Twelve speeches about eloquence and its decline in Germany

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Adam Heinrich Müller (around 1810)

The twelve speeches on eloquence and its decline in Germany are linguistic critical lectures by Adam Heinrich Müller , which the author gave in May and June 1812 in the kuk Redouten building in Vienna and which were published in Leipzig in 1816 . In the rhetorically brilliant speeches, Müller dealt with questions of aesthetics , poetry and philosophy of language for the last time . In contrast to France and other European nations, Germany has no tradition of great political eloquence.

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Germany

Like Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Friedrich Sieburg later , Müller looked at the German and French language culture and complained in his foreword about the lack of “lively speech” and the neglect of the language in Germany. Literature lacks great oratorical moments. If only people write, if the “greater minds” “find a desk prepared instead of the speaker's platform”, the ideas cannot “beat the heart of the nation” directly with the “force of the voice” and their own language is superseded by a foreign one , one should not be surprised to find no speakers. In contrast to other countries, in Germany there is "no whole, no community, no city, no nation that listens to the speaker with one ear."

Everyday language is losing its binding force; it disintegrates into innumerable dialects and idioms and is disfigured in its own way. Ghosts like Friedrich von Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe would “gather the rays of this scattered language like in a burning mirror.” But the nation would not hear them if one learned less from “paper” and “dead writing” than from that spoken language.

Science and literature

For Müller, all of German literature is divided into two parts - the larger of science and that of literature. In scientific works, the speaker would “not address anyone, but rather speak to himself.” While the French - such as Montesquieu or Diderot - feel that the author wants to address you and convince you that a simple English pamphlet has a specific person in front of you , and ancient writers would charm the ear and invite conversation, the German scholar builds "a building of ciphers, ingenious but lonely, uncomfortable, unpleasant, without an answer or a reply from any side!"

In the field of literature there were speakers who “really wanted to address” and inspire. Inwardly moved by the fate of “his nation”, he wanted to “knock an answer out of it, like a spark, or a spring, or something living from the rock”.

Schiller shows himself here more as a speaker than as a poet, who in his works sounds like "Germany itself should sound if it could talk." But this part does not become “a living tradition”.

Without the theater , many works would never have been adequately performed. So there are not only "living" and dead, but also dumb literatures. German literature has been one of the silent forms to this day. The fact that the national poets are read and declaimed again is a good development. There is only one sign of understanding: understandability, one only understands to the extent that one is understood.

While in England, France and Italy people speak naturally, in Germany speaking is practiced on the same level as other activities: those who live “to speak”; the Germans, on the other hand, only speak to live.

Friedrich Schiller

Friedrich von Schiller

Friedrich Schiller as "the greatest speaker of the Germans", "who only chose the poetic form because he wanted to be heard", lamented the fate that the soul is always far ahead of the spoken word. This is also the fate of Germany, which is forever wrestling with language: For a long time it was on itself and the "eternal things" and suddenly became aware of how it had "missed outward life, fatherland and society" and its thoughts much further ranged than his language.

“The Germans' horizon” is greater than their sphere of activity, the thought reaches further than the language, while “the French” is in a floating relationship to his language, so his soul finds space in every word.

Goethe's outstanding size does not disprove the fact that German literature is characterized by a disproportion between willingness and ability.

Conversation and the art of listening

Based on the conviction that true speech is only a conversation that Lessing , Goethe and Schiller have pushed onto the stage, that he and his "opponent" always speak in the mouth of the speaker and that all sciences begin with the idea of ​​conversation, Müller introduces to other chapters such as “On Conversation” and “On the Art of Listening”. Speakers and listeners would have to demonstrate “good taste”, according to another chapter. A "true conversation" is only possible if there is a "common air" between two different people, belief and trust as the basis of justice, what the person should actually fulfill, "to what extent he is human."

However, the generation is so torn by the ideas that one finds more “teachers than learners” and there is “little real conversation”.

republic

In order to find common ground in the conversation and to be able to speak and listen truthfully, a free framework such as is possible in a republic is required . The eloquence thrives there not only because everyone is allowed to have a say, but is also used early on to enter into the "free mind, into the ears of the neighbor". Whoever wants to rule has to hear, feel and tolerate a lot.

In the sixth chapter, Müller described a speech given in 1791 by Edmund Burke, whom he valued, about the French Revolution , which ended his friendship with Charles James Fox . The eloquence never performed "greater miracles" than that night.

background

The lectures were announced in the Austrian Observer on May 14, 1812. From the “simplest forms of speech” to the “writings for time and posterity”, the peculiarities of the art of speaking should be developed “as clearly as possible”. Here the "character in the speech, as well as the style of the writing as well as the receptivity in hearing ... are described ... and in relation to the practical life ... are represented."

They followed on from a similar series by Friedrich von Schlegel on the history of old and new literature that he had held sixteen days earlier in the dance hall of an inn. The speeches quickly caused a stir and outdid Schlegel's appearance.

Since Müller in VI. Chapter mentioned the advantages of the democratic system compared to the existing conditions in Germany, a censorship official, the court secretary Armbruster, felt compelled to report to Prince Metternich .

reception

As controversial as Müller's work and character appear to posterity and as much as one criticized the Catholic convert and "romantic state theorist" for his personal weaknesses and political machinations - from the "stable feeding of the peoples according to natural philosophical principles" ( Heinrich Heine ), from the "aftertaste of the charlatanry "( Friedrich Schlegel ), there was talk of the" reverse Jacobin "( Friedrich Hebbel ) - he was repeatedly praised as a talented stylist and brilliant rhetorician. On the other hand, even with a stylist like Müller, certain mannerisms, comparatives and superlatives are noticeable, which are sometimes borrowed from Wilhelm Tieck, Schlegel or Franz Theremin and - as Carl Schmitt noted - tarnish the picture.

Hugo von Hofmannsthal 1910 on a photograph by Nicola Perscheid

Hugo von Hofmannsthal - conservative esthete and important stylist like Müller - praised the twelve speeches on the occasion of the new edition in 1920 as opposed to the “overexerted, technically restricted expression of the present day” and included parts of them in his text collection Value and Honor of the German Language as in his “German Reading Book ”.

If you look at the current speeches in Germany, you notice a “poverty and stiffness, a lack of security and dignity of expression.” As Hofmannsthal repeatedly complained - as in his great literary speech that absorbs Müller's thoughts - one is faced with an “aborted” speech in Germany Tradition ”, to which the other Western European peoples appeared“ superior and victorious ”.

Müller's book, which came from a happier literary era, had an immediate, politically wanted effect. If you read the beautiful speeches, you will be filled with a "pleasant alienation". As much as the mind sees itself transported to a distant epoch and is surrounded by the “atmosphere of Schiller ... the Humboldt brothers”, one recognizes something of one's own and feels carried to lasting by the changing fashions. Ultimately, the surface of spiritual things has changed more, but not their core. In contrast to today's publications, the words “strength and dignity” are more fresh. The beautiful works, the connection of the high, the ideal with the real. Such publications, properly distributed, should have an influence on the spiritual elements of the nation in order to influence the "public tone" and the language of the nation through the newspapers.

The conservative literary critic and talented stylist Friedrich Sieburg - like Müller and Hofmannsthal - repeatedly compared French and German intellectual life. How Müller dealt with the decline of eloquence in Germany, so Sieburg in his lust for ruin , one has to speak of the "decline of literature" today. She is closely related to rhetoric, since both relate to people in society. Since this is missing, literature has "lost its right."

For Walter Jens Müller, “the police state's favorite child”, was one of the great masters of German eloquence despite his weaknesses in character. The tenor of the Protestant sermon had given his speeches glamor and pathos. Müller's diction, with its rhythmically structured prose characterized by parallelisms and antitheses, was shaped by pulpit rhetoric. Even if he was a "characterless politician" - his sense of language was not corrupted, and he was not wrong on "questions of German style". This work will remain.

With his statement that eloquence flourishes above all in republics, Müller had expressed a truth that he otherwise fought: that there can only be a humane conversation where republican freedom prevails.

literature

Text output

  • Adam Müller: Twelve speeches on eloquence and its decline in Germany , Library of Skeptical Thinking, Verlag JG Hoof, Warendorf 2003
  • Adam Müller: Twelve speeches about eloquence and its decline in Germany , Ed. Walter Jens, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt 1967 ( collection insel 28)
  • Adam Heinrich Müller Twelve speeches on eloquence and its decline in Germany Held at Vienna in the spring of 1812 , digitized

Secondary literature

  • Michael Emmrich: Heinrich von Kleist and Adam Müller, Mythological Thinking , Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt, 1990, European University Writings, Series I, German Language and Culture, ISBN 3-631-41979-1
  • Björn Hambsch: Decline in eloquence . In: Gert Ueding (ed.): Historical dictionary of rhetoric . Darmstadt: WBG 1992ff., Vol. 10 (2011), Col. 1377-1393.
  • Walter Jens: reactionary eloquence , Adam Müller, in: Von deutscher Rede, Piper, Munich 1983

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Adam Müller, Twelve Speeches about eloquence and its decline in Germany, foreword, Bibliothek des skeptischen Denkens, Verlag JG Hoof, Warendorf 2003, p. 8
  2. ↑ Adam Müller, Twelve Speeches about eloquence and its decline in Germany, foreword, Bibliothek des skeptischen Denkens, Verlag JG Hoof, Warendorf 2003, p. 9
  3. ↑ Adam Müller, Twelve Redenings on Eloquence and its Decline in Germany, Preface, Library of Skeptical Thinking, Verlag JG Hoof, Warendorf 2003, p. 10
  4. ↑ a b Adam Müller, Twelve Speeches about eloquence and its decline in Germany, foreword, library of skeptical thinking, Verlag JG Hoof, Warendorf 2003, p. 14
  5. ↑ Adam Müller, Twelve Speeches about eloquence and its decay in Germany, From Conversation, Library of Skeptical Thinking, Verlag JG Hoof, Warendorf 2003, p. 27
  6. ↑ Adam Müller, Twelve Speeches about eloquence and its decline in Germany, From the art of hearing, Library of skeptical thinking, Verlag JG Hoof, Warendorf 2003, p. 56
  7. ↑ Quotation from: Adam Heinrich Müller, Twelve Reden about eloquence and its decline in Germany , in: Kindlers Neues Literatur-Lexikon, Vol. 12, Munich 1991, p. 24.
  8. ↑ Michael Emmrich: Heinrich von Kleist and Adam Müller, Mythological Thinking , Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt, 1990, Europäische Hochschulschriften, Series I, German Language and Culture, p. 109
  9. ↑ a b Adam Heinrich Müller, Twelve Reden about eloquence and its decline in Germany , in: Kindlers Neues Literatur-Lexikon, Vol. 12, Munich 1991, p. 24.
  10. ↑ Quotation from: Walter Jens , Reactionary eloquence, Adam Müller, in: Von deutscher Rede, Piper, Munich 1983, p. 80
  11. ^ Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Adam Müller's twelve speeches ..., collected works in ten individual volumes, speeches and essays II, Fischer, Frankfurt 1979, p. 125.
  12. ^ A b Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Adam Müller's twelve speeches ... , collected works in ten individual volumes, speeches and essays II, Fischer, Frankfurt 1979, p. 125.
  13. ^ Friedrich Sieburg , Marsch in die Barbarei, Die Lust am Untergang, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1983, p. 310
  14. ^ A b Walter Jens, reactionary eloquence, Adam Müller, in: Von deutscher Rede, Piper, Munich 1983, pp. 84–85.