August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben

August Heinrich Hoffmann, known as Hoffmann von Faller life ( born April 2, 1798 in Faller life, Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg, † January 19, 1874 in Corvey ) was a high school teacher of German, who contributed significantly to the establishment of the discipline as a scientific discipline, poet and collector and editor of ancient texts from different languages ​​. He wrote the later German national anthem, The Song of the Germans, as well as numerous popular children's songs. To distinguish them from other carriers of the frequent surname Hoffmann he took as an addition to the origin of the name Faller life.

Life

Childhood

August Heinrich Hoffmann's parents were the merchant, innkeeper, Senator and Mayor of life Faller Heinrich Wilhelm Hoffmann and his wife Dorothea Balthasar. In 1812 he visited after the Faller Haderslev public school ( elementary school ) to the higher public school (Gymnasium) in Helmstedt. Two years later he moved to the Martino- Katharineum to Brunswick. In May 1815, he debuted with four poems.

Study

In April 1816, at age 18, Hoffman started in Göttingen ( by his own admission " with little money and lust " ) is a study of theology and in the same year a member of the "Old Göttingen fraternity ". Actually, he was more interested in the history of classical antiquity, his example in this respect was Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

When he in studies in museum and library of the city of Kassel the acquaintance of Jacob Grimm made ​​in 1818, asked him this, if he his country does not lie closer than the ancient times. Then he moved to the study of German language and literature ( German and German Philology ). 1818 his father was able to preserve his relationships and money from military service it. That same year, followed Hoffmann his teacher Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker at Bonn University. There was Ernst Moritz Arndt one of his lecturers. In 1819 he became a member of the "Old Bonner fraternity ".

On May 8, 1821 Hoffmann found fragments of a medieval Bible epic of Otfrid. Shortly thereafter, he published an essay on this find with the title Bonner fragments from Otfried together with other language monuments. In the same year his collection of poems Songs and Romances, in which he the name of Hoffmann Faller life helped himself appeared. With the addition of his home town, he simply wanted to avoid the same name and was not out to fake a title of nobility.

Professional life

In December 1821 he left Bonn and went to Berlin to be with the help of his brother librarian. This brought him into contact with the baron Gregory of Meusebach whose private library was famous throughout Prussia. In the circle of Baron Meusebach Hoffmann became friends with Friedrich Karl von Savigny, Georg Friedrich Hegel, Adelbert von Chamisso, Ludwig Uhland and others.

1823 Hoffmann was appointed curator of the University Library Wrocław. There he was appointed as successor to Johann Gustav Gottlieb Büsching 1830 extraordinary professor of German language and literature, in 1835, he was promoted to full professor.

1840 and 1841 he published his collection of poems, non-political songs (Part 1 140 Part 2 with 150 poems ). The high circulation of 12,000 copies was much demand. During a stay on the resort island of Helgoland English then he wrote on August 26, 1841, the Song of the Germans, which was first sung in public in Hamburg in October of the same year.

Hoffmann was particularly interested in the old Dutch language. He made eight trips to Holland and Flanders, where he was the founder of the Dutch Philology and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Leiden. In 1837 he discovered in Valenciennes which is important for Romance Eulalia sequence.

Years of travel

Because of his advocacy of a unified Germany and its liberal attitude that manifested itself in his Non-political songs, Hoffmann was dismissed in 1842 by the Prussian government pensionslos his professorship. The government threw him under the headings including " politically inappropriate principles and tendencies" before. One year later, was deprived of the Prussian citizenship and deported him from the country. This was the turning point in his life; Hoffmann went into exile. He wandered through Germany, but was picked up by political friends. Among his friends in exile was the Vormärzpolitiker Georg fine. Constantly spied on by the police, he was 39 - times reported, including three times from his hometown Faller life. At several stages of his wandering life writing tablets attached to the buildings in the 20th century.

For a long time he was given shelter at the Mecklenburg manors Holdorf, whose owner Rudolf Müller declared him to the authorities as a cowherd, and Buchholz at Ventschow with his political allies, the landowner Samuel Fast. In the seclusion of country life, he created his most beautiful children's songs; from the acquaintance with the determined to emigrate to Texas Pastor Adolf Fuchs created the Texan songs. At the March Revolution of 1848, he took part not active. In the revolutionary year he was rehabilitated thanks to an amnesty law and got the board a waiting money on Prussian soil disbursed, but he did not get his chair back.

Marriage and Family

1849 Hoffmann was rehabilitated back into the Rhineland. In the same year married the 51 -year-old his 18- year-old niece Ida from the mountain, a pastor's daughter from Both field near Hanover. With her he had a son who came to Weimar in 1855 to the world. After his two godfathers and Franz Liszt Friedrich Preller, he was baptized in the name of Franz Friedrich. Later he became a landscape painter. His paintings are exhibited in Hoffmann- of - life Faller Museum in Wolfsburg Faller life.

The composer Liszt the poet had met in 1854 in Weimar, where he edited a literary magazine on behalf of the Grand Duke Carl Alexander. 1860 the family moved after Corvey. There Hoffmann got through the mediation of Liszt and Princess Marie zu Sayn -Wittgenstein a job as a castle librarian at Duke Victor I. Duke of Ratibor. In the same year died his wife Ida.

At the age of 75 years August Heinrich Hoffmann died after a stroke on 19 January 1874 Castle Corvey in Hoexter. He was buried in the presence of more than a thousand mourners beside his wife in the cemetery next to the former Abbey of Corvey.

Political significance

The politicization of Hoffmann was already in his childhood. Born a few years after the French Revolution, he grew up in the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation into hundreds of micro, absolutist governed principalities. As a child he lived in the time of the Napoleonic occupation, the introduction of civil rights ( equality before the law, freedom of religion, public legal proceedings, etc. ). After the retreat of the Grande Armée as a result of defeat in Russia in 1812, the old aristocratic order was re-installed in the form of the Kingdom of Hanover in the home of the poet.

The political significance of Hoffmann was in the fight for the lost civil liberties and in the efforts to create a united German Fatherland. The latter was accomplished mainly through his Song of Germany, which at that time was sung enthusiastically by students and liberal -minded citizens. His Unpolitischen songs were not at all political. They attacked the political circumstances of the time, such as petty, press censorship, arbitrary prince, omnipotence of the police and military.

Characteristic of his attitude towards France was the experience of the Rhine crisis, as 1840/1841 France laid claim to the Rhineland for him, as for many of his generation. The rejection of such expansion needs was also the occasion to write the song of the Germans. In the first stanza he calls for the unity of the Germans, who will lead to triumph over any attacker ( " Germany above all "). The rejection against France solidified on Faller life, the longer France cooperated with a German unification in his eyes. In the Franco-German War he wrote in the summer of 1870:

" [ ... ] And leaves us only the left hate, hatred against the French rejected gender, these abominations of humanity, these great dogs, this grande nation de l' infamie et de la bassesse. God gives and He gives it that we gloriously emerge from this difficult struggle and humanity prove the great service that my, our all, Germany above all ' becomes the truth. "

Hoffmann also wrote anti-Jewish poems such as Emancipation (1840 ), which states addressed to the people " Israel ": "You -consuming test under our feet / Us our German fatherland ... And are be taught by this God / On usury, lying and deceit considered. Do you want to ... of this God does not leave, / Never open Germany you his ear. "

Corresponding antijudaistischer connotations (eg alleged usury, overconfidence or plenitude of power ) operated Hoffmann also in his satirical poem The Song of Sandomir and his polemical poems against Rothschild ( modesty leadeth to the highest in the world; Des German Emperor Kammerknechte ) and Heine. In his nationalist definition of the German one he wanted " the stranger completely banished " and what are their "meaning" abolished "foreign words" and wished " curse and destruction / all, this strange trinkets ".

His works made ​​by Hoffmann Faller life in one fell swoop famous, but also cost him a professional career. After the appearance of the Non-political songs he had for his nationalism, which was aimed at disempowering the individual princes, first big problems with the Prussian government. In 1842 he was dismissed from his teaching post and remained for years without permanent employment.

1845 Hoffmann visited the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, initially full of enthusiasm for the German national uprising against the Danish royal power. However, after a meeting in the town of Schleswig disappointed he wrote in his diary:

"This Schleswiger have in common with us almost only the language. In them, the Danish essence lies very deep, and it comes out at every opportunity ... "

Hoffmann's greatest political desire a united Germany, was in his lifetime at least partially true, as in 1871, the German Empire was founded under Otto von Bismarck.

Commemoration

In Faller life castle the city of Wolfsburg has a Hoffmann- of - life Faller Museum established. The birthplace of Hoffmann is now run as a hotel - restaurant with room operation ( Hoffmann- house) and is owned by the city of Wolfsburg. Outside the building is a stone bust of the poet.

On the North Sea island of Helgoland, a monument to him is built as well as in Hoexter. A bronze relief with a portrait of the poet is mounted in Hannover Lower Saxony state parliament in the line lock on a labeled archway. It was manufactured by Siegfried Neuenhausen 2007. As a second production the relief since 2008 hangs in the town hall in Wolfsburg.

To his memory gives the Hoffmann- of - life Faller Society biennial Hoffmann- of - life Faller price. In addition, each year on May 1, the anniversary of the inauguration of Hoffmann as a librarian in Corvey (1860 ), the Hoffmann -von- Fallersleben medal awarded in the Imperial Hall of the castle Corvey in a personality that has been especially active for the unity of Germany.

In several cities, schools were named after him ( including Braunschweig, Hannover, Hoexter, Luetjenburg, Weimar and Wolfsburg).

In Hanover -Both field at the St. Nicolai Church on the 100th anniversary of the Germany - song an oak tree was planted in 1941 in memory of the poet. In Both field he founded in 1849 his family and wrote many songs heath. This is indicated by a memorial stone.

From 1990 -2006 there was in Berlin, the Hoffmann- of - life education work Faller eV a named according to Hoffmann- of - life Faller club of right-wing functionaries and cadres based in Berlin.

In Bingen- Bingerbrück a way to Elisenhöhe on the name in 2009, " Hoffmann- of - Faller Life Path " inaugurated. It offers a wide view on Bingerbrück, the place in which Hoffmann von Faller life lived 1849 to 1851.

Work

In addition to his political poetry, the poet created 550 children's songs, of which he set 80, many in collaboration with his friend Ernst Richter. In addition, he wrote folk and patriotic songs. The most famous songs are:

• The Song of the Germans, the third verse is the National Anthem of the Federal Republic of Germany
• All birds are already there ( in Althaldensleben written )
• Who has the most beautiful sheep
• A little man stands in the forest (December 1843)
• Hum, hum, hum
• Goodbye winter, divorce hurts
• Cuckoo, cuckoo calls from the forest 's
• The Cuckoo and the Donkey
• A, a, a, the winter is here
• Morning Comes Santa Claus
• Spring has set itself
• Emigration song
• Evening there will again
• In the fall

Bibliography

Hoffmann von Faller life as an author ( first edition: publisher, place and year ):

• Apolitical songs I. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1841
• Apolitical songs II Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg 1842
• Preface to political poems from the German past. GL Schuler, Strasbourg, 1842 ( edited and with an afterword by George Fine)
• German songs from Switzerland. Winterthur and Zurich 1843
• Pleiades gevatterlicher weighing songs for wife Minna von Winterfeld. Polish Neudorf. 20 Rose Moon 1827. Printed and published by Forster, high -heimer and Comp. to the 4 towers. 8 °. 10 pages.
• Fifty children songs by Hoffmann von Faller life on the original and known ways with piano accompaniment. From Ernst Richter. Xavier and Wigand, Leipzig 1843
• Fifty new children's songs by Hoffmann von Faller life on the original and known ways with piano accompaniment. From Ernst Richter. Friedrich Wassermann, Mannheim 1845
• Forty children songs by Hoffmann von Faller life on the original and folk - ways with piano accompaniment. Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig 1847
• My life: notes and recollections. Six volumes, Carl Rümpler, Hannover 1868-1870

Hoffmann von Faller life as an editor:

• Political Poems from the German past, in 1843 ( digitized )

Collections:

• Collected Works, 1893 ( posthumously )