Adolf Böttger

Adolf Böttger ( born May 21, 1815 in Leipzig, † November 16, 1870 in Gohlis, today in Leipzig ) was a German poet, dramatist and translator. He is considered a "forgotten poet of romanticism." Böttger translated the works of Lord Byron into German.

Life

His father, not unknown as an English lexicographer, was a tax. He received his education at the St. Thomas School of his native city whose university he attended without dedicated to just one particular discipline. The modern languages ​​and not the English among them attracted him above all and made ​​him the celebrated translator, without even taking him his creative power. Boettger has almost never left his native city, and indeed his life was without particularly outer strange fates, but also without any shiny recognition in increasingly narrowing circles. Almost lonely and lost in tribulation he passed away to Gohlis at Leipzig, where he had retired in the past few years. His translation of the works of Lord Byron, which first appeared in 1840, but was then laid up several times, has the German people first developed the depth of this great poet and was down to Gildemeister exemplary. Similarly, translations Popes (1842 ), Goldsmith (1843 ), Milton (1846), Ossian (1847 ), Longfellow's " Hiawatha " (1856 ), as well as individual dramas of Shakespeare in their flowing, finely formed form of certificates that the translator was also a poet. Translated from the French, he translated only in 1853 Racines " Phaedra " and Ponsards " Odysseus ". As an independent poet Böttger first emerged in 1846 in the " poems " on whose melodic form - with admittedly sometimes verfehltem Content - evocatively. For a genre of poetry, described by Gottschall as flower lyric, Böttger was by the two larger seals " Hyacinth and Lilialide " (1849 ) and " The Pilgrimage of flowers spirits" ( 1851), the first impulse. What was with him but deeply felt and portrayed alive, was flattened by his Nachtreter. With special fondness Böttger turned the poetic narrative, the epic- lyric seals " Pausanias " (1852 ), " Habana " (1853 ), " The Fall of Babylon" (1855 ) and " The daughter of Cain " (1865 ). Notwithstanding these is the idyll " Goethe 's Puppy Love" (1861 ), whose style admirably whose images are cleanly executed. Mention should still make the unfinished satirical epic poem: " Till Eulenspiegel " (1850), as well as his swan song, " The Hangman " (1870 ). This its exquisite seals, one may be stringed yet the drama " Agnes Bernauer " ( 1850). His "Collected Works " he gave (Leipzig 1864-1866 ) out, even so without them verhofften profit.

Robert Schumann's Spring Symphony was inspired by a fresh, cheerful, optimistic Spring poem by Adolf Böttger.

1865 published by Dürr in Leipzig his complete seals in six volumes, 1889 at Knaur in Leipzig a second edition also in six volumes.