Zacharias Werner
Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werner (* November 18 / 19th November 1768 in Königsberg in Prussia ; † 17th January 1823 in Vienna ) was a German poet and dramatist of romance . In 1814 he became a Catholic priest and preacher.
Life
From 1784 Werner studied law and camera sciences at the University of Königsberg , where he also attended Immanuel Kant's colleges .
In 1793 he was appointed chamber secretary in South Prussia and later to various places in the new Polish provinces, most recently Warsaw . During his stay there, where he was associated with ETA Hoffmann , among others , Werner entered into three marriages, the first two of which broke off quickly. In Warsaw he also met his future biographer Julius Eduard Hitzig and entered a Masonic lodge , whose mysticism attracted him more than its enlightenment tendencies. His first drama The Sons of the Valley (1803–1804), which deals with the dissolution of the Knights Templar , was also written at that time .
After traveling back to Koenigsberg with his third wife to look after his mentally ill mother, Werner went to Berlin , where his patron, the Minister von Schrötter , had found him a job where he could pursue his poetic muse entirely . At the Berlin National Theater on June 11, 1806, the play Martin Luther or the Consecration of Power took place under the title The Consecration of Power. A knight play successfully premiered. August Wilhelm Iffland played the role of Martin Luther in the play performed 26 times until 1814. Iffland was initially a supporter of Werner, on reading tours he made The Consecration of Power known. In contrast, The Sons of the Valley , which were performed for the first time in Berlin on March 10, 1807, only saw five performances.
After the dissolution of his third marriage, Werner traveled the Rhine in the summer of 1807 and then went to Weimar , where he had frequent conversations with Goethe during a winter stay , who had his tragedy Wanda premiered on January 30, 1808. As early as the next summer he traveled to Switzerland, where he met Madame de Staël and stayed for a while at Coppet Castle . After Werner had performed the little fateful tragedy The Twenty-fourth February in Weimar , he traveled to Rome , where he stayed until July 1813 and converted to Catholicism on April 19, 1811 .
In 1814 Werner was ordained a priest in Aschaffenburg ; then Werner took up permanent residence in Vienna. During the Congress of Vienna and later, he preached there frequently without a permanent job, and his strange figure drew a large number of listeners. The Redemptorist Klemens Maria Hofbauer , who was later canonized , had a great influence on him .
From 1816 on he lived for a year in Podolia with Count Chołoniewski and became the Dome of Honor of the Cathedral Chapter in Kamieniec. From 1819 Werner lived in Vienna again.
Ailing from 1821 onwards, he nevertheless eagerly continued his public lectures. He spontaneously gave up his resolution to join the Redemptorist Order. Zacharias Werner died on January 17, 1823. In accordance with his wishes, he was buried in the “Romantic Cemetery ” in Maria Enzersdorf . His estate in the Redemptorist monastery in Vienna near Maria am Gestade was lost when the monastery was devastated during the revolution of 1848 .
Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werner was the only playwright of the Romantic School who achieved stage success. No one else developed the mystical elements and the idea of fate as much as he did. He rose more and more into a dark fantasy and drama and ultimately found his only hold in the “unbroken power and glory” of the Catholic Church.
Quote
“Everything that the friend and enemy of the romantic imagined was united in it: Christian piety up to the point of martyrdom, pagan myths and rites, love as sexuality, enthusiasm and charity, secret societies and non-classical formal art. But those who could not imagine anything under the romantic, received something easily understandable and at the same time apparently demanding on this topic from him, which gave the good feeling of participating in the new and original without having to accept its challenge, but at the same time the reproach of To be able to reject pleasure in the trivial. "
Works
- Mixed Poems , 1789
- The Sons of the Valley , 1803–1804
- The Templars in Cyprus , 1803
- The Brothers of the Cross , 1804
- The cross on the Baltic Sea , 1806
- The bridal night , 1806
- Martin Luther or the Consecration of Power , 1806
- The twenty-fourth February , 1808
- Attila, King of the Huns , romantic tragedy, 1808 (literary model for Verdi's opera Attila )
- Wanda, Queen of the Sarmatians , 1810
- The consecration of inefficiency , 1813
- Kunigunde the saint , 1815
- Spiritual Exercises for Three Days , 1818
- The Mother of the Maccabees , 1820
literature
- Ulrich Beuth: Romantic drama. Investigations into the dramatic work of Zacharias Werner , dissertation, Munich 1979.
- Herbert Breyer: The principle of form and meaning in the drama Zacharias Werner. Breslau, Priebatsch 1933. (= language and culture of the Germanic-Romanic peoples; series B, Germanistic series; 4).
- Günter de Bruyn: sinner and saint. The unusual life of the poet Zacharias Werner , S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main [2016], ISBN 978-3-10-397208-5 .
- Willy Ekhard: The technology in Zacharias Werner's 'Sons of the Valley'. Berlin, Ebering 1917.
- Paul Hankamer : Zacharias Werner. A contribution to illustrating the problem of personality in romanticism. Bonn, Cohen 1920.
- Anett Kollmann: Armored Sensitivity. Heroes in female form around 1800. Heidelberg, Winter 2004. (Problems of Poetry; 34), ISBN 3-8253-1539-8 .
- Gerard Kozielek: The dramatic work of Zacharias Werner. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich 1967. (= Prace Wrocławskiego Towarzystwa Naukowego; A, 120).
- Yixu Lü: Female rule in the drama of the early 19th century. Munich, Iudicium-Verlag 1993, ISBN 3-89129-225-2 .
- Rudolf Palgen : About Zacharias Werner's "Sons of the Valley". A contribution to the history of romanticism. Reprint of the edition Marburg, Elwert 1917. New York, NY et al .: Johnson 1968. (= contributions to German literary studies; 21).
- Ernst Müller: Poetics of Romantic Conversion. The Zacharias Werner case and its literary continuation , in: Figures of Conversion. Friedrich Schlegel's Conversion to Catholicism in Context , ed. v. Winfried Eckel and Nikolais Wegmann (= Schlegel Studies, Vol. 5), Paderborn, Munich et al., Ferdinand Schöningh, 2014, pp. 263–285.
- Theo Pehl: Zacharias Werner and Pietism. Studies on the religious way of life of the early Zacharias Werner. Limburg an der Lahn: Limburger Vereinsdr. 1933.
- Franz Stuckert: The drama Zacharias Werner. Development and position in literary history. Frankfurt am Main: Diesterweg 1926.
- Emil Sulger-Gebing: Werner, Zacharias . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 42, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1897, pp. 66-74.
- Emil Wismer: The influence of the German romantic Zacharias Werner in France. The poet's relations with Madame de Staël. Unchangeable Reprint of the Affoltern a. A., Weiss 1928. Bern: Lang 1968. (= European university publications; 1.9).
- Zacharias Werner. The Lord and the Cynic. Selected poems. With a drawing by ETA Hoffmann and a biographical outline . Revonnah Verlag Hannover. ISBN 3-927715-56-5 .
- Otto Weiß : Werner, Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 13, Bautz, Herzberg 1998, ISBN 3-88309-072-7 , Sp. 850-864.
- Constantin von Wurzbach : Werner, Zacharias . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 55th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1887, pp. 72–96 ( digitized version ).
- Zacharias Werner in New Nekrolog der Deutschen , 1st year, 1st issue. Ilmenau 1824. p. 56 f.
Web links
- Literature by and about Zacharias Werner in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Zacharias Werner in the German Digital Library
- Works by Zacharias Werner at Zeno.org .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gerhard Schulz : Romanticism "History and Concept" . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1996, pp. 72f., ISBN 3-406-41053-7
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Werner, Zacharias |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Werner, Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German romantic poet and dramatist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 18, 1768 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Koenigsberg i. Pr. |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 17, 1823 |
| Place of death | Vienna |