Karl Mayer (poet)
Karl Friedrich Hartmann Mayer ( born March 22, 1786 in Bishop 's home; † February 25, 1870 in Tübingen) was a lawyer and poet. He belonged to the Swabian school of poetry, to the circle of friends around Justinus Kerner and to Seracher poet circle around the Earl Alexander of Württemberg. His younger brother, Louis Mayer was a landscape painter.
Life
His father Friedrich Christoph Mayer (1762-1841) was a lawyer ( knightly Office of the masters of Helmstatt in Bishop Home ) connected the family moved after the death of his masters to the new place of work to Heilbronn and later was given the title of a court counselor. His mother was Johanna Friederike Henriette Hartmann ( 1762-1820 ).
While his brother Louis Mayer spent the Youth in Heilbronn, Karl Mayer came as a high school student to his grandfather Stuttgart, the Masonic Johann Georg Hartmann. Hartmann was the one who had the Goethe city of Stuttgart shown when he arrived there in 1779. Karl Mayer recalls in his memoirs of 1864 mainly due to the publicists and musicians CFD Schubart, a precursor of Georg Büchner, who temporarily moved after settling a prison at Hohenasperg at Grandpa Hartmann.
From 1803 on, Mayer began his study of law in Tübingen, where he also Ludwig Uhland and Justinus Kerner met, with whom he remained a lifelong. He often went on trips. Mayer later joined the civil service. From 1809 he was a lawyer in Heilbronn, then Assessor in Esslingen am Neckar. When in 1815 the introduction of the new Constitution was debated, he entered politics and for the free thinkers and in 1831 elected for the constituency vineyard in the state legislature, where he belonged to the liberal opposition. In the 1833 election he was re-elected, the mandate but did not accept, as the government denied him the vacation, so Heinrich Pfaff moved in the Chamber of Deputies. 1833 also appeared his first book, a collection of songs, which increased his fame. The book earned him the praise of his colleagues as well as criticism. Wolfgang Menzel and Eduard Moerike admired it. From 1842 he was chief magistrate in Waiblingen.
The poet as a long forgotten even by experienced Mörike poem To Karl Mayer and as a hate object of Heinrich Heine attention. Here, Mayer was a liberal during the German Revolution of 1848/49 on the part of revolutionaries and advocated a friendship with France, and was opposed to the Prussians. The Democrat Mayer went to Frankfurt in 1848 to support his friend Uhland, who was sitting on the side of the left in the National Assembly. The unsuccessful end of the " Rump Parliament " in Stuttgart, and especially the following " reaction time " Mayer is very sorry. Following arise even political poems, which he published only after an amnesty for his son in 1864. Most recently, he was Chief Justice and retired in Tübingen. Nikolaus Lenau later calls him the "genius of friendship".
Mayer had married in 1818 Friederike press ( 1792-1844 ). From the marriage seven children were born, including a son, also Karl Mayer (1819-1889) was called. He was like -minded and was in the decades after his return from exile in Switzerland to a main character of Württemberg Republicans ( and member of the Reichstag from 1881 to 1887 ).
Importance
Mayer was a master of nature poetry and is mainly confined to this genre. Numerous spring poems sprang from his pen.
Works
- Mayer, Karl [ Friedrich Hartmann ]: Images on the trails. Poems. Selected, introduced and annotated by Hans Mattern and Hans Feyrer. Sigmaringen 1993 ( Cultural-historical miniatures).