Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolai

Ludwig Heinrich von Nicolay ( born December 25, 1737 Strasbourg, † November 18, 1820 on the estate Monrepos near Vyborg ) was a poet and as president of the Russian Academy in Saint Petersburg.

Life and work

Nicolay was the son of the Strasbourg archivist Christopher Nicolay and his wife Sophie- Charlotte Faber. After completing his schooling at the Protestant school of his native city Nicolay studied at the University of Strasbourg, philosophy and law. In 1760 he was able to successfully complete his studies with a doctorate in Law. Together with his fellow student Franz Hermann LaFermière (1737-1796) Nicolay went to Paris, where he made the acquaintance soon the encyclopedist Denis Diderot and Jean Baptiste le Rond d' Alembert.

Due to this, the two also found access to various salons and Nicolay made ​​here the acquaintance of Prince Dmitri Mikhailovich Golitsyn, who soon hired him as private secretary. When his employer Tsarist ambassador in Vienna, Nicolay accompanied him and learned inter alia Pietro Metastasio and Christoph Willibald Gluck know. Lived between 1763 and 1765 and worked Nicolay back in Strasbourg and taught as a lecturer at the University of logic and metaphysics. One of his students was Count Andreas Razumovsky, the Nicolay acted as a kind of preceptor on his Grand Tour through almost the whole Europe.

1769 Nicolay took a position at the court in St. Petersburg and became a teacher of Grand Duke Paul, later Tsar Paul. Parallel to this, he served from 1770 as secretary to his disciple and accompanied him on his trips to Paris, Vienna and Versailles. For a long time, but teachers and students talked to on the summer residence of the imperial family Gatchina.

As Grand Duke Paul after the death of Empress Catherine II took over the government, he gave his friend and teacher Nicolay baron Title (linked to the income from the village Tambov ) and brought him into his Cabinet. As such he was called Nicolay 1798 President of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Between 1798 and 1803, the Academy was reorganized by Nicolay, equipped with a regular budget and opened especially the Enlightenment ideas. Nicolay was his life with important philosophers of the Enlightenment in active corresponded exchange: the writers Johann Baptist von Alxinger, Friedrich Nicolai, Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel, Karl Wilhelm PeterRamler, Johann Georg Schlosser and Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg - Stolberg.

Nicolay's literary work ranged from the lyric to the tragedy. His dramatic poems are the Anacreontics connected and were estimated inter alia by Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. Nicolay could start with the literary movements of the Sturm und Drang and Romanticism little. This was based more on authors such as Horace, Ovid, Propertius and Tibullus Albius. But the Renaissance and their representatives Ludovico Ariosto, and Petrarch Bernardo Tasso he emulated.

Nicolay married in Saint Petersburg Johanna Margarethe, a subsidiary of the German bankers Poggenpohl. With her he had his son, who was given the same name in honor of Tsar Paul. Baron Paul Nicolay was later Tsarist ambassador in Copenhagen and married the Princess Alexandrine de Broglie.

When Tsar Paul had been murdered in 1801, Nicolay was dismissed from his offices. In 1803 he moved with his family back to his estate Monrepos near Vyborg. Where he described in detail his life in 1804 in his poem " The estate Monrepos in Finland ". Tsarina Maria Feodorovna Nicolay presented the extensive library of his late friend LaFermière on his estate available.

At the age of almost 83 years died of Ludwig Heinrich Nicolay on November 18, 1820 at his country estate.

Works

  • Alcinens Island ( 1778)
  • Zerbin and Bella (1779 )
  • Reinhold and Angelika (1781-1784)
  • The estate Monrepos in Finland (1804 )

Collected editions

  • Elegies and Letters. Strasbourg 1760
  • Verse and prose. Basel 1773 ( 2 vols )
  • Mixed poems. Berlin 1778-1786 (9 vols )
  • Mixed poems and prose writings. Berlin 1792-1810 (8 vols )
  • Theatrical works. Königsberg in 1811 ( 2 vols )
  • Poetical works. Vienna 1817 ( 4 vols )

Literature and sources

  • Wilhelm Bode: Nicolay, Ludwig Heinrich Freiherr von. In: General German Biography (ADB ). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1886, pp. 631 f
  • Peter of Gerschau: From the Life of Baron Heinrich Ludwig von Nicolay. Perthes & Besser, Hamburg 1834.
  • Edmund Heier: LH Nicolay (1737-1820) and his contemporaries. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1965.
  • Edmund Heier: LH Nicolay (1737-1820) as to exponent of neo- classicism. Bouvier, Bonn 1981.
  • Georges Livet: Nicolay, Ludwig Heinrich Freiherr von. In: New German Biography ( NDB ). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8, pp. 209 f ( digitized ).
Mon Repos (Vyborg) Salon (gathering) Andrey Razumovsky Paul I of Russia Versailles (city) Karl Wilhelm Ramler Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie Neue Deutsche Biographie Integrated Authority File
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