Johann Gaudenz von Salis-Seewis
Gaudenzdorfer Johann Freiherr von Salis - Buchen ( born December 26, 1762 Castle Bothmar at Malan, † January 29, 1834 ) was a Swiss poet.
Life
Salis - Buchen comes from the noble family of Salis. His parents were Baron Johann Ulrich von Salis - Buchen and the baroness von Salis - Jakobea Bothmar. Between 1779 and 1789 he served as an officer in the Swiss Guards of the French king in Paris until the French Revolution led him goodbye - Salis - Buchen was one of the favorites of Marie Antoinette. The next year he made a trip through the Netherlands and Germany (including Weimar), where he met Goethe, Herder, Schiller, Wieland and Matthisson. In particular, with the latter he formed a close friendship. The fellow poets of the Sturm und Drang and the sensibility called him the " Grison Nightingale".
1791 wide his mother. In 1793 he returned to Switzerland, married the 22 -year-old Ursina Pestalozzi and joined the council in his home town Malan. At the political changes in his native country he was lively involved in the next few years, advocated in 1798 decided to connect the Three Leagues to the new, proclaimed by France Helvetic Republic. After the area was occupied in the following year by Austria, Johann Gaudenzdorfer had to flee with his family to Zurich. Here he was appointed Inspector General of the Swiss troops. This activity brought him the ambiguous name "Poet General " because, as a general inspector of Swiss him little happiness was granted. He later went some time after Bern and received a position at the Court of Cassation. The Mediation Act of 1803 enabled him to return to the newly founded Canton Grisons. There he held several public offices until 1817, he resigned as Federal colonel. His father had died two years earlier. Until his death in 1834 he lived in retirement in Malan.
Monuments
In Buchen im Prättigau since 1962 a memorial stone with the words " singer of the home, servants of the people " to him. There stood the castle of his ancestors. The family, however, was moved before his birth by Malan in the inherited from his mother castle.
In Chur is a monument in honor of Johann Gaudenzdorfer Salis ' in the city garden.
Artistic creation
His poetic work is reminiscent in many features to the Matthisson his friend. Both have a tendency to portray Wistful and especially events from the general topics of nature and home. However, the seals of Salis - Buchen should be according to critics characterized by more masculinity, freshness, popularity, as well as deeper and truer desire to always have his elegies a firm and decisive reason. Impressed by the revolutionary ideas of the French Revolution, he was a progressive representatives of human rights and broke away from the conservative, oligarchic tradition of his family, who ruled the Three Leagues unchallenged for decades.
Franz Schubert set many poems of Salis - Buchen as Farewell to the Harp, The grave or to round dance. The 1782 written by Johann Friedrich Reichardt 1799 musically painted Herbstlied applies under the title are already stained the woods today as a German folk song and his most famous work of the poet.