Georg Herwegh
Georg Friedrich Rudolph Theodor Herwegh ( born May 31, 1817 in Stuttgart, † April 7, 1875 in Lichtental ) was a socialist- revolutionary German poet and translator of the pre-March period. Besides Georg Weerth he is considered one of the most important poet of the German proletariat in the 19th century. Herwegh partially bombastic, occasionally bloodthirsty poetry from the safety of exile as his failure in actual revolutionary situation was interpreted by Ulrich Enzensberger as a " mixture of bitterness and Verbiestertheit from Großsprechertum and violence ", which can be seen as well as stylistic anticipation of Wilhelminism.
Life
1817-1848: Vormarz
Georg Herwegh was born in 1817 as son of the innkeeper Ernst Ludwig Herwegh and raisin Catharina Herwegh. From 1828 he lived with relatives and attended the Latin school in Balingen as a classmate of Gottlieb Rau. From 1831-35 he attended after passing the exam the country Protestant seminary (high school ) in Maulbronn monastery and studied theology from 1835 and law in Tübingen as a fellow of the Tübingen pin from which he was expelled in 1836. During his studies, he became in 1835 a member of the union Burschenschaft Association of patriots Tübingen. From 1836 he worked as a freelance writer in Stuttgart, and from 1837 he worked with both on August Lewald Journal Europe, as well as Karl Gutzkow Telegraph Journal for Germany. In 1839 he felt compelled to flee to Switzerland because he had offended at a masked ball a royal -Württemberg officer and threatened him, the military forced recruitment.
His flight took him first after Emmishofen and then to Zurich, where he edited the critical part for the published by Johann Georg August Wirth magazine Hall of the People. He became friends with the fraternity and poet August Follen. In the summer of 1841 the first part of his poems a living, which represented a polemical counterpart to the letters of a deceased person by Hermann von Pueckler and made him an instant celebrity appeared. The 1841 resulting poems include lullaby The anxious night and O Freedom, Liberty! .
From autumn 1841 to February 1842 Herwegh traveled to Paris and met with Heinrich Heine, who later in his poem An Georg Herwegh ironically as "iron lark " immortalized him. After his return to Zurich, he delivered himself a journalistic battle with the Zurich conservatives. Due to its caustic comments in the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper and edited by Julius Froebel Journal Swiss Republican, he was sentenced by the District Court of Zurich fined.
He worked for the Karl Marx edited Rheinische Zeitung ( cf. Neue Rheinische Zeitung) and planned to restructure the German messengers from Switzerland to an organ of struggle against political and social oppression in Germany. During this time he became friends with Ludwig Feuerbach. In 1842 he traveled to Germany to recruit people for his magazine project, and learned in Cologne Karl Marx, for whose newspaper he had already written. He also got an audience with the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the magazine was prohibited before its publication immediately after the meeting with Herwegh. In December, Frederick William IV of Prussia identify Herwegh after who had complained in an open letter about the political situation in Germany.
On his return to Switzerland, he met in Leipzig anarchists Michael Bakunin, who influenced him again and again with his later writings. After his return to Switzerland Herwegh received the right of citizenship in the canton of Basel-Country, established links with the communist movement artisan ago. He was married to Emma Siegmund, the daughter of a Berlin banker. He also had good contacts with Ludwig Büchner, August Wilhelm Becker and wide Ling, the influential theorist of the League of the Just. From 1842 to 1843 he worked as an editor for the magazine, the young generation, and published in 1843 twenty-one arc from Switzerland, a collection of unpublished contributions to the magazine, which should bypass the Twenty -arm clause of the German censorship.
In 1843 he moved, pardoned by the King of Württemberg on condition of emigration to Paris and met again Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin. In addition, he met Jenny Marx, Moses Hess, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Beranger, Carl Vogt and other prominent intellectuals know that time. 1844 appeared here the second part of his poems a living, it lacked the momentum of the first volume, although his republican tendencies still showed certain.
1848-1875: March Revolution, commitment to socialism
After the February Revolution in Paris 1848 Herwegh was elected president of the Republican Committee and Chairman of the German Democratic Legion.
Against all objections and suggestions of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, he hurried with a small armed force the radical democratic insurgents to Friedrich Hecker in Baden during the March Revolution to help ( see also Baden Revolution ). On April 27, 1848, the German Democratic Legion of Württemberg troops in the Battle of Dossenbach (near Schopfheim ) was defeated. The volunteer corps of Friedrich Hecker, the so-called Heckerzug was already a week earlier defeated on the Scheideck at Kandern in the Black Forest in battle and had been wiped out, without it had come to union with Herwegh Freischar. After this defeat Herwegh had to flee again, and again ended his flight in Switzerland. His little rebellion in support of the radical democratic movement in the Grand Duchy of Baden finally led to a break with the founders of scientific socialism.
In his subsequent trip to France he met Alexander Sergeyevich Turgenev and Ivan heart. Early 1850s was Herwegh house in Zurich a meeting place for people like Richard Wagner, Gottfried Semper, Wilhelm Rustow and Franz Liszt. It also came to a break with Alexander Herzen, whose wife Natalie Herwegh loved passionately. He worked during this time for the Swiss liberal press and anonymous for the satirical magazine Kladderadatsch.
1863 Herwegh became the agent of the newly founded General German Workers' Association ( ADAV ) in Switzerland. The ADAV was the first forerunner of the later Social Democratic Party of Germany ( SPD).
Establishing the ADAV Herwegh wrote in 1863, the Federal song as an anthem for the revolutionary proletariat. The following are the last three of twelve stanzas of the Federal song:
The Federal song was banned very fast and could only be distributed illegally for years. Nevertheless, it is still regarded as one of the most famous German workers' struggle songs.
Herwegh friends with the founder of the ADAV, Ferdinand Lassalle, but from which he later distanced himself because of his moderate, more reform-oriented and state-conform attitude. Even the ADAV he alienated again.
In 1866 he returned as a fellow of the working class back to Germany and was even nominated in the same year as honorary correspondent of the First International ( International Workingmen's Association ). In 1869, he joined, founded by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht Marxist- revolutionary Social- Democratic Workers' Party ( SDAP ), with which the ADAV 1875 united.
Herwegh became a permanent employee of the Social Democratic People's State of The Journal, and published in this position his sharpest political poems in which he denounced the Prussian militarism, the Franco-German War of 1870/ 71 and the German Empire. On April 7, 1875 Herwegh died in today Baden-Baden belonging Lichtental. He is buried in Liestal. His grave inscription reads:
"Here lies, as he wanted it, free in his home ground Georg Herwegh May 31, 1817 - April 7, 1875 From the powerful tracked Hated by the slaves, From the most misunderstood, Loved by his family. "
In Liestal 1904 is " the freedom singer and fighter in gratitude dedicated men working friends of freedom " a monument erected. It is provided with the third stanza of the poem An Herwegh grave of Frankfurt poet and comrade Herwegh, Friedrich Stoltze. In an obituary on this Herwegh also wrote:
The estate of George Herwegh and his wife Emma Herwegh now forms the core of the poet and the City Museum Liestal.
Works
- Lightweight luggage, 1840
- Poems of a Living, Volume 1, 1841 (→ figure on the right ) ( digitized and full text in German Text Archive )
- Twenty-one arc from Switzerland, 1843
- Poems of a Living, Volume 2, 1843 ( digitized and full text in German Text Archive )
- Two songs Prussia, 1848
- Four-day - Irr and traveling with the Paris German Democratic Legion in Germany and their end by the Württemberg in Dossenbach, ed. by F. Lipp, 1850
- The Schiller ceremony in Zurich, 1860
- The Federal song, anthem of the 1863 ADAV, the SPD predecessor party
- New poems, 1877
- The song of Hasse, 1841
Translations
- Lamartine's complete works in 6 volumes, 1839/40
- Dramatic works of W. Shakespeare, 7 volumes (20, 24, 27, 29, 34, 36, 37), 1869/71