Ludwig Rellstab

Heinrich Friedrich Ludwig Rellstab ( born April 13, 1799 in Berlin, † November 27, 1860 ) was a German journalist, music critic and poet. At times, he used the pseudonym free mouth viewers.

Life

Rellstab was the son of the musician and publisher Johann Johann Carl Friedrich Rellstab and his wife Caroline Charlotte judge. He had seven siblings, including the later singer Karoline Rellstab.

His first musical training received Rellstab by his father; later, he was informed by the composer Bernhard Klein and Louis Berger. With 16 years Rellstab came in September 1815, the cadet school in his hometown. There he became an officer in 1818 and in April 1821 left Rellstab the army.

In the summer of the same year Rellstab wandered on foot over Dresden and Weimar to Bayreuth. Had invited him, the writer Jean Paul. In Dresden Rellstab visited the composer Carl Maria von Weber and the writer Ludwig Tieck; in Weimar writer Johanna Schopenhauer and the musicians Carl Friedrich Zelter. Through the latter two Rellstab made ​​the acquaintance of Ottilie von Goethe, in whose salon he was well received. The contact with their father, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stayed cool and kept to a minimum.

In the years 1822-1823 Rellstab worked as a guest student at the Universities of Bonn and Heidelberg, and returned late in 1823 returned to his hometown. There he founded together with a friend a bookstore, with which he but his livelihood could not deny. This he had to earn as a critic at the Berlin general musical newspaper.

In the spring of 1825 Rellstab took a trip to Vienna to meet the composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Rellstab poems, which he presented Beethoven reached, later Franz Schubert, of which seven are set to music, which were recorded posthumously in his swan song cycle. In Vienna Rellstab made ​​friends with the playwright Ignaz Franz Castelli, who introduced him to several members of the Ludlamshöhle, including Heinrich Anschütz and Johann Gabriel Seidl.

End of the same year Rellstab returned to Berlin and was the beginning of the following year a music critic for the newspaper Vossische. As such, he was a successor to his father, who had worked there 1806-1813. During a boat ride in the moonlight on Lake Lucerne, he felt the Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor (Op. 27/II, 1801) by Ludwig van Beethoven recalls. You received from him the name under which it became famous ( Moonlight Sonata ). With his novel Henriette or the beautiful singer Rellstab debuted in 1826 as a writer. In this work, he worked in a satirical way the career of the singer Henriette Sontag. But as he ridiculed the possibility the British ambassador in Berlin, this book became a political issue, what Rellstab had to pay for it with twelve weeks imprisonment at Spandau Citadel.

Published in 1827 Rellstab a satire in which he surrendered the Italian composer Gaspare Spontini to ridicule. After several complaints and processes Rellstab was sentenced late 1837 for six weeks in prison.

1830, Rellstab the weekly magazine of Iris in areas of music, which until 1841 had on hand and he almost exclusively company alone. He reported it on all sorts of current musical events and thus made ​​himself the most influential music critics of his time. His own musical works were based on Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven on.

As a critic, he refused almost the entire work of Gaetano Donizetti and Gioachino Rossini. The work of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner he held until his Rienzi and Tannhäuser actually failed. His own works from this period - for example, Charles the Bold (1824 ) or Francis of SICKINGEN (1843 ) - were all unsuccessful.

Rellstab also emerged as an effective powerful critic of the then unrivaled successful Grand operas of his Berlin compatriot Giacomo Meyerbeer. His attacks on Robert le diable and Les Huguenots, which were performed in Paris more than any other opera prepared the anti-Semitic Hetzkritik of Richard Wagner the ground. Layer this ground eluded the skillful tactician Meyerbeer, however his Berlin adversary Rellstab, by offering him the libretto of a given for the reconstruction of the burned Knobelsdorffstraße 's opera house Unter den Linden commissioned by the Prussian royal opera that finally as a military camp in Silesia on December 7, 1844 Premiere had. Rellstab was flattered and accepted the commission, although in truth Meyerbeer's best librettist Eugène Scribe provided the model and undertook against the payment of 3,000 francs to strict confidentiality about this unusual work order.

" Rellstab, the Philistine par excellence " was in his narrow-minded and bigoted nature of the trigger for Robert Schumann in 1834 founded the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. The " Philistines " were there to the main opponents of the " Davidsbündler ". Nevertheless Rellstab has the early works of Schumann discussed quite positive.

Already in 1834 married Rellstab in Berlin Emma Henry. With her he had a daughter and two sons; including the later chemists Ludwig Rellstab.

At the beginning of the March Revolution of 1848 Rellstab wanted King Friedrich Wilhelm IV move to mediate between the military and the citizens on the occasion of an audience; vain.

At the age of 61 years he died on 27 November 1860 in Berlin. His final resting place he found on the Berlin St. Peter's Cemetery.

Rellstab and the writer Willibald Alexis were cousins ​​, Alexis ' mother Juliane Louise Charlotte Rellstab a sister of Rellstab father. The chess master Ludwig Rellstab was his great-grandson.

Effect

Rellstab novellas found quite the audience, but always stood in the shadow of ETA Hoffmann, the Rellstab personally knew and with whom he stood in the rain artistic exchange. Among the narrative works of his historical novel in 1812 was very popular on the Russian campaign of Napoleon and was read at the beginning of the 20th century much ( 34, illustr. Edition, Leipzig 1923).

In addition to historical novels, short stories, plays, and travel books, the poetry has a strong presence in Rellstab literary work. Many of his poems were, inter alia, set to music by Franz Schubert; worthy of mention ( with the numbers of the German directory) on the current ( D 943 ), Autumn (D 945), Message of Love (D 957-1 ), the warrior idea (D 957-2 ), Frühlingssehnsucht (D 957-3 ), serenade (D 957-4 ) stay ( D 957-5 ), in the distance (D 957-6 ) and Farewell (D 957-7 ).

Works

• Henriette or the beautiful singer. a story of our day. (1826 )
• About my relationship as a critic to Mr. Spontini as General Music composer and first master in Berlin ( 1827)
• Algiers and Paris in 1830. Two novellas. ( 3 vols, Berlin 1831)
• In 1812. A historical novel. (4 vols, Leipzig 1834)
• Collected Writings. (20 vols Leipzig from 1843 to 1848. - New edition, 24 vols, Leipzig 1859-1861 )
• From my life. ( 2 vols, Berlin 1861)
• In the footsteps of Napoleon. Historical novel. Area- Verlag, Erftstadt 2004, ISBN 3-89996-090-4

Operas and dramas

• Dido. Opera (1823 ). Music: Bernhard Klein
• Eugene Aram. Acting (1839, loosely based on Edward Bulwer- Lytton )
• Francis of SICKINGEN. Historical Tragedy (1843 )
• Charles the Bold. Historical Tragedy (1824 )

Secondary literature

• Jürgen Rehm: For reception of music in the pre-March Berlin. The presentation of bourgeois self- understanding and Biedermeier art view in Music Reviews Ludwig Rellstab. Hildesheim: Olms, 1983 ISBN 3-487-07438-9.
• M. Bendinger: Rellstab, Ludwig. In: General German Biography (ADB ). Volume 28, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig, 1889, pp. 781-784.
• Gertrud Maria Rösch: Rellstab, Heinrich Friedrich Ludwig. In: New German Biography ( NDB ). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4, pp. 407 f ( digitized ).