Johann Nikolaus Götz

Johann Nikolaus Götz ( born July 9, 1721 Worms, † November 4, 1781 in Winter castle in Bad Kreuznach ) was a German clergyman, writer and translator. He is regarded as representative of the German Anacreontics.

• 2.1 works
• 2.2 Posthumous editions
• 2.3 musical settings

Life

Origin, educational background

Goetz came from a Protestant parsonage in Worms, where he attended high school from 1731. After high school he studied 1739-1742 in the Prussian university town of Halle ( Saale) Philosophy ( Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Georg Friedrich Meier, Christian Wolff), Greek and Hebrew ( Michaelis sen., And jun. ) And theology ( Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten, Andreas Weber Johann Friedrich Stiebritz and Johann Georg Knapp), where he formed the so-called second Halleschen poet circle with his friends Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim study and Johann Peter Uz and a half years worked as a preceptor at Francke'schen orphanage; the literary and human connection to Gleim and Uz, he lived long maintained, even over long distances.

Tutor, foreign travel,

After studying Götz received in 1742 on the recommendation of his former teacher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten a job as a tutor in the now Prussian recently Emden in the family of the princes of Kalckreuth and was responsible among others for the education of the young Count Wilhelm Heinrich Adolf von Kalckreuth. After the health-related return to Worms, he was in 1744 in Forbach, Lorraine Castle preacher and tutor with the widow of the Governor General of the Duchy of Zweibrücken, Henning von Stralenheim whose grandson he raised and he accompanied in 1746 the Knights Academy (nobility school) in Luneville. There he came up with the intellectual atmosphere at the court of Lorraine Duke Stanislaus I. Leszczynski in contact, including with Voltaire, and developed his love for the French language and literature, especially in their small forms.

Chaplain, pastor, Marriage

In 1747, Goetz chaplain at the Régiment Royal Allemand in Nancy, with whom he undertook the expedition to Flanders and Brabant; He spent his free time with trips to nearby Holland and studies. After the Peace of Aachen (1748 ), he returned to Germany, where he in 1751, the Lutheran pastor in Zweibrücken Hornbach received and in the same year married the widow of his predecessor Hautt; the wandering years were finished. In 1754 he became senior pastor and inspector in Meis Home, then in 1759 (1761? ) Oberkonsistorialrat in the first Zweibrücken, ibid at Bad Kreuznach and in the same year since 1776 Superintendent of Baden- durlachischen Amtsort winter castle on Soonwaldsteig. Promotions and transfers struck from idols, to devote himself to the family, his community and his poetry. Cut off from the great literature and its movements, Götz nevertheless encouraged by winter castle from the "peasant poet " Isaac mouse and Kreuznacher painter and poet painter Müller.

Later years and death

The sensitive and courteous poet idol died in 1781 at the age of 61 years, despite a happy marriage and family relationships full of premonitions of death and worried about the future of the family and the great Pietist oriented and barren community, of a stroke. Karl Wilhelm Ramler familiar and the student Karl Ludwig von Knebel, who visited idol in winter castle, we owe a descriptive report on the circumstances of the author in his idyllic, but cloistered retreat.

The literary work

Götz's works consist of numerous lyrical works and translations, of which that of Anacreon from the Greek, the Gresset and Montesquieu are the most important from the French. His graceful and graceful, delicate, light and melodious verses without a deeper personal level, some of them difficult or to the bordering Frivolous, corresponded to the gallant tastes. As a translator of French and Greek authors, he is hard to overestimate and awarded according to the severity of the Baroque thought the life of the Rococo and the Enlightenment eloquent expression.

Götz translated together with Uz the first all Odes of Anacreon into German ( 1746 ); he is thus one of the most important poets anacreontic. As a translator of French authors, he made ​​the genera of the madrigal, the Triolet and the Rondeau by as gallant as skilful transfers and after-sensations in literature capable of Germany, for which he praised Prussian King Friedrich II in his Littérature allemande (1781 ). As a writer highly esteemed, praised Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Heinrich Voss, Lessing, Goethe, Johann Heinrich Merck, later Edward Moerike its shape dexterity, his imagery and his poetic feeling. The melody of his verses inspired 37 composers to musical settings, including Johann Friedrich Reichardt and Joseph Haydn.

• " Taste, grace and graceful treatment of language as the form distinguish him especially since they go with ächtem feeling hand in hand. There was only a limited circle in which he himself, his abilities and powers exactly knowing, moving, but within the same he did excellent things that can make it rightfully claim to be saved from total oblivion. " (ADB 10, 1879, p.252 )

Problems of textual transmission

Goetz had carefully avoided from the beginning, but especially since his appointment as pastor in a Protestant church on the flat land, each Publik If his poetic activity; also of modesty and from a Stoic living out ( gr lathe biosas, "Live in secret " ) he let his editor and Auditor Karl Wilhelm PeterRamler, the "German Horace ," a free hand in dealing with his writings, and the nature of its publication. Therefore His poems have appeared after Ramler text editors anonymously or abbreviations ( "Y") in Muse almanacs and collections and excited even in this processing quite a stir. Ramler unknown to us, additions and changes complicate a critical appraisal: " Götz and cow we have consequently only Ramler'scher in disguise" (ADB 27, 1888, p.214 ). From Lessing is known that he quit a conceded his own arrangement of his text by PeterRamler with dismay; Ramler smoothing, formalizing, often pedantic influence on the form of the text is largely clarified after the discovery of Götz ' hand-written texts (John / Wisser, 1986), a critical issue is still pending.

Götz's estate was auctioned off, with the exception of the manuscripts; since the Ramlersche edition published by his son, the bookseller Christian Götz, not sold, was a factory final edition did not materialize by Götz ' Weimar admirers. His writings came over the Kreuznacher writer painter Müller and Götz's grandson Frederick in the possession of the Baron of Preuschen family, Osterspai / Rhein.

Goetz ' son of Gottlieb Christian was an employee and successor of Schwann Hofbuchhandlung in Mannheim. He was a friend and rival of Schiller also interested in the bookseller daughter Margaret Swan poet (ADB Bd.33, 1891, p.176 f.) In swan appeared, among other Schiller's Robbers, and Beethoven 's early compositions, here later also became the posthumous complete works of JN Goetz moved to the Ramlerschen processing.

Works and editions

Works

• Attempt Wormsers in poems. 32 S. Without publishing and Location 1745. [ ND 1790 and 1792 under the title Poems of Wormsers. ]
• The Odes of Anacreon in blank verse. In addition to several other poems. (Translated and edited by Johann Nikolaus Götz Johann Peter Uz and ). 4 pp., 128 pp. Frankfurt. Leipzig:. Publishing without 1746 - Johann Peter Uz ( 1720-1796 ) was Anacreontic writer whose sociable, graceful poetry praises the cheerful enjoyment of life.
• About the death of his brother Cornelius George Götzens. 6 Bl Without publishing and Location in 1747.
• J. ( ean ) B. ( aptiste ) L. ( ouis ) Gresset: Paperle. In four cantos. (Translated by Johann Nikolaus Götz ). Frankfurt. Leipzig:. No Verlagsangabe 1750 - Gresset ( 1709-1777 ), French Jesuit, poet and playwright from Amiens, was known for his witty, light occasional poetry with strong satirical, frivolous strike. Ejected Because of his writings from the Order, he lived thereafter by an official board as a playwright; his polished dialogue made ​​him famous. 1759 there was a change of mind and commitment to religiosity. - Johann Peter Uz (1720-1796) was considered a " German Gresset " ( Gleim in a letter to Jacobi, A. Anger, seal the Rococo, Tübingen 1969, p.139 ).
• J. ( ean ) B. ( aptiste ) L. ( ouis ) Gresset: Ver -Vert. Übs of J.N.Götz. In Folio. Karlsruhe 1752 -. This issue could not be verified.
• Montesquieu: The temple to Gnidus. Translated from the French of Gresset. Karlsruhe 1759 -. Montesquieu ( 1689-1755 ), French jurist, Counsellor of Parliament and academician, was by his satirical " Persian Letters" (1721 ), the historical and philosophical work " Size and Decline of the Romans " (1734 ) and especially the constitutional important work " spirit of Laws " known throughout Europe (1748 ). - The philosophical and satirical novel " The Temple of Gnidus " is one of Montesquieu's " most charming narrative writings" ( Brockhaus in text and image edition 2002).
• The poems of Anacreon and Sappho Oden. Translated from the Greek, and accompanied with notes. 228 S. Karlsruhe: Macklot 1760 - facsimile pressure after the issuance of 1760 with an afterword by Herbert Zeman. . ( German reprints. Variety texts of the 18th century ). Stuttgart: . Metzler 1970 The Uz and Götz jointly translated edition first published in 1746 in the present edition of 1760 it is the second, expanded edition of Götzens spring. .
• The girls Island. An elegy. 15 S. Without local and publisher's statement in 1773.
• Johann Nikolaus Götz: Mixed poems. Hgb. By Karl Wilhelm PeterRamler. 3 vols Mannheim: Schwanische Hofbuchhandlung in 1785.

Posthumous editions

• Mixed poems. 2 parts. Vienna. Prague: Haas 1805.
• Mixed poems. Latest edition. 2 Tle in 1 Vienna: Bauer 1817.
• Friedrich Götz: Beloved shadow. In 1858. ( Contains facsimile poems in their original form ).
• Poems by Johann Nikolaus Götz from the years 1745-1765 in original shape. Hgb. by Carl Schiiddekopf. ( The German literature of the 18th and 19th centuries. Vol. 42).. Stuttgart: Goschen 1893 ND Nendeln / Liechtenstein: . Kraus 1968 - Contains 99 poems in original form.
• Letters to and from Johann Nikolaus Götz. Wolfenbüttel: Zwissler 1893.

Musical settings

• Joseph Haydn: " The harmony in marriage ( Goetz ) ". In: The three - and four-part songs. Hgb. By Bernhard Paumgartner. BA 901 Kassel. Basel: . Barenreiter 1967 - " O wonderful harmony - what he wants, wants them too. He zechet like he say, like, he pays ducats like and makes the great Lord ... this is also their use, "a satire set to music a couple that has the same weaknesses.
• Karl Sieber: "The Harmony in Marriage," Joseph Haydn set to music a poem by Johann Nikolaus Götz Hornbacher pastor. In: History Calendar for Pirmasens and Zweibrücken country in 2001.