Johann Karl Wezel

Johann Karl Wezel (also: Carl, born October 31, 1747 in Special Hausen, † January 28, 1819 ) was a German poet, writer and educator of the late Enlightenment.

  • 4.1 Wezel Yearbooks
  • 4.2 Research ( selection)

Life

Wezel was the son of a civil servant courtly cook peasant origin. Breakfast was Wezel musical and poetic talent and was encouraged by Dietrich Nikolaus Giseke, in whose house he moved when he was in Leipzig began studying theology in 1764. Soon he completed his subjects to law, philosophy and philology.

Fear God Christian Gellert mediated Wezel, of himself to the study of Locke, Voltaire and La Mettrie turned without a degree, a job as a tutor at the Freiherr von Schönberg in Bautzen / Trattlau, where he remained until 1775. After 1776, he worked as a critic Staff at the "New Library of the fine arts and the liberal arts ." Wezel experienced strong support by Christoph Martin Wieland, with whom he fell out later.

Wezel traveled to St. Petersburg, Paris and London, was from 1782 to 1784 playwright in Vienna and returned to his birthplace in 1793 probably Sondershausen back. During the last two decades of his life he was probably in a life crisis triggered by social isolation, financial difficulties and literary controversies. He was repeatedly subjected to psychiatric treatments, in June 1800 when Samuel Hahnemann in Altona. Whether and to what extent he wrote at this time is unknown; his manuscripts were stolen several times. Books that appeared at this time under his own name are mostly foisted; whether they contain proportions of stolen manuscripts, is unexplored.

The " Wezel - house" in Sondershausen where Wezel spent his last eight years of life, was demolished in 1986. Today there is a metal stele, and the street bearing his name.

Wezel was one of the first authors who could live solely on her writing. Some of his books were great successes, notably Hermann and Ulrike. Nevertheless, he was in his lifetime almost completely forgotten. Only Arno Schmidt brought Wezel in 1959 with the radio essay Belphegor or How I hate you back to memory.

Work

Wezel wrote at first poems, as well as novels, comedies and satires. His works include the influence of Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett and G. Laurence Sterne. Wezel satirical novel Belphegor is considered as a counterpart to Voltaire's Candide and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. The hero Belphegor traveling together with his friends and Medardus Fromal and the girl Akanthe around the world and is, like Gulliver, numerous adventures. However, these are little bit of humor and satire, as marked by terror and cruelty.

Wezel wrote in addition to his literary works also an independent contribution to the new science anthropology, which makes him unique among his contemporaries. He criticizes Ernst Platner's philosophical medicine that still appeals to metaphysical conceptions of the soul. Wezel itself argues for a new empirically - psychological understanding of the soul. With Platner he also led a public polemic. However, even he runs a literary description of the emotions and passions based on the experimental psychology (1756 ) Johann Gottlob Krüger. For Wezel is the " nerve juice" the connecting link between soul and body. In his pedagogy Wezel is close to the educational ideas of the Dessau Philanthropin where the education of the people was not understood by the notion of a normalized, perfect ideal, but for pragmatic point of view to the formation of an individual personality.

Writings

Individual works (selection)

Wezel works during his lifetime, almost all published anonymously.

  • Life history Tobias Knauts, the wise, otherwise called the Stammerer: collected from family news. Leipzig 1773-1776
  • Filiberto and Theodosia. Leipzig 1772
  • The Earl of Wickham
  • Peter Marcks, a marriage history. 1775
  • Belphegor or the most likely story under the sun. Novel. 2 volumes, Leipzig 1776 (Vol. 2 as digitized and full text in German Text Archive )
  • Herrmann and Ulrike. Strangely novel. 4 volumes, Leipzig 1780
  • Epistle to the German poet. Leipzig 1775
  • Appellation of vowels to the audience. Frankfurt; Leipzig 1778
  • Comedies. Leipzig 1778-1787
  • Wild Betty. Leipzig 1779
  • Zelmor and Ermide. Leipzig 1779
  • Diary of a new Ehmanns. Frankfurt; Leipzig 1779
  • Robinson Krusoe New edited. Leipzig 1779
  • About Language Arts, Science and flavor of the Germans. Leipzig 1781
  • My resurrection .. o.o. 1782
  • Wilhelmine Arend or the dangers of sensibility. Dessau 1782
  • Cockroach, or history of a Rosicrucian from the previous centuries. Leipzig 1784
  • Essay on the knowledge of man. 2 vols Leipzig 1784/85
  • Works of madness: Wezel the God-man. Erfurt 1804/ 05

Werkausgaben

  • Critical writings, ed. by Albert R. Schmitt, Phillip McKnight, 3 vols Stuttgart 1971-1975
  • Pedagogical writings, ed. by Phillip McKnight. Frankfurt 1996
  • Complete Edition, ed. by Klaus Manger, 8 vols, Heidelberg 1997
John Locke Gulliver's Travels Robinson Crusoe Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie Zeno.org Integrated Authority File
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