Wilhelm Pfeiffer (writer)

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Wilhelm Victor Christoph Pfeiffer (born May 5, 1810 in Eutin , † December 28, 1841 in Oldenburg ) was a German teacher and writer. He used the pseudonyms W. Freimund and Freimund Pfeiffer .

Live and act

Wilhelm Pfeiffer was a son of Pastor Gustav Pfeiffer and his wife Christiane Mariane, née Heins. He first received lessons from his parents and then went to the Eutin School of Academics, today's Johann Heinrich Voss School , where his teacher Heinrich Arminius Riemann strongly influenced him. He then attended the Prima of the Lübeck Katharineum for a year , where he made friends with the composer Carl Grädener and together with him passed the Abitur at Easter 1831. In the summer semester of 1831 he began to study philology at the University of Leipzig , which he continued in Bonn and Göttingen. In Bonn he heard from Christian August Brandis , August Ferdinand Naeke , August Wilhelm Schlegel , Karl Friedrich Heinrich and Eduard Bobrik ; in Göttingen with Carl Otfried Müller , Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann , Ernst von Leutsch and Amadeus Wendt . In autumn 1834 he did his doctorate with Carl Otfried Müller. In his dissertation he dealt with Catullus .

Immediately after graduation, Gradener placed his friend Pfeiffer in positions at two large private schools, Michael Andresen's boys 'institute and Elisabeth Hennings and Dorothea Krumbhaar's girls' institute. He worked there for four and a half years and was quickly recognized as a hardworking educator. At the girls' institute he met Theodor Mommsen and Tycho Mommsen , who were Dorothea Krumbhaar's nephews and for whom Pfeiffer became a mentor. On July 20, 1838, he married Luise Schultetus (born September 27, 1819 in Plau ; † October 11, 1913 there). She was a daughter of the pharmacist Johann Schultetus and his wife Charlotte Dorothea, née Mühlenbruch and a niece of Elisabeth Hennings'.

On Michaelmas 1839, Pfeiffer changed to the main teacher for German and history at the school for higher daughters in Oldenburg, which later became the Cäcilienschule Oldenburg . Maximilian Heinrich Rüder , with whom Pfeiffer had been friends since his youth, lived in Oldenburg . In October 1839 both of them co-founded the “literary-sociable association”, which in the Vormärz formed the nucleus of the slowly emerging bourgeois- liberal movement in Oldenburg.

Pfeiffer died childless due to a stroke.

Works

Pfeiffer was considered a good teacher who designed his lessons based on Herbart's model. He devoted himself in particular to improving the less developed teaching of girls at the time. Heinrich Zeise wrote about his lessons in his memoirs and Tycho Mommsen in his autobiographical sketch.

Pfeiffer was a respected lyric poet from a young age. During his studies he wrote the “Jugendklänge”, which contained poems with a wide range of content and form. The censors criticized some texts because of their political stance on the Polish uprising and the prohibition of the fraternity colors. Gradener set several of the texts to music. He later wrote poems that appeared in the "Musenalmanach 1843". Pfeiffer announced in Oldenburg that he wanted to publish the collection of poems "Poetic Woodcuts", which he however no longer brought to print. Carsten Wagner later included several texts in the "Yearbook of Schleswig-Holstein Poets". Further texts were printed in contemporary anthologies or used for fraternity songs.

Pfeiffer also wrote prose texts in which he was obviously formally guided by Junge Deutschland and Heinrich Laube , whom he knew personally. He first wrote a farce about what he saw as exaggerated euphoria about the Rhine song . In response to this, the court evidently animated an anonymous critic who attacked him harshly in the "Mitteilungen aus Oldenburg" in 1841. Shortly afterwards, in mid-1841, Pfeiffer published “Goethes Friederike”. With this text he wanted to help save Friederike Brion's honor. However, critics misunderstood his intention and means of representation and judged the text to be a mystification .

After Pfeiffer's death, his book “Goethe and Klopstock” was published in 1842, the main part of which was based on Wolfgang Menzel's “Goethe and Schiller” and presented essential differences in antitheses. On the day of his death, Pfeiffer also published the “Göttinger Burschenlieder”, which he dedicated to Carl Grädener ( Carl Felix-Grüdener ) for the wedding.

literature

  • Wolfgang Merckens: Pfeiffer, Wilhelm . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , pages 212-214.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hermann Genzken: The Abitur graduates of the Katharineum in Lübeck (grammar school and secondary school) from Easter 1807 to 1907. Borchers, Lübeck 1907 ( digitized version ), no. 285
  2. ^ Wolfgang Merckens: Pfeiffer, Wilhelm . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , pages 212-213.
  3. ^ A b c d e Wolfgang Merckens: Pfeiffer, Wilhelm . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , page 213.
  4. ^ Wolfgang Merckens: Pfeiffer, Wilhelm . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , pages 213-214.
  5. ^ Wolfgang Merckens: Pfeiffer, Wilhelm . in: Schleswig-Holstein biographical lexicon . Volume 5. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1979. ISBN 3-529-02645-X , page 214.
  6. ↑ digitized version
personal data
SURNAME Pfeiffer, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pfeiffer, Wilhelm Victor Christoph (full name); Freimund, W. (pseudonym); Pfeiffer, Freimund (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German teacher and writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1810
PLACE OF BIRTH Eutin
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 1841
Place of death Oldenburg