Heinrich Seidel
Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Georg Philipp Eduard Seidel ( born June 25, 1842 in Perlin, Mecklenburg -Schwerin, † November 7, 1906 in Great light field in Berlin) was a German engineer and writer.
Life
Heinrich Seidel was the son of originating from Goldberg same evangelical pastor Heinrich ( Alexander) Seidel ( 1811-1861 ) in Perlin at Wittenburg born. He studied mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic Institute in Hannover and since 1866 at the Commercial Academy in Berlin and became an engineer. The new offices of the Berlin- Potsdam Railway (1870-1872) and the Berlin- Anhalt Railway (1872-1880), he constructed railway facilities such as Yorck bridges and designed the unique in Europe at that time roof construction of the pickup station with a wingspan of 62.5 meters. In 1880 he made his, as he writes in the memoirs Perlin From Berlin, " strange double life " and devoted himself exclusively to writing.
Seidel was a member of the Academic Club hut, short HUT, named Frauenlobstraße in the literary society tunnel over the river Spree and a founding member of the Mecklenburg Country team Obotritia, later Corps Obotritia Darmstadt .. The beginnings of the country team Obotritia he has claimed in his book From Perlin Berlin described as Leberecht chicken. Under the pseudonym John Köhnke he participated alongside Julius Stinde (pseudonym Theophilus ball home ), Johannes Trojan and other generally German rhyme club (ADR).
The famous saying " The engineer is nothing too hard," has been his motto and first line of his 'Engineer Song ' of 1871.
Heinrich Seidel had a special hobby: He used to bring his travels abundant seeds of alien plants to them ( for example Zimbelkraut, a plantain plant, in Doberan ) suspend in Berlin or elsewhere again. Some shrub species have the relocation well survived and today are natural constituents of the Berlin flora.
1875 married Agnes Becker Seidel ( 1856-1917 ), the daughter of a Hamburg merchant. With her he had three sons. The oldest, Heinrich Wolfgang Seidel, also later became a well-known writer. The godfather of his youngest son Helmuth Helmuth Karl Bernhard Seidel was von Moltke, who had been baptized Heinrich Seidel's great-grandfather in Parchim on November 2, 1800. In Berlin Seidel first lived in the house of Senator aD Dr. Karl Eggers (brother of Friedrich Eggers ) in the street Am Karlsbad 11 in Berlin -Tiergarten and from 1895 until his death from stomach cancer in 1906 in his own house in the Booth Straße 29 in Berlin Villenkolonie Lichterfelde. There Seidel felt especially at home, " a place as beautiful as a poem ."
The honorary grave of Henry Seidel is located on the west wall of the cemetery lights in the field Moltkestraße 42
Artistic creation
His most famous work is the book Henry Seidel Leberecht chicken, which consists of several episodes that originated 1880-1893. The book is still available today and has been found by the description of simple happiness many readers.
The title character Leberecht chicken is a college friend of the narrator, who, like Seidel is an engineer. Chicken lives with his slightly disabled wife and two children in modest circumstances, but he " knows the art of being happy." Among other things, a " feast " is described in which all 15 harvested grapes are eaten ceremoniously. In a later episode, the narrator falls in love with the chick daughter Frieda. Other chapters describe the marriage of the two, separate children's birth and death of the daughter of the narrator and Frieda. Leberecht chicken occurs here in the background, but his spirit continues to serve as a leitmotif.
Chicken idyll is characterized by its independence and its modesty. So it seems from the dangers of modernity, which is symbolized by the molochartige expansion of the city of Berlin, prepared internally.
A marginal figure is Doctor Havel Mueller, who is portrayed as bizarre, good-natured scholar. This Seidel portrayed his friend Emil Jacobsen.
Less well known is Seidel's novel Reinhard Flemming's adventures at sea and on land, in which he processed the memories of his youth in rural Perlin. Here is his "mother tongue", Low German, greater use than in other works.
Were highly valued Seidel's stories and his autobiography From Perlin to Berlin, especially by his fellow writers Stinde, Trojan, Stettenheim and others.
In Seidel's story In 1984, we read the account of the miraculous journey of Gottlieb Nothnagel in the year 1984. Seidel shows us the year 1984 as a machine world of automatic restaurants and extraordinarily rapid intercontinental transport links, populated by people who wear highly individual clothing.
Works (selection)
- Engineer song, 1871
- From the Homeland, short stories, 1874
- Suburban stories, 1880
- Triads are 's, 1880
- Leberecht chicken, Jorinda and Other Stories, 1882
- In 1984, 1884
- News from Leberecht chicken and other nerds, 1888
- Nature Singer, 1888
- Leberecht chicken as a grandfather, 1890
- Weird Tales, 1891
- From Perlin to Berlin Memoirs, 1894, revised edition 2006
- Leberecht chicken ( complete edition ), 1901, new edition in the Insel Verlag, ISBN 3-458-32486-0
- Home stories ( complete edition ), 1902
- Reinhard Flemming's adventures at sea and on land ( 3 vols ), 1900-1906
- Collected Writings, (20 vols ) 1889-1907
- Narrative writings, (7 vols ) 1899-1900
- Collected Works, (5 vols ) 1925