Johann Georg Jacobi
Johann Georg Jacobi ( born September 2, 1740 Good PEMPELFORT in Dusseldorf ( now a district ); † January 4, 1814 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German poet and writer and the older brother of the philosopher, lawyer, businessman and writer Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi.
Life and work
Johann Georg Jacobi was born the son of a wealthy sugar merchant on the estate PEMPELFORT in Dusseldorf. Contrary to his poetic inclinations, he studied from 1763 to 1766 Theology in Göttingen and jurisprudence and philology in Helmstedt, Marburg, Leipzig and Jena. In 1766 he was appointed professor of philosophy at Halle, but as he made the acquaintance Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim ( 1719-1803 ) made from Halberstadt in the same year, his poetic inclinations broke out again, especially when he confirmed him in his poetic efforts. In order to retain the talent in itself, got him Gleim 1769 the sinecure of a canon of the cathedral of Halberstadt. In Halberstadt wrote Jacobi as his patrons love and drinking songs in the style of ancient Greek poet Anacreon. These works gave probably the decisive factor for the later reputation Jacobi at the University of Freiburg, but they led after initial friendship also to disagreements with the literary sizes that period who dismissed the Anacreontic poetry as superficial illusion. 1773 Jacobi was with Christoph Martin Wieland the " Germans Mercury " and later with Wilhelm Heinse the "Iris ," a "literary quarterly magazine for women's room " out.
Despite the tolerance patent of Joseph II of 1781, which guaranteed toleration of religious denominations within Austria, was the establishment by the Emperor appointment of Protestants Jacobi on the Freiburg Chair of Fine Arts and Sciences (1784 ), many citizens of this city as a deliberate provocation - and Freiburg his university had until then remained purely catholic. Nevertheless, the brothers Jacobi had connections to Catholic circles and Jacobi were lectures soon became very popular, so that not only students but also for listeners of all ranks and women were often present, and the lecture halls which often interested could no longer hold. He was elected several times dean of his faculty and 1791 unanimously for the first Protestant Rector of the University. Again entrusted in difficult times 1803 this office, helped him especially his excellent knowledge of French is exercised.
His entry into the Catholic dominated Freiburg Society took Jacobi especially about the female audience. For the ladies educated he taught in his apartment in the men's road a literary wreath. It reported the poetess Maria Therese Artner a girlfriend: " So what do we do in our wreath? We gather around the cozy teapot, sipping his steaming casting, chatting Diess and that, are not you a little precocious, and I may not so much and laugh heartily when it admits whim, tout comme chez nous ... The most popular fabric are trains from the life of excellent people, because of which is able to provide most of Jacobi. " In this context, Jacobi made his 1803 Iris as" resurrect Quarterly Paperback for the learned woman room ". This magazine was particularly popular as a forum for which he had founded the Upper Rhine circle of poets to which Goethe's brother Johann Georg Schlosser, Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel from Colmar and Johann Peter Hebel included.
Jacobi himself wrote numerous poems, wrote prologues to plays, wrote poetry singing and plays and promoted with its own Black Forest seal the regional consciousness around 1800. Many of these songs were later set to music by Schubert, Haydn and Mendelssohn. 1806 was one of the founders of the Jacobian of Sauerbronn excited by Karl Wilhelm Ludwig Friedrich von Drais Freiburger Reading Society. After the final annexation of the Breisgau in Baden in the course of the restoration, he wrote the leitmotif of Baden's Grand Dukes, who wanted to popularize by referring to their Zähringen descent this change of power: The separated for centuries shields / reunite, and a prince Mild / is now the good citizens souls / separate countries equal / marry.
A little later, in 1814, died Jacobi; his pupil Karl von Rotteck held the eulogy at the tender poet and lover of the beautiful. At the funeral at the old cemetery the whole university share increased: The grief was general, very solemnly the funeral. The coffin was carried by students to the cemetery. On the black grave cloth was a white cushion on this well-earned laurels. A girl choir, which progressed the coffin, sang the poet Ash Wednesday song. As luck would have it, the train was passing the to the house where [ King of Prussia ] Friedrich Wilhelm III. was then relegated; the king stood on the balcony and greeted sympathetically ...
At Johann Georg Jacobi's 200th Anniversary, on January 4, 2014 a plaque on his house lived and died in the Lord Street 43 was unveiled.
Reception
Klopstock had only scorn for Jacobi, Herder described his works as a thread- nonsense. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg called Jacobi a Doctorem Jubilatum, a professor who has some time gloriously ministered, and [ in Halberstadt ] finally at a canonry has set at rest, and parodied his poetry with the verses: Language trifling always tenderly as / The night Thoughts enemy Jacobi ... Wrote every maids sweet Briefgen / full love and with Diminutivgen, / Never anything fully, always just a bißgen / Knosp was a Knöspgen, walk a Füßgen, / and how Trüppgen of pygmies / Stehn since the marzipan ideas. / Oh exclaims one, that is certainly of / Gleim or even Anacreon?
Goethe also criticized Jacobi's poems and wrote their success especially his female admirers to find a poem beautiful "and just thinking of the sensations of the words to the verses. But that the true power and effect of a poem in the situation where the subjects are included, thinks of nobody. And for this reason, as well as thousands of poems to be made where the subject is absolutely zero, and the only by feelings and sounding verses feign a kind of existence. "