Johann Anton Leisewitz
Johann Anton Leisewitz ( born May 9, 1752 Hannover, † September 10, 1806 in Braunschweig ) was a German writer and lawyer.
Life
Leisewitzstraße was the son of a wine merchant and his wife. He spent his childhood and youth in Celle. In Göttingen, he studied law from 1770 to 1774 and joined in 1774 the Göttingen Hainbund at.
In a contest of theater director Konrad Ernst Ackermann and his wife Sophie Charlotte Schröder Leisewitzstraße in 1775 defeated by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger. The jury assessed his play The Twins better.
After successfully graduating, Leisewitzstraße made in 1775 in Braunschweig as a lawyer down. From this time his contacts ( correspondence) to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Joachim Eschenburg, Jacob Mauvillon come, etc. In Brunswick he was a member of the company founded in 1771 Argonaut Order, which finds mention in a diary entry in 1779.
In the year 1776, held on Leisewitzstraße some time in Berlin and graduated there also acquaintance with Friedrich Nicolai. When Easter of the same year the Lessing 's tragedy Julius of Tarentum Leisewitz read, he imputed if the genius of the authorship of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. This work, the notoriety Leisewitzstraße ' as a writer and is still regarded as one of the most important plays of the Sturm und Drang.
1780 visited Leisewitzstraße Goethe in Weimar. Probably with intercession Goethe Leisewitzstraße was appointed in 1786 to tutor the later Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick- Lüneburg. Four years later Leisewitzstraße became a member of the government in Braunschweig.
1801 became Leisewitzstraße to the Privy Council of Justice and as such he headed from 1805 as president the top medical college. At the age of 54 years Johann Anton Leisewitz died on September 10, 1806 in Braunschweig. In his will Leisewitzstraße ordered the destruction of his entire literary estate of what happened.
He married in 1781 in Hamburg Sophie Marie Catherine Seyler ( 1762-1833 ), daughter of theater director Abel Seyler and sister of the banker Ludwig Edwin Seyler.
Works
- The visit at midnight ( dramatic scene ), 1775
- Julius of Tarentum ( tragedy ), 1776
- Soliloquy of a strong spirit in the night ( dramatic fragment), 1776
- Conradin ( dramatic fragment), 1776
- Alexander and Hephaestion ( dramatic fragment), 1776
- Speech of a scholar to a company scholar ( satire), 1776
- History of the discovery and conquest of the Canary Islands ( translation from English ), 1777
- Message from Lessing 's death (Letter to Lichtenberg), 1781
- About the public facility at institutions for the poor -to-follow principles, 1802