40, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1896, pp. 444-448.
  • Wolf Weigand:  WACKENRODER, Wilhelm, Heinrich. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 15, Bautz, Herzberg 1999, ISBN 3-88309-077-8 , Sp. 1409-1412.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Katrin Jurzig: Medieval reception in Wackenroder's “Herzensergießungen” . Driesen, Taunusstein 2001, ISBN 978-3-9807344-3-1 .
  • Dirk Kemper: Language of Poetry. Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder in the context of the late Enlightenment. JB Metzler, Stuttgart 1993. (Metzler study edition).
  • Dirk Kemper: Wackenroder Research 1981–1991. A critical overview. In: Journal for German Philology. 112. Vol., 1993, special issue: New works on romanticism. Ed. V. Hartmut Steinecke, pp. 2–50.
  • Dirk Kemper: Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder. In: Wolfgang Bunzel (Ed.): Romanticism. Epoch, authors, works. Knowledge Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2010, pp. 107–122.

Web links

Wikiquote: Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder  - Quotes
Wikisource: Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rolf Straubel: Biographical handbook of the Prussian administrative and judicial officials 1740-1806 / 15 . Saur, Munich 2009.
  2. ↑ Alexandra Kertz-Welzel: The transcendence of feelings . Relationships between music and feeling at Wackenroder / Tieck and the musical aesthetics of romanticism. Röhrig, Saarbrücken 2001, ISBN 3-86110-278-1 .
  3. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 219.
personal data
SURNAME Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German romantic writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 13, 1773
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 1798
Place of death Berlin