David Ferdinand Koreff

David Ferdinand Koreff ( after his baptism in 1816 Johann (es) Ferdinand Koreff; born 1 February 1783 in Breslau, † May 15, 1851 in Paris) was a German writer and physician and member of various literary groups.

Life

Study

Koreff came from a prominent Jewish family. His father Joachim Koreff Salomon (1732-1805) was a physician in Breslau, and had known the famous Franz Anton Mesmer, whose ideas should also strongly influence the son of animal magnetism. Koreff started studying medicine at the University of Halle in 1802. There he turned under the influence of Schelling's " natural philosophy " in the direction of medicine, which was then dominated by the writings of Franz von Baader. From 1803 he completed his clinical studies in Berlin, where he was connected to the romantic North Star League by Adelbert von Chamisso and Varnhagen von Ense. He gained access to literary salons of Berlin and also joined the Serapion brothers, the literary circle of friends ETA Hoffmann. In his short story collection The Serapionsbrüder Koreff is portrayed as the witty conversationalist mystical Vincent.

Paris

After graduating, he moved to Paris and began to practice, especially among members of the local German colony. At the same time he pursued numerous literary projects. His most important literary work was his lyric poems (1815 ). Included in this is the " prayer of a magnetizer " that gives his poetic and cosmic medicine understanding expression to a recipe and a sonnet only " different emanations of divinity " are:

He wrote the libretto for the opera Aucassin and Nicolette, a processing of the old French tale Aucassin et Nicolette, who was listed in 1822 in Berlin. He also worked as a translator and rendered poems of Tibullus and Sulpicia elegies into German.

Confidant Hardenberg in Berlin

At the Congress of Vienna it was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose family physician he was he by his acquaintance with Humboldt's wife, Caroline, in the Prussian chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg. He managed to win his trust. Hardenberg initially gave him a professorship at the University of Berlin. His opponents pointed out that he was a Jew, not entitled to such a place, whereupon the Chancellor personally led that Koreff was baptized in the Lutheran Church. In addition, he made ​​him his personal physician and personal confidant.

When it Koreff 1817 succeeded in Hardenberg to heal from a serious illness, his position was fully consolidated. He received the presentation for scientific and artistic issues in the Chancellery and was in particular the human development of the Humboldt University in Berlin and the construction of 1818 the newly founded University of Bonn deals. This enabled him to win as professors August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ernst Moritz Arndt. Koreff was now at the height of his career and in the center of the Berlin Society and the literary Germany: He gave Ludwig Tieck and Jean Paul stately inns, Gaspare Spontini made ​​known in Berlin and was one of Alexander von Humboldt and Hegel to his interlocutors. 1818 Koreff was also a member of the Academy of Sciences in Erfurt profit.

Through him a renewed interest Hardenbergs formed on mesmerism, as Koreff practiced this and this technique sensational success - especially in the treatment of the mentally ill - attributed. As evidence for such miracle cure he introduced a medium named Friederike Hähnel in the house Hardenberg's where they impressed the aging chancellor not only by spirit- but especially by her beauty. Probably for this reason they should be the Princess Charlotte added as a partner. This lady, however, should prove to Hardenberg's marriage as explosive device.

In 1822 it came to a loss of trust in Hardenberg, in his absence, he had sent a font Benz mountain to Benjamin Constant to Paris, which are under- his and Constant's name with the provocative title you triomphe inévitable et prochain the principes constitutionnels s Prusse ( " About inevitable and imminent triumph of constitutional principles in Prussia " ) was published. This pamphlet was neither Tsar Alexander, nor Emperor Franz Joseph, still with Metternich and not at Gentz ​​gentle reader, and it has been suggested that publication, was presented to the Hardenberg again as a pioneer of parliamentarism would be published at his instigation been. A denial Hardenberg was no faith, because Koreff a confidant Hardenberg and Constant with a cousin Hardenberg was married. Through this affair Hardenberg's position was heavily damaged and Koreffs Berliner career to an end.

It is not true that the affair Hardenbergs with Friederike Hähnel, which made ​​the old prince to his beloved and to camouflage with a Baron of Kimski (or Kimsky supposedly a player ) had married, was responsible for Koreffs fall. The Hähnel remained about the separation from his wife and Hardenberg's until his death in her arms his mistress. Previously (by Codizill of 20 April 1822) Hardenberg had exposed her a pension for life. In addition, she was told by the dying Chancellor, who as travel funds led to his recent trip to Verona 100,000 dollars with them, to have plundered along with her husband thoroughly. She decided her days in Rome to noisy conversion to the Catholic faith.

Last year in Paris

So Koreff moved to the end of his ambitions Berlin again in 1822 to Paris. His circle of friends in the French capital belonged to the painter Eugène Delacroix, the philosopher Victor Cousin, the musician Giacomo Meyerbeer and great writers like Stendhal, Prosper Mérimée, Alfred de Musset, Victor Hugo and Heinrich Heine, whose physician he was. He was also the doctor that Marie Duplessis, who was immortalized as a model for the Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils and Verdi's La Traviata. He appeared to the French as a strange, quirky German dressed as the " Hoffmanneske doctor " (le Medicin hoffmannique ), to which probably contributed also carried by it Loden red wig.

Due to a scandal over excessive fee demands (the case of Lady Lincoln), he lost his position in 1838 in the elegant world and treated in his last years, the members of the Parisian middle class with its slowly coming out of fashion magnetic cures. He died in poverty altogether.

As an intermediary between the leading French and German literary groups Koreff was an important personality. Among other things, he encouraged the French edition of the works of ETA Hoffmann on. Overall, he was the perfect example of the characteristic for many romantics vacillation between poles: scientist and writer, doctor and charlatan, Jew and Christian, German and French.

Works

• Contributions under the pseudonym Anthropos to Musenalmanach. Hrsgg. by Adelbert von Chamisso and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, 1804-1806
• Albii Tibulli carmina libri tres. translation; Paris 1810
• The Sulpicia Elegies and some elegiac fragments of others. translation; Paris 1810
• Réflexions sur la nouvelle machine a plonger, appelee Triton, inventée par M. Frédéric Drieberg. Paris 1811
• Don Tacagno, funny musical comedy in 2 acts. Music of Johann Friedrich of Drieberg, 1812
• The arrival of the emperor. Vienna 1814
• Lyrical poems. Paris 1815
• Weihgesang the birth celebrations of His Majesty the King of Prussia on the third day of August 1815. Paris 1815
• De regionibus Italiae Aere pernicioso contaminatis. . Berlin 1817 German: About the bad air regions of Italy. Berlin 1821
• German word from Prussia to the Rhinelander. In response to the Scripture given the address of the city of Coblenz and the landscape to His Majesty the King in public. Audience with His Highness the Prince State Chancellor on January 12, 1818 1818
• As to the phenomena of life and the laws by which it reveals itself in the human organism. A Skitze as an introduction to his lectures on human physiology. Berlin 1820
• You triomphe inévitable et prochain the principes constitutionnels s Prusse. With Benjamin Constant. Paris 1821
• Aucassin and Nicolette, or: The love of the good old days. Opera in 4 acts. Text Koreff. Music by Georg Abraham Schneider. Berlin 1822. Digitalisat