Karl Wilhelm Ramler

Karl Wilhelm PeterRamler ( born February 25, 1725 in Kolberg, † April 11, 1798 in Berlin), called the German Horace, was a German poet and philosopher, which is attributed to the Enlightenment as well as the sensitivity.

Life

PeterRamler was the son of the tax inspector Wilhelm Nikolaus PeterRamler and his wife Elisabeth Rose. After attending school in his hometown and in Szczecin PeterRamler 1738 came to the establishment of the Francke Foundations in Halle ( Saale). Then he started in 1742 at the University of Halle to study theology. Three years later he moved to the University of Berlin to study medicine. Since he actually felt obliged to belles lettres, PeterRamler also gave up this study. Encouraged in this decision was Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim him, whom he had met in Berlin. Gleim could inter alia PeterRamler gain employment as a private tutor on the domain paralysis in Werneuchen so Ramler livelihood for the time was assured.

1747 to PeterRamler again settled in Berlin and was in 1748 appointed as a lecturer in philosophy at the local military academy and later with the title of aoProf. honored. This office had PeterRamler held until 1790. There in Berlin, he soon made the acquaintance of Moses Mendelssohn and Friedrich Nicolai, which brought him closer to the Enlightenment and how PeterRamler belonged to the prestigious Monday Club. Between 1750 and 1751 published PeterRamler together with Johann Georg Sulzer his Critische News from the realm of scholarship. Friendly PeterRamler was, inter alia, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim with, Ewald Christian von Kleist and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

With the latter he published together in 1759 " epigrams " by Friedrich von Logau. The Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin took PeterRamler 1786, as a member, in the following year saw the membership of the Academy of Arts. Along with August von Beyer and Johann Jakob Engel PeterRamler was also appointed to the management of the royal spectacles; he held until 1797 this office.

In Ramler literary creation poetry occupies a large part. The Prussian king Frederick the Great was sung by PeterRamler in several odes, but paid tribute to the poet no attention. His successor, Frederick William II, still called him in the Coronation year 1786 in the Council of the Academy of Sciences and sat him a pension of 800 thalers. At the request of the king PeterRamler in 1790 transferred the management of the National Theatre. He held until shortly before his death this position.

At the age of 73 years Karl Wilhelm PeterRamler died on 11 April 1798 in Berlin. He found his final resting place at the local old Sophie Cemetery ( memorial plaque at the Ayasofya).

Work

Some of Ramler poems were set to music by musicians such as Carl Heinrich Graun, Johann Joachim Quantz, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann. In addition to his - still interesting - work as a literary critic is PeterRamler made ​​a name for itself as a literary translator. He translated works by Catullus, Horace and Martial, and always turned it the principles of aesthetics, which he had taken over from the French esthetician Charles Batteux. This required a fundamental principle of poetry, the exact imitation of nature. His multi-volume edition of Martial included the first almost complete edition of all the works of the poet, the first band he gathered many translated by Martin Opitz poems he had worked. At the end lost about 15 % of the works that omitting PeterRamler with intent due to the offensive nature.

Contemporaries celebrated PeterRamler as German Horace, but already fifty years later he was only a poetic disciplinarian; today's literary criticism sees him often as Verspedanten. In recent times, its transmissions are again more appreciated because of their high understanding of the text and the flow of the translation.

PeterRamler translated Batteux ' "Introduction to the fine arts " ( Cours des belles lettres ), edited as per its requirements several works by contemporary authors and worked as an editor. Lessing, for example, had to revise some of his works of PeterRamler that changed this to an extent that it almost Lessing aufkündigte the friendship.

Works (selection)

• Critische News from the realm of scholarship (1750 /51)
• The death of Jesus (1755, revised 1760), oratorio, set to music by Karl Heinrich Graun (1755 ), Georg Philipp Telemann (1755 ), Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach (1760 ) and Joseph Martin Kraus ( 1776)
• The songs of the Germans ( 1766, later lyrical anthology )
• Fable reading (1783 /90)
• Collection of the best epigrams of the German poet (1766)
• Concise Mythology (1790)
• Poetical Works ( 1801/ 02, 2 vols, edited by Leopold Friedrich Günther von Goeckingk )