Willibald Alexis

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Willibald Alexis, around 1840
Signature Willibald Alexis.PNG

Willibald Alexis , actually Georg Wilhelm Heinrich Häring (born June 29, 1798 in Breslau , † December 16, 1871 in Arnstadt ) was a German writer who is considered the founder of the realistic historical novel in German literature.

Life

youth

Alexis came from a Huguenot family named Harenc from Brittany . He later adopted the stage name Willibald Alexis to avoid jokes about his name Häring ( allec is the Latin translation of Hering ). The father, a chancellery director, died in 1802. As a child, Alexis witnessed the siege of Wroclaw. After the city was taken by the French in 1806 (description of the impressions in Penelope ), Alexis and his mother Henriette Juliane Louise Charlotte, née Rellstab, moved to Berlin .

They both lived with their mother's relatives for 14 years. The boy first attended Messow's private school and then the Friedrichwerder high school . Fighting by the Cossacks against the French lying in Berlin in early March 1813 delighted the high school student. In 1815 Alexis took part in the wars of liberation as a volunteer ; As a member of the Kolberg Regiment, he besieged some Ardennes fortresses (description in the novella Iblou and the critical report as a volunteer to France ).

Degree, lawyer, writer

Willibald Alexis; Woodcut by A. Neumann , 1872

From 1817 Alexis studied law and history in Berlin and Breslau with Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Friedrich von Raumer . During his studies in 1818 he became a member of the old Berlin and Breslau fraternity . In 1820 he became a trainee lawyer at the Criminal Senate of the Supreme Court , where he met E. T. A. Hoffmann's friend Julius Eduard Hitzig , who in turn introduced him to Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué . After the success of his first novel (1824), Alexis ended his civil service career.

From 1827 on he lived in Berlin and headed the editorial office of the Berliner Konversationsblatt , which was merged with the Freimüthigen in 1830 ; In 1835 he laid down the editorial management in protest against increasing censorship . He now lived successfully in Berlin as a freelance writer and columnist for various newspapers . Alexis , who was strongly influenced by Walter Scott and his novel Ivanhoe (1820) , published his first novel as a translation of a Scottish novel. From 1842, Alexis and Hitzig published the New Pitaval , a spectacularly successful collection of criminal cases.

Restless activity

In the years that followed, Alexis wrote novels after Roman, mostly with great success, but was also active in other areas: he founded several reading societies , ran bookshops, bought and sold houses, was a theater critic for the Vossische Zeitung and traveled through France and Scandinavia , among other places and East Prussia . He is also mentioned as the founder of Heringsdorf , so that his real name, Häring, lives on in this place name. Through his participation in the literary New Wednesday Society, he made connections with Joseph von Eichendorff , Karl Immermann and Wilhelm Hauff, among others . After his marriage to the English-born Laetitia Perceval, his house became a meeting place for literary Berlin; Ludwig Tieck was a guest among others .

In the pre- March part of Prussian liberalism , he received the reputation of a red republican in post-March because of his persistent adherence to the ideas of the revolution . Together with his personal disappointment with the outcome of the revolution of 1848 , the constant attacks made him leave Berlin. After a long stay in Rome (1847–1848), he retired to Arnstadt in 1853.

Sickness and old age

In 1856 Alexis suffered a first stroke , followed by a second in 1860. The author's memory was irreparably damaged, it was impossible to continue the literary work, and the once wealthy writer relied on the support of the German Schiller Foundation. In 1867 the paralyzed, blind and increasingly demented author received the Hohenzollern House Order . Theodor Fontane described the old, sick Alexis as follows:

Anyone who came to Arnstadt back then, around summer time, and went for a walk under the trees in the park on quiet afternoons, would come across a little cart in which a sick person was slowly being driven up and down: an old gentleman, his head bared and tilted to one side, the face interesting, despite all the signs of decay. That patient was Willibald Alexis. Many a sympathetic eye followed this silent vehicle.

Willibald Alexis is buried in the old cemetery in Arnstadt.

The Brandenburg village of Lehnin erected a monument to Alexis in 1914 near the forest ranger's office in the form of a pyramid made of boulders . This memorial is the starting point for the Willibald-Alexis-Weg, which since 2003 has led to places in the Lehnin forest and lake area that Alexis described in his works.

Willibald Alexis and the Berlin writer and music critic Ludwig Rellstab were cousins, Alexis' mother Juliane Louise Charlotte Rellstab was a sister of Ludwig Rellstab's father.

plant

Monument in Lehnin

Willibald Alexis is considered the founder of historical realism in German literature, which was brought to its climax by Theodor Fontane .

Alexis began his literary career with reviews in the Viennese Yearbooks of Literature and the magazine Hermes . a. Sir Walter Scott, Lord Byron , Heinrich Heine and Immermann. His first own fictional work was the satirical - idyllic epic The battue in 1820 . As a result of a wager and his devotion to Scott, the novel Walladmor (1824) was translated many times and generally believed to be an original work by Scott in translation (as intended by Alexis), as was the second novel Avalon Castle (1827). The follow-up novel, however, was nowhere near as successful as Walladmor .

In addition to these larger works, Alexis wrote a number of short stories based on the Tieck model (4 volumes 1830–1831, Neue Novellen , 2 volumes, 1836). At times enthusiastic about the Young German movement, he published works in keeping with them: the novels Das Haus Düsterweg (1835) and Twelve Nights (1838). Before that, in 1832, he had already opened the series of his so-called Patriotic Novels with Cabanis , one of his best achievements, in which he is completely equal to his role model W. Scott .

In the Patriotic Novels , Alexis gradually treated the most important sections of Brandenburg- Prussian history from the 14th century to the half of the 19th century in great detail, meticulously detailed descriptions, cross-class and clearly patriotic . In addition to Cabanis , this series includes: The Roland von Berlin (1840), The false Woldemar (1842), The pants of Herr von Bredow (1846), Rest is the first civic duty (1852), Isegrim (1854) and Dorothee (1856) .

In addition to the novels, Alexis wrote numerous short stories and stories, poems and ballads , travelogues and biographical abstracts (about William Shakespeare and Anton Reiser, for example ) and, with Hitzig, published the New Pitaval from 1842 , a collection of authentic crime stories, with the authors as their focus based on the psychology of the criminals and wanted to entertain them through tense portrayals. Some of Alexis' poems were set to music by Carl Loewe and Johannes Brahms . Alexis had little success with dramatic attempts. His collected works were published in 20 volumes in 1874.

Quote

What should I not have been, because I did not want to be exactly what this and that wanted from me! As sworn to a historical, as to an ironic school, there serf and bondage under Walter Scott at every turn; there a pupil of Tieck, swearing on his words! I was considered servile to the one, while the other wanted to draw me to the investigation as revolutionary; for appearing too elegantly this, that I did not make myself scarce enough. [...] I should be fanatical about Prussia; Others turned their backs on me because I wasn't, because they dared to paint their moments of the most sacred upswing with sober colors of reality.

Works

Narrative literature

  • The driven hunt. Epos. 1820
  • Walladmor. Loosely based on the English of Walter Scott. Novel. Herbig, Berlin, 1824
  • The outlaws. Novella. Duncker and Humblot, Berlin, 1825
  • Avalon Castle. Loosely based on the English of Walter Scott from the translator of Walladmor. 3 volumes. Novel. Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1827
  • Cabanis. Patriotic novel in 6 books. Fincke, Berlin, 1832
  • The Düsterweg house. A story from the present. Novel. Leipzig, 1835
  • Penelope. (Partial authorship) 1837
  • Herr von Sacken 1837 Novelle in German paperback to the year 1837, SS 211 - 314
    • In: German Novellenschatz . Edited by Paul Heyse and Hermann Kurz. Volume 10. 2nd edition. Berlin, [1910], pp. 95-202. In: Thomas Weitin (Ed.): Fully digitized corpus. The German Novellenschatz . Darmstadt / Konstanz, 2016. ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • Twelve nights. Novel. 1838
  • The Roland of Berlin. Patriotic novel. 1840. urn : nbn: de: kobv: 109-1-13898719 (4th edition from 1881)
  • The wrong Woldemar. Patriotic novel. 1842
  • Urban Grandier or the Obsessed with Loudun. Novel. 1843
  • Herr von Bredow's trousers. Patriotic novel. Adolf, Berlin, 1846. zeno.org
  • The werewolf. Patriotic novel. 1848
  • The sorcerer Virgilius. A fairy tale from the present. Adolf, Berlin, 1851
  • Rest is the first civic duty or 50 years ago. Patriotic novel from the time of the humiliation of Prussia. Barthol, Berlin, 1852 ( Volume 1 , Volume 2 , Volume 3 , Volume 4 , Volume 5, each as digitized version and full text in the German Text Archive )
  • Isegrimm. Patriotic novel from the time of need and liberation. Barthol, Berlin, 1854
  • Dorothee. A novel from the history of Brandenburg. 1856
  • Yes in Naples. Novella. Janke, Berlin, 1860

Time and travel descriptions

  • As a war volunteer to France in 1815. Sheets from my memories . 1815
  • Autumn trip through Scandinavia . 2 volumes. Berlin, 1828
  • Viennese pictures. Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1833
  • Silhouettes from southern Germany . Leipzig, 1834
  • The new Pitaval. A collection of the most interesting crime stories from all countries, both old and new. Together with Julius Eduard Hitzig. 60 volumes. Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1842–1890.
  • Arnstadt. A picture from Thuringia. 1851

Collections

  • Willibald Alexis collected novels. 4 volumes. Duncker and Humblot, Berlin, 1830–1831
  • New novellas. 2 volumes. 1836
  • Collected Works. 20 volumes. 1874
  • Patriotic novels. 8 volumes. 1881 and 1884

Film adaptations

literature

  • Wolfgang Beutin (Ed.): Willibald Alexis (1798–1871). An author of the pre- and post-march . Aisthesis-Verlag, Bielefeld 2000, ISBN 3-89528-275-8 (Vormärz studies; 4).
  • Thierry Carpent: Willibald Alexis, intellectuel you “juste milieu”. Histoire, droit et politique du XIX siècle . Lang, Bern 2002, ISBN 3-906769-08-9 (additional dissertation, University of Nancy 1994).
  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume II: Artists. Winter, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8253-6813-5 , pp. 7-10.
  • Caroline Hobi: Willibald Alexis, "Quiet is the first civic duty". A narrative theoretical analysis and interpretation . Lang, Bern 2007, ISBN 978-3-03911-230-2 (also dissertation, University of Zurich 2006).
  • Michael Niehaus: Authors among themselves. Walter Scott , Willibald Alexis, Wilhelm Hauff and others in a literary affair . Synchron, scientific publishing house of the authors, Heidelberg 2002, ISBN 3-935025-36-X .
  • Paul K. Richter: Willibald Alexis as a literary and theater critic . Kraus, Nendeln / Liechtenstein 1967 (reprint of the Berlin 1931 edition).
  • Lynne Tatlock: Willibald Alexis' "Zeitroman" "Das Haus Düsterweg". Analyzes and documents. Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1984.
  • Lionel Thomas: Willibald Alexis. A German writer of the 19th century . Blackwell, Oxford 1964.
  • Hermann Palm:  Alexis, Willibald . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, p. 600 f.
  • Walter Heynen:  Alexis, Willibald. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 197 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Gerhard Fischer: The "Brandenburg Walter Scott" . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 6, 1998, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 12-16 ( luise-berlin.de - about Fontane's view of Alexis).

Web links

Commons : Willibald Alexis  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Willibald Alexis  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Fechter : History of German literature . C. Bertelsmann Verlag , Gütersloh 1954, p. 319.
  2. ↑ a b arnstadt.de
  3. ↑ Gerhard Fischer: The "Brandenburg Walter Scott" . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 6, 1998, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 12-16 ( luise-berlin.de ).
  4. ^ Hermann Palm:  Alexis, Willibald . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 10, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1879, p. 600 f.
  5. ↑ phf.uni-rostock.de
personal data
SURNAME Alexis, Willibald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Häring, Georg Wilhelm Heinrich (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer and poet
DATE OF BIRTH June 29, 1798
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1871
Place of death Arnstadt