Charles Victor de Bonstetten
Karl Viktor von Bonstetten ( born September 3, 1745 in Bern, † February 3, 1832 in Geneva) was a Swiss writer.
Life
Karl Viktor von Bonstetten came from a Bernese patrician family (his father Charles Emmanuel of Bonstetten was finance minister for the French speaking subjects areas Berns ); according to the majority spent in Yverdon youth he studied first in Geneva ( the naturalist and philosopher Charles Bonnet ), then in Leiden / Holland and Cambridge ( where he met the poet Thomas Gray befriended ) and Paris, after which he returned to Bern. In 1773 he met the young Swiss historian Johannes Müller know whose friend and patron Bonstetten remained a lifetime. 1774 Bonstetten was on grand tour of Italy; addressed to Müller letters have been collected only recently and published. In 1775 he was elected to the Grand Council (legislature ) of the Republic of Berne and tried as an enlightened patrician to a relaxation of encrusted social and political conditions. After his marriage to Marianne von Wattenwyl and joint work with Johannes Müller at the Swiss history he 1779 /80 Official governor in Rougemont. Bonstetten also wrote letters about a Swiss shepherd Country ( 1782 ) astutely described the transition from pasture to proto-industrial cheese business.
In the Grand Council he tried unsuccessfully to reform the Bernese education. When traveling, he became friends with Sophie von La Roche, Friedrich von Matthisson and the Danish writer Friederike Brun. From 1787 to 1793 Bonstetten worked as a bailiff in Nyon / Vaud, where he initiated Hydraulic reforms among others. 1792 first published writings of Karl Viktor von Bonstetten. 1795 to 1797 he was a syndicator ( superintendent ) in then Ticino bailiwicks of Confederation and fought against the prevailing corruption in the legal system.
After the surrender Berns before the Napoleonic troops in 1798 to Bonstetten continued to Copenhagen from Friederike Brun; she gave 1802 anonymous letters of a young scholar to his friend between Bonstetten and Johannes von Müller out and with their help also appeared a four-volume New fonts that Bonstetten contained letters about the Italian offices, among other things: today worth reading habits and Social Images.
1803 Bonstetten took up residence in Geneva, where he frequently Madame de Staël at Coppet Castle on Lake Geneva and visited there the closest friends de Staël was formed with Charles de Sismondi, Benjamin Constant and August Wilhelm Schlegel. He made several trips to Italy and France, he worked as a writer; he also wrote philosophical experiments on the imagination and the intellectual property of men, as well as cultural philosophical essays on the influence of climate on the culture. Bonstetten died in 1832 at the age of 87 years in Geneva.
Bonstetten wrote mainly French and transferred his writings together with girlfriends and friends as Johannes Müller and Friederike Brun into German. In addition to the writings he expressed itself mainly in a vast correspondence with many leading contemporaries in Europe. Goethe sent his Eckermann to Geneva, who handed the following judgment from the old Bonstetten: " Bonstetten is a man [ ... ] who has Voltaire and Rousseau up to the wife of Staël and Lord Byron lived with all the literature of the century. He has a limitless experience, and a special gift, the peculiarities of different people by the finest, sharpest intimations to deliver another, and to make clear. " As a cultural mediator between Germany, France, England and Scandinavia Bonstetten was a" Berner of truly European caliber "( Hellmut Thomke ). About 4000 of his letters now worked up and justified in the comprehensive, Peter and Doris Walser William since 1996 and led edition of the Bonstettiana have been submitted.