Wilhelm Schumacher (Editor)

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Wilhelm Schumacher (born January 3, 1800 in Danzig ; † April 28, 1837 there ) was a German writer and newspaper publisher .

Life

Wilhelm Schumacher was born the son of a carter who later became a government messenger.

For financial reasons he could not get the necessary education, so his father taught him to read and through private lessons he learned something French, Polish and geography; he attended a free school for six months .

In his childhood and youth he grew up among street boys. At the age of 13, hunger during the siege of Danzig forced him out of the city, so that he stayed among farmers and Cossacks in the surrounding area. Despite these unfavorable circumstances, he developed a vivid imagination and, as a child, was already making verses and inventing stories so he could tell fairy tales off the cuff. In his childhood he suffered various accidents: For example, he smashed the front part of his skull when he fell on a car axle, at the age of eight he fell out of a window on the third floor and later sank into a huge haystack and was only able to do so shortly before Suffocation to be saved; twice he almost drowned in the Baltic Sea.

The religious instruction of the superintendent Jakob Gottlieb Ehwalt (1765-1844) laid the foundation for his religious meaning and he learned to appreciate reading the Bible . According to his mother's wishes, after the siege of Danzig he was supposed to catch up on elementary lessons and then study theology, but his mother died before that and Wilhelm Schumacher had to begin an apprenticeship as a saddler due to his father's financial circumstances. In the free time during his apprenticeship, he used the nights to study the books he could get hold of and used a large part of his tuition money to buy candles.

After completing his apprenticeship, he served as a soldier until 1821, where he attended the soldiers' schools and in his off-duty time he did his own study. After finishing his service as a soldier, he went on a hike as a saddlery journeyman and earned the benevolence of a prince in Breslau through an occasional poem, with whom he traveled to Austria and received instruction from the court master . Two years later he returned to Gdansk and upon arrival was told that one of his brothers had committed suicide the day before.

Due to the training he had received so far, he gave up saddlery and wrote occasional poems for which he was honored. Thanks to the support of the director of the St. Johannis School in Danzig, Matthias Gotthilf Löschin , he was allowed to use the library; so he jotted down excerpts and copied out remarkable things.

He married in 1823 and was now faced with the problem that he was not earning enough with his literary work, so that he embarked on small trade speculations and was deceived and had to go to the debt tower for nine months . There he found the leisure to study and read Immanuel Kant , Johann Gottfried Herder , Gotthold Ephraim Lessing , Johann Gottfried Seume and Voltaire as well as the Bible.

The arrival of the opera singer Henriette Sontag in Gdansk gave him the opportunity to publish some humorous satirical writings and poems. Through this and the publication of an address book for Danzig he was able to buy himself out of the debt tower. Now his financial circumstances improved and he worked for foreign magazines, edited a few novels and was a casual poet. As he himself said, he wrote godfather and love letters, petition and impertinence letters, marriage and recommendation poems, essays in the archive, circular songs and funeral songs .

When cholera broke out in Gdansk in 1831, he began to write cholera satires, which were copied by the thousands and translated into English and Danish. According to his own statements, this gave him a profit of 600 thalers. In November of the same year he also founded the magazine Danziger Dampfboot , with the promise that it would be a magazine for spirit, humor, satire, poetry, world and popular life, correspondence, art, literature and theater. As an editor, he ran the newspaper for six years almost exclusively alone and rarely with an employee. Initially it had 300 subscribers, this number had grown to more than 900 by the end of 1836 when it was transferred to the Gerhardsche Buchhandlung; Julius Lasker led the editorial team from 1838 to 1844. The Danzig steamboat existed until 1879 and had up to 1,500 subscribers.

In the winter of 1836 he caught the flu , which turned into consumption , and he died of it in April 1837.

Fonts (selection)

  • Feminine Shame and Degeneration, Or The Causes of the Current Lack of Usable Female Servants . Danzig, 1826.
  • Remarks on the abuse of the wise law which condemns the father of an illegitimate child to pay the food allowance for the same to the applicant . Danzig 1826.
  • The first fruits: a collection of stories, poems, etc. Charades . Danzig: Anhuth, 1826.
  • The great hermit, or love adventure of Freiherr Leopold von Lilienfeld: a satirical-witty novel . Danzig: Gerhard, 1826.
  • The attentive viewer: weekly for friends of happy mood and satire . Danzig: Wilhelm Schumacher, 1826–1827.
  • Danzig steamboat for literature, poetry, theater and socializing . Danzig: Printed in the Wedelschen Hofbuchdruckerei, 1828.
  • Hustle and bustle and harp sounds: a collection of stories, ballads and poems . Graudenz; Berlin, 1828.
  • Bells. Jokes, pranks, glosses and satyrs . Graudenz 1828.
  • Momus. Paperback for friends of jokes and satyrs . Graudenz 1828.
  • The conquest of Varna by the Russians in 1828 casual drama in 3 acts; along with an appendix of mixed up poems . Danzig 1829.
  • Song at the parting of the fateful year 1830 . Gdansk 1830.
  • Forget Me Not. A bouquet of songs for heart and mind . Danzig Botzon 1830.
  • Figaro: Theater sheet for Danzig . Danzig: Wedelsche Hof-Buchdruckerei, 1830.
  • Characteristic of the Danzig night watchmen: a silhouette . Strasbourg in West Prussia. Printed by JFS Zimmermann, 1830.
  • Epistle to the new Sunday children in Grossfischdorf: a satirical poem . Danzig: printed by Louis Botzon, 1830.
  • Gdańsk city and address almanac for 1831 . Danzig Wedel 1831.
  • Epilogue, at this year's end of the local stage, on January 17, 1831, after the performance of Molier's comedy Tartufe . Danzig: printed in the Wedelschen Hofbuchdruckerei, 1831.
  • The most understandable and proven instructions about the dangerous plague-like disease cholera morbus: provided with a recipe that teaches the safest means of protection against cholera, and surpasses and makes superfluous all books that have already been published and may still be published; Carefully compiled from the main results of medical experiences made in India, Persia, Russia, and Poland . Danzig: Wedel, 1831.
  • The miracle doctor as he is . Danzig 1831.
  • Cholera morbus, part 1 . Danzig 1831.
  • Cholera morbus, part 2 . Danzig 1831.
  • Cholera morbus, part 3 . Danzig 1831.
  • History of cholera in Danzig in 1831: In addition: humorous-satirical rose pictures from a thunderstorm night of the most terrible reality: three poems with a stone print and prosaic notes to the poetic texts . Danzig 1831.
  • The shoemaker Hamann in Heubude, his miracle drops against cholera and his assessors: According to reasons of reason and all previous experiences, for the benefit of the audience, critically illuminated and impartially presented . Danzig 1831.
  • Zacharias Zappio: or Love and Life of a Citizen of Danzig, a historical-romantic story; together with a biography of the police secretary Paulus . Danzig: Wedelschen Hofbuchdruckerei, 1831.
  • Danzig steamboat for spirit, humor, satire, poetry, world and folk life, correspondence, art, literature and theater . Danzig 1831.
  • The darklings in the land of light: together with: reply to the Dr. Olshausen's attacks . Danzig 1834.
  • Félicité Robert de Lamennais ; Wilhelm Schumacher; Hoffmann and Campe Publisher: De Lamennais Words of a Believer . Hamburg Hoffmann & Campe 1834.
  • Prussian muse temple of the loyal popular love for the sublime royal house or description of the festivities on which, in Jare 1834, from Berlin to embarkation in Memel, JJKK Highnesses of the Crown Prince of Prussia and Höchst his wife took place . Danzig 1834.
  • Carl Woike; Wilhelm Schumacher: The nature of the moral-religious judgment of our time: First a letter to the editor of the "Danziger Dampfboots", Mr. W. Schumacher, regarding his "Darklings in the Land of Light" . Königsberg Unzer 1835.
  • Lyric and humorous poems . Danzig 1835.
  • Mayflowers and mountain fruits, or mixed writings in poetry and prose . Danzig, 1835-38.

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