1.
Caspar David Friedrich
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Caspar David Friedrich was a 19th-century German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic or megalithic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, Friedrich was born in the Pomeranian town of Greifswald at the Baltic Sea, where he began his studies in art as a young man. He studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden and he came of age during a period when, across Europe, a growing disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise to a new appreciation of spirituality. Friedrichs work brought him early in his career, and contemporaries such as the French sculptor David dAngers spoke of him as a man who had discovered the tragedy of landscape. Nevertheless, his work fell from favour during his years, and he died in obscurity. The early 20th century brought a renewed appreciation of his work, beginning in 1906 with an exhibition of thirty-two of his paintings and sculptures in Berlin. By the 1920s his paintings had been discovered by the Expressionists and it was not until the late 1970s that Friedrich regained his reputation as an icon of the German Romantic movement and a painter of international importance. Caspar David Friedrich was born on 5 September 1774, in Greifswald, Swedish Pomerania, the sixth of ten children, he was brought up in the strict Lutheran creed of his father Adolf Gottlieb Friedrich, a candle-maker and soap boiler. Records of the financial circumstances are contradictory, while some sources indicate the children were privately tutored. Caspar David was familiar with death from an early age and his mother, Sophie Dorothea Bechly, died in 1781 when he was just seven. A year later, his sister Elisabeth died, while a sister, Maria. Some accounts suggest that Johann Christoffer perished while trying to rescue Caspar David, Quistorp took his students on outdoor drawing excursions, as a result, Friedrich was encouraged to sketch from life at an early age. Through Quistorp, Friedrich met and was influenced by the theologian Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten. Quistorp introduced Friedrich to the work of the German 17th-century artist Adam Elsheimer, whose works often included religious subjects dominated by landscape, during this period he also studied literature and aesthetics with Swedish professor Thomas Thorild. Four years later Friedrich entered the prestigious Academy of Copenhagen, where he began his education by making copies of casts from antique sculptures before proceeding to drawing from life, living in Copenhagen afforded the young painter access to the Royal Picture Gallerys collection of 17th-century Dutch landscape painting. At the Academy he studied under such as Christian August Lorentzen. Mood was paramount, and influence was drawn from sources as the Icelandic legend of Edda
2.
Weimar Classicism
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Weimar Classicism is a German literary and cultural movement, whose practitioners established a new humanism, from the synthesis of ideas from Romanticism, Classicism, and the Age of Enlightenment. The German Enlightenment, called “neo-classical”, burgeoned in the synthesis of Empiricism and Rationalism as developed by Christian Thomasius and this philosophy, circulated widely in many magazines and journals, profoundly directed the subsequent expansion of German-speaking and European culture. The inability of this common-sense outlook convincingly to bridge “feeling” and “thought”, “body” and “mind”, another, though not as abstract, approach to this problem was a governing concern with the problems of aesthetics. It was no inquiry into taste — into positive or negative appeals — nor sensations as such, therefore, the Weimar Classicism could also be started with the arrival of Wieland and extended beyond Schillers death until the death of Wieland or even of Goethe himself. In Italy Goethe aimed to rediscover himself as a writer and to become an artist, through training in Rome. While he failed as an artist, Italy appeared to have him a better writer. Schillers evolution as a writer was following a path to Goethes. He had begun as a writer of wild, violent, emotion-driven plays, in the late 1780s he turned to a more classical style. In 1794 Schiller and Goethe became friends and allies in a project to establish new standards for literature, by contrast the contemporaneous and efflorescing literary movement of German Romanticism was in opposition to Weimar and German Classicism, especially to Schiller. On this Goethe remarked, The Weimar movement was notable for its inclusion of female writers, die Horen included works by several women, including a serially published novel, Agnes von Lilien, by Schillers sister-in-law Caroline von Wolzogen. Other women published by Schiller included Sophie Mereau, Friederike Brun, Amalie von Imhoff, Elisa von der Recke, between 1786 and Schillers death in 1805 he and Goethe worked to recruit a network of writers, philosophers, scholars and artists to their cause. A work’s Gehalt is not reducible to its Inhalt, Stoff, Schiller and Goethe reserve this for the forms taken from the world or that are created. In a work of art, Stoff is to be “indifferent”, christoph Martin Wieland was the first writer to arrive in Weimar. In 1772 he was called by the widowed Anna Amalia of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, then regent of the Duchy Sachsen-Weimar, Weimar remained Wielands home until his death. Here, in 1773, he founded Der teutsche Merkur, which under his editorship became the most influential literary review in Germany,1776, one year after his arrival, Goethe arranged that Herder was called to Weimar, whom he had admired already in his Strasbourg years. The vast array of writings themselves, other than being solely literary pursuances or distichs, include scientific, philosophic, Schiller was remarkably prolific during this period, writing his plays Wallenstein, Mary Stuart, The Maid of Orleans, The Bride of Messina and William Tell. Ein Schauspiel für Liebende Iphigenie auf Tauris Torquato Tasso Römische Elegien Venezianische Epigramme Faust, ein Fragment Beiträge zur Optik Der Bürgergeneral Reineke Fuchs Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten Das Märchen, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre Faust. Musicians were inspired to compose for the works of writers, Ludwig van Beethoven, Paul Dukas, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
3.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
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Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Interpreting Schellings philosophy is regarded as difficult because of its apparently ever-changing nature, Schellings thought in the large has been neglected, especially in the English-speaking world, as has been his later work on mythology and revelation, much of which remains untranslated. An important factor was the ascendancy of Hegel, whose works portray Schelling as a mere footnote in the development of idealism. Schellings Naturphilosophie also has been attacked by scientists for its analogizing tendency, however, some later philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Slavoj Žižek have shown interest in re-examining Schellings body of work. Schelling was born in the town of Leonberg in the Duchy of Württemberg and he attended the monastic school at Bebenhausen, near Tübingen, where his father was chaplain and an Orientalist professor. From 1783 to 1784 Schelling attended a Latin school in Nürtingen and knew Friedrich Hölderlin, on 18 October 1790, at the age of 15, he then was granted permission to enroll at the Tübinger Stift, despite not having yet reached the normal enrollment age of 20. At the Stift, he shared a room with Hegel as well as Hölderlin, Schelling studied the Church fathers and ancient Greek philosophers. His interest gradually shifted from Lutheran theology to philosophy, in 1792 he graduated with his masters thesis, titled Antiquissimi de prima malorum humanorum origine philosophematis Genes. Explicandi tentamen criticum et philosophicum, and in 1795 he finished his doctoral thesis, meanwhile, he had begun to study Kant and Fichte, who greatly influenced him. At this time he also visited Dresden, where he saw collections of the Elector of Saxony, to which he referred later in his thinking on art. On a personal level, this Dresden visit of six weeks from August 1797 saw Schelling meet the brothers August Wilhelm Schlegel and Karl Friedrich Schlegel and his future wife Caroline, and Novalis. After two years tutoring, in October 1798, at the age of only 23, Schelling was called to University of Jena as a professor of philosophy. His time at Jena put Schelling at the center of the ferment of Romanticism. He was on terms with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who appreciated the poetic quality of the Naturphilosophie. As the prime minister of the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar, Goethe invited Schelling to Jena, on the other hand, Schelling was unsympathetic to the ethical idealism that animated the work of Friedrich Schiller, the other pillar of Weimar Classicism. Later, in Schellings Vorlesung über die Philosophie der Kunst, Schillers theory on the sublime was closely reviewed, in Jena, Schelling was on good terms with Fichte at first, but their different conceptions, about nature in particular, led to increasing divergence in their thought. Fichte advised him to focus on philosophy in its original meaning, but Schelling, who was becoming the acknowledged leader of the Romantic school, had begun to reject Fichtes thought as cold and abstract. Schelling was especially close to August Wilhelm Schlegel and his wife, a marriage between Schelling and Carolines young daughter, Auguste Böhmer, was contemplated by both
4.
Friedrich Schleiermacher
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He also became influential in the evolution of Higher Criticism, and his work forms part of the foundation of the modern field of hermeneutics. Because of his effect on subsequent Christian thought, he is often called the Father of Modern Liberal Theology and is considered an early leader in liberal Christianity. The Neo-Orthodoxy movement of the century, typically seen to be spearheaded by Karl Barth, was in many ways an attempt to challenge his influence. As a theology student Schleiermacher pursued an independent course of reading and neglected the study of the Old Testament, at the same time he studied the writings of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, and began to apply ideas from the Greek philosophers to a reconstruction of Kants system. Schleiermacher developed a deep-rooted skepticism as a student, and soon he rejected orthodox Christianity and he has himself read some of the skeptical literature, he says, and can assure Schleiermacher that it is not worth wasting time on. For six whole months there is no word from his son. In a moving letter of 21 January 1787, Schleiermacher admits that the doubts alluded to are his own and his father has said that faith is the regalia of the Godhead, that is, Gods royal due. Schleiermacher confessed, Faith is the regalia of the Godhead, you say, I cannot believe that he who called himself the Son of Man was the true, eternal God, I cannot believe that his death was a vicarious atonement. Two years later, in 1796, he became chaplain to the Charité Hospital in Berlin, here Schleiermacher became acquainted with art, literature, science and general culture. He was strongly influenced by German Romanticism, as represented by his friend Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel, though his ultimate principles remained unchanged, he placed more emphasis on human emotion and the imagination. Meanwhile, he studied Spinoza and Plato, both of whom were important influences and he became more indebted to Kant, though they differed on fundamental points. He sympathised with some of Jacobis positions, and took some ideas from Fichte, the literary product of this period of rapid development was his influential book, Reden über die Religion and his new years gift to the new century, the Monologen. This established the programme of his subsequent theological system, from 1802 to 1804, Schleiermacher served as a pastor in the Pomeranian town of Stolp. He relieved Friedrich Schlegel entirely of his responsibility for the translation of Plato. The obscurity of the style and its negative tone prevented immediate success. At the foundation of the University of Berlin, in which he took a prominent part, Schleiermacher obtained a theological chair, and soon became secretary to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. The twenty-four years of his career in Berlin began with his short outline of theological study. At the same time Schleiermacher prepared his chief theological work Der christliche Glaube nach den Grundsätzen der evangelischen Kirche and he felt isolated, although his church and his lecture-room continued to be crowded
5.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, usually cited as Friedrich Schlegel, was a German poet, literary critic, philosopher, philologist and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the figures of the Jena romantics. He was a promoter of the Romantic movement and inspired Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Adam Mickiewicz. Schlegel was a pioneer in Indo-European studies, comparative linguistics, in became known as Grimms law. As a young man he was an atheist, a radical, ten years later, the same Schlegel converted to Catholicism. Around 1810 he was a diplomat and journalist in the service of Clemens von Metternich, surrounded by monks, Karl Friedrich von Schlegel was born on 10 March 1772 at Hanover, and his father was the Lutheran pastor Johann Adolf Schlegel in the Marktkirche. For two years he studied law at Göttingen and Leipzig, and met with Friedrich Schiller, in 1793 he devoted himself entirely to literary work. In 1796 he moved to Jena where his brother August lived and collaborated with Novalis, Ludwig Tieck, Fichte and Caroline Schelling, Novalis and Schlegel had a famous conversation about German idealism. In 1797 he quarreled with Schiller, who did not like his polemic work, Schlegel published Die Griechen und Römer, which was followed by Geschichte der Poesie der Griechen und Römer. Then he turned to Dante, Goethe and Shakespeare, in Jena he and his brother founded the Athenaeum, contributing fragments, aphorisms and essays in which the principles of the Romantic school are most definitely stated. They are now recognized as the deepest and most significant expressions of the subjective idealism of the early romanticists. After a controversy, Friedrich decided to move to Berlin, there he lived with Friedrich Schleiermacher and met Henriette Herz, Rahel Varnhagen, and his future wife Dorothea, a daughter of Moses Mendelssohn and the mother of Philipp Veit. In 1799 he published Lucinde, an eccentric and unfinished romance, in September 1800 he met four times with Goethe. In 1801 he graduated in philosophy, in Alarcos, a tragedy in which, without much success, he combined romantic and classical elements. In June 1802 he arrived in Paris, where he had a circle including Heinrich Christoph Kolbe and he lectured on philosophy in private courses for Sulpiz Boisserée, and carried on under Alexander Hamilton and Antoine-Léonard de Chézy to study Sanskrit and the Persian language. In his magazine Europe he published about Gothic architecture and Old Masters, in April 1804 he married Dorothea Veith in the Swedish embassy in Paris. In 1806 he and his wife went to visit Aubergenville, where his brother lived with Madame de Staël, in 1808 he published an epoch-making book, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. He argued that a people originating from India have been the founders of the first European civilizations, Schlegel compared Sanskrit with Latin, Greek, Persian, and German, and found many similarities in vocabulary and grammar
6.
August Wilhelm Schlegel
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August Wilhelm Schlegel, usually cited as August Schlegel, was a German poet, translator and critic, and with his brother Friedrich Schlegel the leading influence of Jena Romanticism. His translations of Shakespeare turned the English dramatists works into German classics, Schlegel was also the first professor of Sanskrit in Continental Europe and produced a translation of the Bhagavad Gita. Schlegel was born in Hanover, where his father, Johann Adolf Schlegel, was a Lutheran pastor and he was educated at the Hanover gymnasium and at the University of Göttingen. Schlegel met with Caroline Böhmer and Wilhelm von Humboldt, in 1790 his brother Friedrich came to Göttingen. Both were influenced by Johann Gottfried Herder, Immanuel Kant, Tiberius Hemsterhuis, Johann Winckelmann, from 1791 to 1795, Schlegel was tutor for the children of Mogge Muilman, a Dutch banker, who lived at the prestigious Herengracht in Amsterdam. In 1796, soon after his return to Germany, Schlegel settled in Jena and that year he married Caroline, the widow of the physician Böhmer. She assisted Schlegel in some of his productions, and the publication of her correspondence in 1871 established for her a posthumous reputation as a German letter writer. She separated from Schlegel in 1801 and became the wife of the philosopher Schelling soon after, in Jena, Schlegel made critical contributions to Schillers Horen, to that authors Musen-Almanach, and wrote around 300 articles for the Jenaer Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung. He also did translations from Dante and Shakespeare and this work established his literary reputation and gained for him in 1798 an extraordinary professorship at the University of Jena. In 1797 August and Friedrich broke with Friedrich Schiller, with his brother, Schlegel founded Athenaeum, the organ of the Romantic school, in which he dissected disapprovingly the immensely popular works of the sentimental novelist August Lafontaine. He also published a volume of poems, and carried on a bitter controversy with Kotzebue. At this time the two brothers were remarkable for the vigour and freshness of their ideas, and commanded respect as the leaders of the new Romantic criticism, a volume of their joint essays appeared in 1801 under the title Charakteristiken und Kritiken. His playwright Ion, performed in Weimar in January 1802, supported by Goethe, schlegels translation of Shakespeare, begun in Jena, was ultimately completed, under the superintendence of Ludwig Tieck, by Tiecks daughter Dorothea and Wolf Heinrich Graf von Baudissin. This rendering is considered one of the best poetical translations in German, schlegels sister-in-law was an aunt of composer Felix Mendelssohn. In 1826, Mendelssohn, at the age of 17, was inspired by August Wilhelms translation of Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream to write his concert overture for A Midsummer Nights Dream. After divorcing his wife Caroline, in 1804, Schlegel traveled in France, Germany, Italy and other countries with Madame de Staël, as tutor to her sons and she owed to him many of the ideas which she embodied in her work, De lAllemagne. His lectures on art and literature, which have been translated into most European languages, were delivered at Vienna in 1808. For Schlegel, the magic of a work of art is that it brings us into a different world, with all its own internal coherence, and this is why it needs to become organic and complete unto itself
7.
Ludwig Tieck
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Tieck was born in Berlin, the son of a rope-maker. His siblings were the sculptor Christian Friedrich Tieck and the poet Sophie Tieck and he was educated at the Friedrichswerdersches Gymnasium, where he learned Greek and Latin, like most preparatory schools required. He also began learning Italian at a young age from a grenadier he became acquainted with. Through this friendship, Tieck was given a look at the poor. Later, he attended the universities of Halle, Göttingen and Erlangen, at Göttingen, he studied Shakespeare and Elizabethan drama. In 1794 he returned to Berlin, and attempted to make a living by writing, in 1798 Tieck married and in the following year settled in Jena, where he, the two brothers August and Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis were the leaders of the early Romantic school. His writings between 1798 and 1804 include the drama, Prinz Zerbino, and Romantische Dichtungen. These dramas are typical plays of the first Romantic school, although formless, kaiser Oktavianus is a poetic glorification of the Middle Ages. In 1801 Tieck went to Dresden, then lived for a time at Ziebingen near Frankfurt, from 1812 to 1817 he collected in three volumes a number of his earlier stories and dramas, under the title Phantasus. In this collection appeared the stories Der Runenberg, Die Elfen, Der Pokal, the new series of short stories which he began to publish in 1822 also won him a wide popularity. Notable among these are Die Gemälde, Die Reisenden, Die Verlobung, in 1841 Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia invited him to Berlin where he had a pension for his remaining years. He died on 28 April 1853 in Berlin, Tiecks importance lay in the readiness with which he adapted himself to the emerging new ideas which arose at the close of the 18th century, as well as his Romantic works such as Der blonde Eckbert. His importance in German poetry, however, is restricted to his early period, in later years it was as the helpful friend and adviser of others, or as the well-read critic of wide sympathies, that Tieck distinguished himself. Tieck also influenced Richard Wagners Tannhäuser and it was from Phantasus that Wagner based the idea of Tannhäuser going to see the pope and Elisabeth dying in the song battle. Tiecks Schriften appeared in twenty vols. and his Gesammelte Novellen in twelve, nachgelassene Schriften were published in two vols. in 1855. There are several editions of Ausgewählte Werke by H. Welti, by J. Minor, by G. Klee, the Elves and The Goblet were translated by Carlyle in German Romance, The Pictures and The Betrothal by Bishop Thirlwall. A translation of Vittoria Accorombona was published in 1845, a Tale Abridged from Tieck, which appeared anonymously in Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine in February 1845. The Journey into the Blue Distance, the Romance of Little Red Riding Hood was translated by Jack Zipes and included in his book The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood
8.
Novalis
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Novalis was the pseudonym and pen name of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, a poet, author, mystic, and philosopher of Early German Romanticism. Hardenbergs professional work and university background, namely his study of mineralogy, the first studies showing important relations between his literary and professional works started in the 1960s. Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg was born in 1772 at Oberwiederstedt manor, in the church in Wiederstedt, he was christened Georg Philipp Friedrich. An oil painting and a christening cap commonly assigned to him are Hardenbergs only possessions now extant, the family seat was a manorial estate, not simply a stately home. Hardenberg descended from ancient, Low German nobility and his father, the estate owner and salt-mine manager Heinrich Ulrich Erasmus Freiherr von Hardenberg, was a strictly pietistic man, member of the Moravian Church. Heinrich Ulrich Erasmus second marriage was to Auguste Bernhardine von Böltzig, the Hardenbergs were a noble family but not rich. Young Georg Philipp was often short of cash, rode a small horse, at first, young Hardenberg was taught by private tutors. He attended the Lutheran grammar school in Eisleben, where he acquired skills in rhetoric and ancient literature, from his twelfth year, he was in the charge of his uncle Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Hardenberg at his stately home in Lucklum. Young Hardenberg studied Law from 1790 to 1794 at Jena, Leipzig and he passed his exams with distinction. During his studies, he attended Schillers lectures on history and befriended him during Schillers illness and he also met Goethe, Herder and Jean Paul, and befriended Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and the brothers Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel. In October 1794, he started working as actuary for August Coelestin Just, the following January, he was appointed auditor to the salt works at Weißenfels. Nonetheless, he fell in love with Sophie, since in the young Georg Philipps view of the world nothing is commonplace because all, when rightly seen, is symbolic. On 15 March 1795, when Sophie was 13 years old, the cruelly early death of Sophie in March 1797, from tuberculosis, affected Novalis deeply and permanently. She was only 15 years old, and the two had not married yet, in 1795–1796, Novalis entered the Mining Academy of Freiberg in Saxony, a leading academy of science, to study geology under Professor Abraham Gottlob Werner, who befriended him. During Novalis studies in Freiberg, he immersed himself in a range of studies, including mining, mathematics, chemistry, biology, history and, not least. It was here that he collected materials for his famous encyclopaedia project, similar to other German authors of the Romantic age, his work in the mining industry, which was undergoing then the first steps to industrialization, was closely connected with his literary work. Young Hardenberg adopted the pen name Novalis from his 12th century ancestors who named themselves de Novali, after their settlement Grossenrode, in the period 1795–1796, Novalis concerned himself with the scientific doctrine of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which greatly influenced his world view. He not only read Fichtes philosophies but also developed Fichtes concepts further, transforming Fichtes Nicht-Ich to a Du and this was the starting point for Novalis Liebesreligion
9.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
10.
Heinrich Heine
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Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was a German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his lyric poetry. Heines later verse and prose are distinguished by their satirical wit and he is considered part of the Young Germany movement. His radical political views led to many of his works being banned by German authorities, Heine spent the last 25 years of his life as an expatriate in Paris. Heine was born at Düsseldorf in what was then the Duchy of Berg and he was called Harry in childhood but became known as Heinrich after his conversion to Lutheranism in 1825. Heines father, Samson Heine, was a textile merchant and his mother Peira, née van Geldern, was the daughter of a physician. Heinrich was the eldest of four children, Heine was also a third cousin once removed of philosopher and economist Karl Marx, also born to a German Jewish family in the Rhineland, with whom he became a frequent correspondent in later life. Düsseldorf was then a town with a population of around 16,000. The French Revolution and subsequent Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars involving Germany complicated Düsseldorfs political history during Heines childhood and it had been the capital of the Duchy of Jülich-Berg, but was under French occupation at the time of his birth. It then went to the Elector of Bavaria before being ceded to Napoleon in 1806 and it was first ruled by Joachim Murat, then by Napoleon himself. Upon Napoleons downfall in 1815 it became part of Prussia, thus Heines formative years were spent under French influence. The adult Heine would always be devoted to the French for introduction of the Napoleonic Code and he glossed over the negative aspects of French rule in Berg, heavy taxation, conscription, and economic depression brought about by the Continental Blockade. Heines parents were not particularly devout, as a young child they sent him to a Jewish school where he learned a smattering of Hebrew, but thereafter he attended Catholic schools. Here he learned French, which would be his second language - although he spoke it with a German accent. He also acquired a love for Rhineland folklore. In 1814 Heine went to a school in Düsseldorf where he learned to read English. The most successful member of the Heine family was his uncle Salomon Heine, in 1816 Heine moved to Hamburg to become an apprentice at Heckscher & Co, his uncles bank, but displayed little aptitude for business. He learned to hate Hamburg with its ethos, but it would become one of the poles of his life alongside Paris
11.
Angelica Kauffman
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Maria Anna Angelika Kauffmann RA, usually known in English as Angelica Kauffman, was a Swiss Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome. Remembered primarily as a painter, Kauffmann was a skilled portraitist, landscape. She was one of the two founding members of the Royal Academy in London in 1768. Kauffman was born at Chur in Graubünden, Switzerland and her family moved to Morbegno in 1742, then Como in Lombardy in 1752 at that time under Austrian rule. In 1757 she accompanied her father to Schwarzenberg in Vorarlberg/Austria where her father was working for the local bishop and her father, Joseph Johann Kauffmann, was a relatively poor man but a skilled Swiss muralist and painter, who was often traveling for his work. He trained Angelica and she worked as his assistant, moving through Switzerland, Austria, Angelica, a child prodigy, rapidly acquired several languages from her mother, Cleophea Lutz, including German, Italian, French and English. She also showed talent as a musician and was forced to choose between opera and art and she quickly chose art as a Catholic priest told Kauffman that the opera was a dangerous place filled with seedy people. By her twelfth year she had known as a painter, with bishops. In 1754, her mother died and her decided to move to Milan. Later visits to Italy of long duration followed and she became a member of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze in 1762. In 1763 she visited Rome, returning again in 1764, from Rome she passed to Bologna and Venice, everywhere feted for her talents and charm. Writing from Rome in August 1764 to his friend Franke, Winckelmann refers to her popularity, she was painting his picture. She may be styled beautiful, he adds, and in singing may vie with our best virtuosi, in 1765, her work appeared in England in an exhibition of the Free Society of Artists. She moved to England shortly after and established herself as a leading artist, while in Venice, Kauffman was persuaded by Lady Wentworth, the wife of the British ambassador, to accompany her to London. One of the first pieces she completed in London was a portrait of David Garrick, the rank of Lady Wentworth opened society to her, and she was everywhere well received, the royal family especially showing her great favor. Her firmest friend, however, was Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his pocket-book her name as Miss Angelica or Miss Angel appears frequently, and in 1766 he painted her, a compliment which she returned by her Portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1767 Kauffman was seduced by an imposter going under the name Count Frederick de Horn, whom she married and it was probably owing to Reynoldss good offices that she was among the signatories to the petition to the king for the establishment of the Royal Academy. In its first catalogue of 1769 she appears with R. A. after her name, and she contributed the Interview of Hector and Andromache, and three other classical compositions
12.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer and statesman. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10,000 letters and he was an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement. He also contributed to the planning of Weimars botanical park and the rebuilding of its Ducal Palace and his first major scientific work, the Metamorphosis of Plants, was published after he returned from a 1788 tour of Italy. During this period, Goethe published his novel, Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship, the verse epic Hermann and Dorothea, and, in 1808. Goethes comments and observations form the basis of several biographical works, Goethes father, Johann Caspar Goethe, lived with his family in a large house in Frankfurt, then an Imperial Free City of the Holy Roman Empire. Though he had studied law in Leipzig and had been appointed Imperial Councillor, Johann Caspar married Goethes mother, Catharina Elizabeth Textor at Frankfurt on 20 August 1748, when he was 38 and she was 17. All their children, with the exception of Johann Wolfgang and his sister, Cornelia Friederica Christiana and his father and private tutors gave Goethe lessons in all the common subjects of their time, especially languages. Goethe also received lessons in dancing, riding and fencing, Johann Caspar, feeling frustrated in his own ambitions, was determined that his children should have all those advantages that he had not. Although Goethes great passion was drawing, he became interested in literature, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. He also took pleasure in reading works on history and religion. He writes about this period, Goethe became also acquainted with Frankfurt actors, among early literary attempts, he was infatuated with Gretchen, who would later reappear in his Faust and the adventures with whom he would concisely describe in Dichtung und Wahrheit. He adored Caritas Meixner, a wealthy Worms traders daughter and friend of his sister, Goethe studied law at Leipzig University from 1765 to 1768. He detested learning age-old judicial rules by heart, preferring instead to attend the lessons of Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. In Leipzig, Goethe fell in love with Anna Katharina Schönkopf, in 1770, he anonymously released Annette, his first collection of poems. His uncritical admiration for many contemporary poets vanished as he became interested in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, already at this time, Goethe wrote a good deal, but he threw away nearly all of these works, except for the comedy Die Mitschuldigen. The restaurant Auerbachs Keller and its legend of Fausts 1525 barrel ride impressed him so much that Auerbachs Keller became the real place in his closet drama Faust Part One. As his studies did not progress, Goethe was forced to return to Frankfurt at the close of August 1768, Goethe became severely ill in Frankfurt. During the year and a half that followed, because of several relapses, during convalescence, Goethe was nursed by his mother and sister
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Moritz Daniel Oppenheim
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Moritz Daniel Oppenheim was a German painter who is often regarded as the first Jewish painter of the modern era. His work was informed by his cultural and religious roots at a time many of his German Jewish contemporaries chose to convert. Oppenheim is considered by the scholar Ismar Schorsch to be in sympathy with the ideals of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement, Oppenheim was born to Orthodox Jewish parents at Hanau, Germany in 1800, he died at Frankfurt am Main in 1882. His niece was the wife of student and fellow painter Benjamin Prins and he received his first lessons in painting from Conrad Westermayr, in Hanau, and entered the Munich Academy of Arts at the age of seventeen. Later he visited Paris, where Jean-Baptiste Regnault became his teacher, and then went to Rome, where he studied with Bertel Thorwaldsen, Barthold Georg Niebuhr, and Johann Friedrich Overbeck. In 1825 he settled at Frankfurt, and shortly after exhibited his painting David Playing Before Saul, in 1832, at the instance of Goethe, Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach conferred upon him the honorary title of professor. Oppenheim was commissioned to paint several portraits of prominent members of the Rothschild banking dynasty and his Return of the Jewish Volunteer is among his most famous works and was frequently reproduced, others include Mignon and the Harper, Italian Genre Scene, Confirmation, and Sabbath Blessing. All these are examples of his power of conception and skill at grouping. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Isidore Singer. New York, Funk & Wagnalls Company, claus Stephani, Das Bild des Juden in der modernen Malerei. / Imaginea evreului în pictura modernă, traducere în limba română de Ion Peleanu. ISBN 973-630-091-9 Ruth Dröse, Frank Eisermann, Monica Kingreen, Anton Merk, ISBN 3-928100-36-X The Wedding,1861 – Moritz Oppenheim The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
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Kunsthalle Hamburg
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The Hamburg Kunsthalle is the art museum of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany. It is one of the largest museums in the country, the name Kunsthalle indicates the museums history as an art hall when founded in 1850. Today, the Kunsthalle houses one of the few art collections in Germany that covers seven centuries of European art, the Kunsthalle consists of three connected buildings, dating from 1869,1921 and 1997, located in the Altstadt district, between the Hauptbahnhof and the two Alster lakes. The Kunsthalle has its origins in 1849, when established and opened a year later as Städtische Gallerie by the Hamburg Kunstverein, the collection grew quickly, and it soon became necessary to provide a building. The original red brick Kunsthalle was built from 1863 to 1869, designed by architects Georg Theodor Schirrmacher and Hermann von der Hude, the first director became the art historian and educator Alfred Lichtwark. In 1994, one painting of the Kunsthalle was involved in the so-called Frankfurt art theft, while on loan to the Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt, the painting Nebelschwaden by Caspar David Friedrich was stolen. After negotiations with the thieves, a lawyer bought back the painting, the cubic building sits on a monolithic base at a prominent location in close proximity to the Binnenalster. Since 2014, the Kunsthalle is under a euro 22 million renovation, in which the old entrance is being re-activated as sole entrance for the entire complex. The Kunsthalle is divided into four different sections, the Gallery of Old Masters, the Gallery of 19th-century Art, the Gallery of Classical Modernism and the Gallery of Contemporary Art. The Kunsthalle Museum is also known for its contemporary art collections and exhibitions. The Hamburg Kunsthalle continuisly carries out temporary exhibitions on contemporary and historic art, yearly there are on average 20 special exhibitions. The Dawn of Romanticism 2011–2012, Max Liebermann, pioneer of Modern Art 2012–2013, Giacometti
15.
Johann Gottfried Herder
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Johann Gottfried Herder was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, born in Mohrungen in the Kingdom of Prussia, Herder grew up in a poor household, educating himself from his fathers Bible and songbook. In 1762, a youth of seventeen, he enrolled at the local University of Königsberg. At the same time, Herder became an intellectual protégé of Johann Georg Hamann, although himself an unsociable person, Herder influenced his contemporaries greatly. One friend wrote to him in 1785, hailing his works as inspired by God, a varied field of theorists were later to find inspiration in Herders tantalisingly incomplete ideas. In 1764, now a clergyman, Herder went to Riga to teach and it was during this period that he produced his first major works, which were literary criticism. In 1769 Herder traveled by ship to the French port of Nantes and this resulted in both an account of his travels as well as a shift of his own self-conception as an author. By 1770 Herder went to Strasbourg, where he met the young Goethe and this event proved to be a key juncture in the history of German literature, as Goethe was inspired by Herders literary criticism to develop his own style. This can be seen as the beginning of the Sturm und Drang movement, in 1771 Herder took a position as head pastor and court preacher at Bückeburg under Count Wilhelm von Schaumburg-Lippe. By the mid-1770s, Goethe was an author, and used his influence at the court of Weimar to secure Herder a position as General Superintendent. Herder moved there in 1776, where his outlook shifted again towards classicism, towards the end of his career, Herder endorsed the French Revolution, which earned him the enmity of many of his colleagues. At the same time, he and Goethe experienced a personal split, another reason for his isolation in later years was due to his unpopular attacks on Kantian philosophy. In 1802 Herder was ennobled by the Elector-Prince of Bavaria, which added the von to his last name. He died in Weimar in 1803 at age 59, in 1772 Herder published Treatise on the Origin of Language and went further in this promotion of language than his earlier injunction to spew out the ugly slime of the Seine. Herder now had established the foundations of comparative philology within the new currents of political outlook, Herder wrote that A poet is the creator of the nation around him, he gives them a world to see and has their souls in his hand to lead them to that world. After becoming General Superintendent in 1776, Herders philosophy shifted again towards classicism, Herder was at his best during this period, and produced works such as his unfinished Outline of a Philosophical History of Humanity which largely originated the school of historical thought. The historian should be the contemporary of the past. Herder gave Germans new pride in their origins, modifying that dominance of regard allotted to Greek art extolled among others by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Herder equated the German with the Gothic and favoured Dürer and everything Gothic
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Ludwig Achim von Arnim
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Arnim was born in Berlin, descending from a Brandenburgian Uradel noble family first mentioned in 1204. His father was the Prussian chamberlain Joachim Erdmann von Arnim, royal envoy in Copenhagen and Dresden and his mother, Amalia Carlonia Labes, died three weeks after Arnims birth. Arnim and his elder brother Carl Otto spent their childhood with their maternal grandmother Caroline von Labes in Zernikow and in Berlin, in 1798 he went on to study law, natural science and mathematics at the University of Halle. His early writings included numerous articles for scientific magazines and his first major work, Theorie der elektrischen Erscheinungen showed a leaning to the supernatural, common among the German romanticists. In Halle he associated with the composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt, in whose house he became acquainted with the Romantic poet Ludwig Tieck. From 1800 he continued his studies at the University of Göttingen, though, having met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Clemens Brentano, Arnim received the degree of a Doctor of Medicine in 1801, but never practiced. He went on to travel through Europe with his brother from 1801 to 1804, Arnim was influenced by the earlier writings of Goethe and Herder, from which he learned to appreciate the beauties of German traditional legends and folk songs. Back in Germany, he began forming a collection of these and in 1805 first published the result, in collaboration with Clemens Brentano and he went to see Goethe in Weimar, in order to edit the collection. In Frankfurt he met with the jurist Friedrich Carl von Savigny, arnimss editorial work was increasingly affected by the Napoleonic Wars. Upon the Prussian defeat in the 1806 Battle of Jena–Auerstedt, he followed the court to Königsberg. In 1807 he moved back to Weimar and Kassel, where he visited the Brothers Grimm, the Heidelberg Romanticist circle also included Tieck, Friedrich Schlegel, Jean Paul, Justinus Kerner, and Ludwig Uhland. From 1809 Arnim again lived in Berlin, however, his plans to enter the Prussian civil service failed, in 1810 he affianced Brentanos sister Bettina, who won wide recognition as a writer in her own right. They married on 11 March 1811, their daughter Gisela became a writer as well, shortly after their marriage the couple went on to visit Goethe in to Weimar, however, the reunion was overshadowed by a heated quarrel between Bettina and Goethes wife Christiane. In Berlin, Achim worked on Heinrich von Kleists legacy and founded the patriotic Deutsche Tischgesellschaft association of Christian men and he remained connected with the Prussian patriots such as Adam Heinrich Müller and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué and even commanded a Landsturm battalion during the German Campaign of 1813. From October 1813 he acted as publisher of the Berlin newspaper The Prussian Correspondent, while his wife stayed in Berlin, Arnim in 1814 retired to Künstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf, his family home, where he lived until his death by a stroke in 1831. His output, published in newspapers, magazines and almanacs as well as self-contained books, included novels, dramas, stories, poems, following his death, his library was taken over by the Weimar court library. Arnim is considered one of the most important representatives of German Romanticism and his works were collected, with an introduction by Wilhelm Grimm, in twenty volumes. Heinrich Heine wrote a eulogy of Arnim in his Deutschland, kaiser Karl des Fünften erste Jugendliebe Schaubühne Frau von Saverne Die Kronenwächter
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Bettina von Arnim
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Bettina von Arnim, born Elisabeth Catharina Ludovica Magdalena Brentano, was a German writer and novelist. Bettina Brentano was a writer, publisher, composer, singer, visual artist, an illustrator, patron of young talent, and she was the archetype of the Romantic eras zeitgeist and the crux of many creative relationships of canonical artistic figures. Best known for the company she kept, she numbered among her closest friends Goethe, Beethoven, many leading composers of the time, including Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johanna Kinkel, and Johannes Brahms, admired her spirit and talents. She was closely related to the German writers Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim, the first was her brother and her daughter Gisela von Arnim became a prominent writer as well. Her nephews, via her brother Christian, were Franz and Lujo Brentano, Bettina von Arnim was born at Frankfurt am Main, into the large family of an Italian merchant. Her grandmother, Sophie von La Roche, was a novelist, and her brother was Clemens Brentano, the poet known for his lyric poems, libretti. He was a mentor and protector to her and inspired her to read the poetry of the time and she formed a friendship with Karoline von Günderrode. The two friends acknowledged only natural impulses, laws, and methods of life, and brooded over the “tyranny” of conventionalities, in 1806, Günderrode committed suicide on account of a passion for the philologist Georg Friedrich Creuzer. In 1807 at Weimar Bettina made the acquaintance of Goethe, for whom she entertained a significant passion and their friendship came to an abrupt end in 1811, owing to Bettinas behaviour with Goethes wife. In 1811, Bettina married Achim von Arnim, the renowned Romantic poet, the couple settled near Berlin and had seven children. Achim died in 1831, but Bettina maintained a public life. The book is in large part fictitious, genuine sonnets of Goethe in it were addressed, not to her, but to Minna Herzlieb. As a work of fiction, the book has been praised and she continued to write, inspire, and publish until 20 January 1859, when she died in Berlin, aged 73, surrounded by her children. During the years of 1806 to 1808, von Arnim helped gather the folk songs that comprised Des Knaben Wunderhorn, some of the songs were later put to music by a number of composers, among them Gustav Mahler. The collection became a touchstone of the Romantic musical and poetic style, from 1808 to 1809 she studied voice, composition, and piano in Munich under Peter von Winter and Sebastian Bopp. She published her first song under the pseudonym Beans Beor, which she used later as well. Bettina sang briefly in the Berliner Singakademie and composed settings of Hellenistic poems by Amalie von Helvig, though domestic duties connected to her 1811 marriage to von Arnim diminished her productivity, several art songs from the period have been recovered and have been published in Werke und Briefe. Von Arnim was the first composer to set the poet Hölderlin’s work to music and she was a muse to the progressives of Prussia, linked to the socialist movement and an advocate for the oppressed Jewish community
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Clemens Brentano
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Clemens Wenzeslaus Brentano was a German poet and novelist, and a major figure of German Romanticism. He was the uncle, via his brother Christian, of Franz, Clemens Brentano was born to Peter Anton Brentano and Maximiliane von La Roche, a wealthy merchant family in Frankfurt on 9 September 1778. His fathers family was of Italian descent and his sister was writer Bettina von Arnim, who, at a young age, lionised and corresponded with Goethe, and, in 1835, published the correspondence as Goethes Briefwechsel mit einem Kinde. Clemens Brentano studied in Halle and Jena, afterwards residing at Heidelberg, Vienna and he was close to Wieland, Herder, Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel, Fichte and Tieck. From 1798 to 1800 Brentano lived in Jena, the first center of the romantic movement, in 1801, he moved to Göttingen, and became a friend of Achim von Arnim. He married writer Sophie Mereau on 29 October 1803, in 1804, he moved to Heidelberg and worked with Arnim on Zeitungen für Einsiedler and Des Knaben Wunderhorn. After his wife Sophie died in 1806 he married a second time in 1807 to Auguste Bussmann, in the years between 1808 and 1818, Brentano lived mostly in Berlin, and from 1819 to 1824 in Dülmen, Westphalia. He took on there the position of secretary to the Catholic visionary nun, the Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich. It was claimed that from 1802 until her death, she bore the wounds of the Crown of Thorns, and from 1812, the stigmata, a cross over her heart. Clemens Brentano made her acquaintance in 1818 and remained at the foot of the stigmatists bed copying her dictation until 1824, when she died, he prepared an index of the visions and revelations from her journal, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. One of these visions made known by Brentano later resulted in the identification of the real House of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus by Abbé Julien Gouyet. The latter part of his life he spent in Regensburg, Frankfurt and Munich, Brentano assisted Ludwig Achim von Arnim, his brother-in-law, in the collection of folk-songs forming Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which Gustav Mahler drew upon for his song cycle. His first published writings were Satiren und poetische Spiele, a romance Godwi oder Das steinerne Bild der Mutter, of his dramas the best are Ponce de Leon, Victoria und ihre Geschwister and Die Grundung Prags. Brentanos collected works, edited by his brother Christian, appeared at Frankfurt in 9 vols, selections have been edited by J. B. Diel, M. Koch, and J. Dohmke, diel and William Kreiten, Klemens Brentano, the introduction to Kochs edition, and R. Steig, A. von Arnim und K. Brentano. In his honor the Clemens-Brentano prize is awarded for German literature, Brentanos work is referenced in Thomas Manns novel Doctor Faustus. A cycle of thirteen songs, based on Brentanos poems, is noted in Chapter XXI as one of the composer protagonists most significant early works, kohlhammer, Berlin – ISBN 3-17-008658-8 Das bittere Leiden unsers Herrn Jesu Christi ISBN 3-17-012652-0, ISBN 3-17-004917-8 Das Leben der heil. A. Brentano, Clemens Maria Cassells Encyclopedia of World Literature New York, ripley, George, Dana, Charles A. eds
19.
Jean Paul
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Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, was a German Romantic writer, best known for his humorous novels and stories. Jean Paul was born at Wunsiedel, in the Fichtelgebirge mountains and his father was an organist at Wunsiedel. In 1765 his father became a pastor at Joditz near Hof and, in 1767 at Schwarzenbach, after attending the Gymnasium at Hof, in 1781 Jean Paul went to the University of Leipzig. His original intention was to enter his fathers profession, but theology did not interest him, unable to maintain himself at Leipzig he returned in 1784 to Hof, where he lived with his mother. From 1787 to 1789 he served as a tutor at Töpen, a village near Hof, Jean Paul began his career as a man of letters with Grönländische Prozesse, published anonymously in Berlin in 1783–84, and Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren, published in 1789. These works were not received with favour, and in later life even their author had little sympathy for their satirical tone. Jean Pauls outlook was profoundly altered by a crisis he suffered on November 15,1790. Also among these was the novel Blumen- Frucht- und Dornenstücke, oder Ehestand, Tod and this series of writings assured Richter a place in German literature, and during the rest of his life every work he produced was welcomed by a wide circle of admirers. After his mothers death in 1797, Richter went to Leipzig, and in the year, to Weimar. The English writers Thomas Carlyle and Thomas De Quincey took an interest in Jean Pauls work, in 1801 he married Caroline Meyer, whom he had met in Berlin the year before. They lived first at Meiningen, then at Coburg, and finally, in 1804, here Richter spent a quiet, simple, and happy life, constantly occupied with his work as a writer. Jean Pauls Titan was followed by Flegeljahre and his later imaginative works were Dr Katzenbergers Badereise, Des Feldpredigers Schmelzle Reise nach Flätz, Leben Fibels, and Der Komet, oder Nikolaus Marggraf. In his last years he began Wahrheit aus Jean Pauls Leben, to which additions from his papers, also during this time he supported the younger writer E. T. A. Hoffmann, who long counted Richter among his influences. Richter wrote the preface to Fantasy Pieces, a collection of Hoffmanns short stories published in 1814, in September 1821 Jean Paul lost his only son, Max, a youth of the highest promise, and he never quite recovered from this shock. He lost his sight in 1824, and died of dropsy at Bayreuth, Jean Paul occupies an unusual position in German literature and has always divided the literary public. Some hold him in highest veneration while others treat his work with indifference and he took the Romantic formlessness of the novel to extremes, Schlegel called his novels soliloquies, in which he makes his readers take part. Jean Paul habitually played with a multitude of droll and bizarre ideas, his work is characterized by wild metaphors as well as by digressive, the quick changes of mood attracted the composer Schumann whose Papillons was inspired by Jean Paul. His novels were admired by women
20.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher and an important figure of German idealism. He achieved wide renown in his day and, while primarily influential within the tradition of philosophy, has become increasingly influential in the analytic tradition as well. Although he remains a figure, his canonical stature within Western philosophy is universally recognized. His philosophy of spirit conceptually integrates psychology, the state, history, art, religion and his account of the master–slave dialectic has been highly influential, especially in 20th-century France. Hegel has been seen in the 20th century as the originator of the thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad, however, as an explicit phrase, Hegel has influenced many thinkers and writers whose own positions vary widely. Hegel was born on August 27,1770 in Stuttgart, in the Duchy of Württemberg in southwestern Germany, christened Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, he was known as Wilhelm to his close family. His father, Georg Ludwig, was Rentkammersekretär at the court of Karl Eugen, Hegels mother, Maria Magdalena Louisa, was the daughter of a lawyer at the High Court of Justice at the Württemberg court. She died of a fever when Hegel was thirteen. Hegel and his father caught the disease but narrowly survived. Hegel had a sister, Christiane Luise, and a brother, Georg Ludwig, at the age of three Hegel went to the German School. When he entered the Latin School two years later, he knew the first declension, having been taught it by his mother. In 1776, Hegel entered Stuttgarts gymnasium illustre, during his adolescence Hegel read voraciously, copying lengthy extracts in his diary. Authors he read include the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and writers associated with the Enlightenment, such as Christian Garve, Hegels studies at the Gymnasium were concluded with his Abiturrede entitled The abortive state of art and scholarship in Turkey. At the age of eighteen Hegel entered the Tübinger Stift, where he had as roommates the poet Friedrich Hölderlin, sharing a dislike for what they regarded as the restrictive environment of the Seminary, the three became close friends and mutually influenced each others ideas. All greatly admired Hellenic civilization, and Hegel additionally steeped himself in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and they watched the unfolding of the French Revolution with shared enthusiasm. Schelling and Hölderlin immersed themselves in theoretical debates on Kantian philosophy, Hegel at this time envisaged his future as that of a Popularphilosoph, i. e. Having received his certificate from the Tübingen Seminary, Hegel became Hofmeister to an aristocratic family in Bern. During this period he composed the text which has known as the Life of Jesus
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E. T. A. Hoffmann
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Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was a Prussian Romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. His stories form the basis of Jacques Offenbachs famous opera The Tales of Hoffmann and he is also the author of the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskys ballet The Nutcracker is based. The ballet Coppélia is based on two stories that Hoffmann wrote, while Schumanns Kreisleriana is based on Hoffmanns character Johannes Kreisler. Hoffmanns stories highly influenced 19th century literature, and he is one of the authors of the Romantic movement. Hoffmanns ancestors, both maternal and paternal, were jurists and his father, Christoph Ludwig Hoffmann, was a barrister in Königsberg, Prussia, as well as a poet and amateur musician who played the viola da gamba. In 1767 he married his cousin, Lovisa Albertina Doerffer, ernst Theodor Wilhelm, born on 24 January 1776, was the youngest of three children, of whom the second died in infancy. The household, dominated by the uncle, was pietistic and uncongenial, Hoffmann was to regret his estrangement from his father. Nevertheless, he remembered his aunts with great affection, especially the younger, Charlotte, between 1781 and 1792 he attended the Lutheran school or Burgschule, where he made good progress in classics. He was taught drawing by one Saemann, and counterpoint by a Polish organist named Podbileski, ernst showed great talent for piano-playing, and busied himself with writing and drawing. He had however read Schiller, Goethe, Swift, Sterne, Rousseau and Jean Paul, and wrote part of a novel titled Der Geheimnisvolle. Around 1787 he became friends with Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the Younger, the son of a pastor, and nephew of Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the Elder, during 1792, both attended some of Kants lectures at the University of Königsberg. Their friendship, although tested by an increasing social difference, was to be lifelong. In 1794, Hoffmann became enamored of Cora Hatt, a woman to whom he had given music lessons. She was ten years older, and in 1795 gave birth to her sixth child, in February 1796, her family protested against his attentions and, with his hesitant consent, asked another of his uncles to arrange employment for him in Glogau, Prussian Silesia. From 1796 Hoffmann obtained employment as a clerk for his uncle, Johann Ludwig Doerffer, after passing further examinations he visited Dresden, where he was amazed by the paintings in the gallery, particularly those of Correggio and Raphael. During the summer of 1798 his uncle was promoted to a court in Berlin, and it was there that Hoffmann first attempted to promote himself as a composer, writing an operetta called Die Maske and sending a copy to Queen Luise of Prussia. The official reply advised to him to write to the director of the Royal Theatre, from June 1800 to 1803 he worked in Prussian provinces in the area of Greater Poland and Masovia. This was the first time he had lived without supervision by members of his family, and he started to become what school principals, parsons, uncles, and aunts call dissolute
22.
Heinrich von Kleist
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Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist was a German poet, dramatist, novelist, short story writer and journalist. The Kleist Prize, a prize for German literature, is named after him. Kleist was born into the von Kleist family in Frankfurt an der Oder in the Margraviate of Brandenburg. After a scanty education, he entered the Prussian Army in 1792, served in the Rhine campaign of 1796 and he studied law and philosophy at the Viadrina University and in 1800 received a subordinate post in the Ministry of Finance at Berlin. In the following year, Kleists roving, restless spirit got the better of him, and procuring a lengthened leave of absence he visited Paris and then settled in Switzerland. There he found friends in Heinrich Zschokke and Ludwig Wieland, son of the poet Christoph Martin Wieland, and to them he read his first drama. On a journey to Dresden in 1807, Kleist was arrested by the French as a spy, on regaining his liberty, he proceeded to Dresden, where, in conjunction with Adam Heinrich Müller, he published the journal Phöbus in 1808. In 1809 Kleist went to Prague, and ultimately settled in Berlin, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Kleists whole life was filled by a restless striving after ideal and illusory happiness, and this is largely reflected in his work. He was by far the most important North German dramatist of the Romantic movement, in the spring of 1799, the 21-year-old Kleist wrote a letter to his half-sister Ulrike in which he found it incomprehensible how a human being can live without a plan for his life. In effect, Kleist sought and discovered an overwhelming sense of security by looking to the future with a plan for his life. It brought him happiness and assured him of confidence, especially knowing that life without a plan only saw despair, the irony of his later suicide has been the fodder of his critics. His first tragedy was The Schroffenstein Family, the material for the second, Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, is taken from a Greek source and presents a picture of wild passion. More successful than either of these was his play, Käthchen of Heilbronn, a poetic drama full of medieval bustle and mystery. In comedy, Kleist made a name with The Broken Jug, while Amphitryon, of Kleists other dramas, Die Hermannsschlacht is a dramatic work of anti-Napoleonic propaganda, written as Austria and France went to war. It has been described by Carl Schmitt as the greatest partisan work of all time, in it he gives vent to his hatred of his countrys oppressors. This, together with the drama The Prince of Homburg, which is among his best works, was first published by Ludwig Tieck in Kleists Hinterlassene Schriften, robert Guiskard, a drama conceived on a grand plan, was left a fragment. The Earthquake in Chile and St. Cecilia, or the Power of Music are also examples of Kleists story telling as is The Marquise of O. His short narratives influenced those of Kafka and the novellas of the Austrian writer and he also wrote patriotic lyrics in the context of the Napoleonic Wars
23.
Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg)
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Novalis was the pseudonym and pen name of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, a poet, author, mystic, and philosopher of Early German Romanticism. Hardenbergs professional work and university background, namely his study of mineralogy, the first studies showing important relations between his literary and professional works started in the 1960s. Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg was born in 1772 at Oberwiederstedt manor, in the church in Wiederstedt, he was christened Georg Philipp Friedrich. An oil painting and a christening cap commonly assigned to him are Hardenbergs only possessions now extant, the family seat was a manorial estate, not simply a stately home. Hardenberg descended from ancient, Low German nobility and his father, the estate owner and salt-mine manager Heinrich Ulrich Erasmus Freiherr von Hardenberg, was a strictly pietistic man, member of the Moravian Church. Heinrich Ulrich Erasmus second marriage was to Auguste Bernhardine von Böltzig, the Hardenbergs were a noble family but not rich. Young Georg Philipp was often short of cash, rode a small horse, at first, young Hardenberg was taught by private tutors. He attended the Lutheran grammar school in Eisleben, where he acquired skills in rhetoric and ancient literature, from his twelfth year, he was in the charge of his uncle Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Hardenberg at his stately home in Lucklum. Young Hardenberg studied Law from 1790 to 1794 at Jena, Leipzig and he passed his exams with distinction. During his studies, he attended Schillers lectures on history and befriended him during Schillers illness and he also met Goethe, Herder and Jean Paul, and befriended Ludwig Tieck, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and the brothers Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel. In October 1794, he started working as actuary for August Coelestin Just, the following January, he was appointed auditor to the salt works at Weißenfels. Nonetheless, he fell in love with Sophie, since in the young Georg Philipps view of the world nothing is commonplace because all, when rightly seen, is symbolic. On 15 March 1795, when Sophie was 13 years old, the cruelly early death of Sophie in March 1797, from tuberculosis, affected Novalis deeply and permanently. She was only 15 years old, and the two had not married yet, in 1795–1796, Novalis entered the Mining Academy of Freiberg in Saxony, a leading academy of science, to study geology under Professor Abraham Gottlob Werner, who befriended him. During Novalis studies in Freiberg, he immersed himself in a range of studies, including mining, mathematics, chemistry, biology, history and, not least. It was here that he collected materials for his famous encyclopaedia project, similar to other German authors of the Romantic age, his work in the mining industry, which was undergoing then the first steps to industrialization, was closely connected with his literary work. Young Hardenberg adopted the pen name Novalis from his 12th century ancestors who named themselves de Novali, after their settlement Grossenrode, in the period 1795–1796, Novalis concerned himself with the scientific doctrine of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, which greatly influenced his world view. He not only read Fichtes philosophies but also developed Fichtes concepts further, transforming Fichtes Nicht-Ich to a Du and this was the starting point for Novalis Liebesreligion
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Caroline Schelling
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Caroline Schelling, née Michaelis, widowed Böhmer, divorced Schlegel, was a noted German intellectual. She was born at Göttingen, the daughter of the orientalist Johann David Michaelis, in 1784, she married a district medical officer named Böhmer, in Clausthal in the Harz. After his death, in 1788, she returned to Göttingen, where she became familiar with the poet Gottfried August Bürger and the critic of the Romantic school, August Wilhelm Schlegel. In 1791, she took up residence in Mainz, joining the famous French revolutionary society of the Clubbists, in 1796, she went to Jena and married Schlegel, who was appointed extraordinary professor. She became the wife of the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and she died at Maulbronn in 1809. Caroline Schelling played a role in the intellectual movement of her time. Here she debated with poets and philosophers like Novalis, Fichte, Hegel, Schiller and her later husband Schelling and she is especially remarkable for the assistance she afforded Schlegel in his translation of Shakespeares works. In her own name, she published some critical reviews. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Schelling
25.
Gustav Schwab
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Gustav Benjamin Schwab was a German writer, pastor and publisher. Gustav Schwab was born in Stuttgart, the son of the philosopher Johann Christoph Schwab, after attending Gymnasium Illustre, he studied as a scholar of Tübinger Stift at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, his first two years studying Philology and Philosophy, and thereafter Theology. In 1818 he became a school teacher in Stuttgart, and in 1837 he started work as a pastor in Gomaringen. In 1841, he moved back to Stuttgart, where he was first pastor, in 1847 he received an honorary Doctorate from his old university. In his later years, he traveled regularly to Überlingen am Bodensee to enjoy the waters at the citys spa, he died in Stuttgart in 1850. spiegel. de
26.
Ludwig Uhland
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Johann Ludwig Uhland, was a German poet, philologist and literary historian. He was born in Tübingen, Württemberg, and studied jurisprudence at the university there, in 1815 he collected his poems in a volume entitled Vaterländische Gedichte, which almost immediately secured a wide circle of readers. To almost every new edition he added some fresh poems and his two dramatic works Ernst, Herzog von Schwaben and Ludwig der Baier are unimportant in comparison with his Gedichte. As a lyric poet, Uhland must be classed with the writers of the romantic school, like them, he found in the Middle Ages the subjects which appealed most strongly to his imagination. Yet his style has a precision, suppleness and grace which distinguish his most characteristic writings from those of the romantics. Uhland wrote poems in defense of freedom, and in the assembly of Württemberg he played a distinguished part as one of the most vigorous. In 1815, Württemberg was to be granted a new constitution, Uhland became a prominent proponent of the old rights of the estates during the controversy of the following years, which ended in a compromise in 1819 under William I of Württemberg. Uhland went on to serve in the newly created parliament from 1819 until 1826, in 1829 he was made honorary professor of German literature at the University of Tübingen, but he resigned in 1833, when the post was found to be incompatible with his political views. In 1848 he became a member of the Frankfurt Parliament that convened in the course of the 1848 revolution, as a Germanic and Romance philologist, Uhland must be counted among the founders of that science. His poetical works were published as Gedichte und Dramen, while his scientific work is embodied in Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung und Sage, edited by Holland, Keller. He died on 13 November 1862 in Tübingen, longfellow translated some of his pieces into English. Alexander Platt translated his “Poems”, W. W. Skeat his “Songs and Ballads”, one of his best-known poems is Ich hatt einen Kameraden, which is an integral part of military funerals. A town located south of Austin, Texas is named in his honor, chisholm, Hugh, ed. Uhland, Johann Ludwig. Thurston, H. T. Colby, F. M. eds, ripley, George, Dana, Charles A. eds
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Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff
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Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff was a Prussian poet, novelist, playwright, literary critic, translator, and anthologist. Eichendorff was one of the writers and critics of Romanticism. Ever since their publication and up to the present day, some of his works have been popular in Germany. Eichendorff first became famous for his 1826 novella Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing, the Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing is a typical Romantic novella whose main themes are wanderlust and love. The protagonist, the son of a miller, rejects his fathers trade, as, with his lowly status, she is unattainable for him, he escapes to Italy - only to return and learn that she is the dukes adopted daughter, and thus within his social reach. With its combination of world and realism, Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing is considered to be a high point of Romantic fiction. One critic stated that Eichendorff’s Good-for-Nothing is the personification of love of nature, Thomas Mann called Eichendorffs Good-for-Nothing a combination of the purity of the folk song and the fairy tale. Many of Eichendorffs poems were first published as parts of his novellas and stories. The novella Good-for-Nothing alone contains 54 poems, Eichendorff, a descendant of an old noble family, was born in 1788 at Schloß Lubowitz near Ratibor in Upper Silesia, at that time part of the Kingdom of Prussia. His parents were the Prussian officer Adolf Freiherr von Eichendorff and his wife, Karoline née Freiin von Kloche, Eichendorff sold the family estates Deutsch-Krawarn, Kauthen, and Wrbkau and acquired Lubowitz Castle from his mother-in-law. The castles Rococo reconstruction, which was begun by her, was very expensive, young Joseph was close to his older brother Wilhelm. From 1793-1801 they were home-schooled by tutor Bernhard Heinke, Joseph began writing diaries as early as 1798, witnesses to his budding literary career. The diaries present many insights into the development of the young writer, at a young age, Eichendorff was already well aware of his parents financial straits. On 19 June 1801, the thirteen-year old noted in his diary, Father travelled to Breslau, on the run from his creditors, adding on 24 June, with his brother Wilhelm, Joseph attended the Catholic Matthias Gymnasium in Breslau. In 1804 his sister Luise Antonie Nepomucene Johanna was born, who was to become a friend of Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter, after their final exams, both brothers attended lectures at the University of Breslau and the Protestant Maria-Magdalena-Gymnasium. Eichendorffs diary from this time shows that he valued formal education much less than the theatre, recording 126 plays and his love for Mozart also goes back to these days. Joseph himself seems to have been an actor and his brother Wilhelm a good singer. Together with his brother Wilhelm, Joseph studied law and the humanities in Halle an der Saale, a city near Jena, the brothers frequently attended the theatre of Lauchstädt,13 km where the Weimar court theatrical company performed plays by Goethe
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Johann Gottlieb Fichte
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Recently, philosophers and scholars have begun to appreciate Fichte as an important philosopher in his own right due to his original insights into the nature of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Fichte was also the originator of thesis–antithesis–synthesis, an idea that is often attributed to Hegel. Like Descartes and Kant before him, Fichte was motivated by the problem of subjectivity, Fichte also wrote works of political philosophy, he has a reputation as one of the fathers of German nationalism. Fichte was born in Rammenau, Upper Lusatia, the son of a ribbon weaver, he came of peasant stock which had lived in the region for many generations. The family was noted in the neighborhood for its probity and piety, christian Fichte, Johann Gottliebs father, married somewhat above his station. It has been suggested that a certain impatience which Fichte himself displayed throughout his life was an inheritance from his mother, young Fichte received the rudiments of his education from his father. He early showed remarkable ability, and it was owing to his reputation among the villagers that he gained the opportunity for an education than he otherwise would have received. The story runs that the Freiherr von Militz, a country landowner and he was, however, informed that a lad in the neighborhood would be able to repeat the sermon practically verbatim. As a result, the baron took the lad into his protection, Fichte was placed in the family of Pastor Krebel at Niederau near Meissen and there received thorough grounding in the classics. From this time onward, Fichte saw little of his parents, in October 1774, he was attending the celebrated foundation-school at Pforta near Naumburg. This school is associated with the names of Novalis, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel, perhaps his education strengthened a tendency toward introspection and independence, characteristics which appear strongly in his doctrines and writings. In 1780, he study at the theology seminary of University of Jena. He was transferred a year later to study at the Leipzig University, Fichte seems to have supported himself at this period of bitter poverty and hard struggle. Freiherr von Militz continued to him, but when he died in 1784, Fichte had to end his studies prematurely. During the years 1784 to 1788, he supported himself in a way as tutor in various Saxon families. In early 1788, he returned to Leipzig in the hope of finding a better employment and he lived in Zurich for the next two years, which was a time of great contentment for him. There he met his wife, Johanna Rahn, and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. There he also became in 1793 a member of the Freemasonry lodge Modestia cum Libertate with which Johann Wolfgang Goethe was also connected, in the spring of 1790, he became engaged to Johanna
29.
Ernst Moritz Arndt
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Ernst Moritz Arndt was a German nationalist author and poet. Early in his life, he fought for the abolition of serfdom, Arndt had to flee to Sweden for some time due to his anti-French positions. He is one of the founders of German nationalism and the 19th century movement for German unification. After the Carlsbad Decrees, the forces of the restoration counted him as a demagogue, Arndt played an important role for the early national and liberal Burschenschaft movement and for the unification movement, and his song Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland. Acted as an unofficial German national anthem, long after his death, his anti-French propaganda was used again, in both World Wars. This, together with some strongly antisemitic and anti-Polish statements, has led to a critical view of Arndt today. Arndt was born at Gross Schoritz, then in Swedish Pomerania, as the son of a farmer and emancipated serf of the lord of the district. His mother came of well-to-do German yeoman stock, in 1787 the family moved to Stralsund, where Arndt was able to attend the academy. At the age of 28 he renounced the ministry, and for 18 months led a life of traveling, visiting Austria, Hungary, Italy, France and Belgium. Turning homewards up the river Rhine, he was moved by the sight of the castles along its banks to intense bitterness against France. The impressions of this journey he described in Travels in parts of Germany, Hungary, Italy. In 1800 he taught at the University of Greifswald as an independent lecturer in history, germanien und Europa appeared in 1803, a fragmentary outburst, as he himself called it, on his views on French aggression. Arndt had meanwhile risen from privatdocent to extraordinary professor, and in 1806 was appointed to the chair of history at the university. In this year he published the first part of his Geist der Zeit, in which he flung down the gauntlet to Napoleon and called on countrymen to rise and shake off the French yoke. So great was the excitement it produced that Arndt was compelled to take refuge in Sweden to escape the vengeance of Napoleon, settling in Stockholm, he obtained government employment, and devoted himself to the great cause which was nearest his heart. In pamphlets, poems and songs, he communicated his enthusiasm for German independence to his countrymen, schills heroic death at Stralsund prompted him to return to Germany, and in disguise he reached Berlin in December. In 1810 he returned to Greifswald, but only for a few months, meanwhile, pamphlet after pamphlet, and his stirring patriotic songs, such as Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland. Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen ließ, and Was blasen Trompeten, the boldness of his demands for reform offended the Prussian government, and in the summer in 1819 he was arrested and his papers confiscated
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Friedrich Ludwig Jahn
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Friedrich Ludwig Jahn was a German gymnastics educator and nationalist. His admirers know him as Turnvater Jahn, roughly meaning father of gymnastics Jahn, Jahn was born in Lanz in Brandenburg, Prussia. He studied theology and philology from 1796 to 1802 at Halle, after the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt in 1806 he joined the Prussian army. In 1809 he went to Berlin, where he became a teacher at the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster, the first Turnplatz, or open-air gymnasium, was opened by Jahn in Berlin in 1811, and the Turnverein movement spread rapidly. Young gymnasts were taught to regard themselves as members of a kind of guild for the emancipation of their fatherland and this nationalistic spirit was nourished in no small degree by the writings of Jahn. Early in 1813 Jahn took a part in the formation of the famous Lützow Free Corps. He commanded a battalion of the corps, though he was employed in the secret service during the same period. After the war he returned to Berlin where he was appointed teacher of gymnastics. A man of nature, rugged, eccentric and outspoken. The authorities finally realized he aimed at establishing a united Germany, the conflict resulted in the closing of the Turnplatz in 1819 and Jahns arrest. Kept in semi-confinement successively at Spandau, Küstrin, and at the fortress in Kolberg until 1824, the sentence was reversed in 1825, but he was forbidden to live within ten miles of Berlin. He therefore took up residence at Freyburg on the Unstrut, where he remained until his death, with the exception of a period in 1828. In the spring of 1848 he was elected by the district of Naumburg to the German National Parliament, Jahn died in Freyburg, where a monument was erected in his honor in 1859. Jahn popularized the motto Frisch, Fromm, Fröhlich, Frei in the early 19th century, a complete edition of his works appeared at Hof in 1884-1887. See the biography by Schultheiss, and Jahn als Erzieher, by Friedric, Jahn promoted the use of parallel bars, rings and high bar in international competition. In honor and memory of him, some clubs, called Turnvereine, took up his name. A memorial to Jahn exists in St. Louis, Missouri and it features a large bust of Jahn in the center of an arc of stone, with statues of a male and female gymnast, one on each end of the arc. The monument is on the edge of Art Hill next to the path running north and south along the edge of Post-Dispatch lake
31.
Adelbert von Chamisso
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Adelbert von Chamisso was a German poet and botanist, author of Peter Schlemihl, a famous story about a man who sold his shadow. He was commonly known in French as Adelbert de Chamisso de Boncourt and his name appears in several forms, one of the most common being Ludolf Karl Adelbert von Chamisso. In 1790, the French Revolution drove his parents out of France with their seven children, and they went successively to Liège, the Hague, Wurzburg, and Bayreuth, before settling in Berlin. Shortly thereafter, thanks to the Peace of Tilsit, his family was able to return to France and he had little formal education, but while in the Prussian military service in Berlin he assiduously studied natural science for three years. In collaboration with Varnhagen von Ense, in 1803 he founded the Berliner Musenalmanach, the enterprise was a failure, and, interrupted by the Napoleonic wars, it came to an end in 1806. It brought him, however, to the notice of many of the celebrities of the day. Chamisso had become a lieutenant in 1801, and in 1805 he accompanied his regiment to Hamelin, where he shared in the humiliation of the towns treasonable capitulation the next year. Placed on parole, he went to France, but both his parents were dead, returning to Berlin in the autumn of 1807, he obtained his release from the Prussian service early the following year, in 1812 he returned to Berlin, where he continued his scientific studies. In the summer of the year,1813, he wrote the prose narrative Peter Schlemihl. This, the most famous of all his works, has translated into most European languages. It was written partly to divert his own thoughts and partly to amuse the children of his friend Julius Eduard Hitzig. In 1815, Chamisso was appointed botanist to the Russian ship Rurik, fitted out at the expense of Count Nikolay Rumyantsev and he collected at the Cape of Good Hope in January 1818 in the company of Krebs, Mund and Maire. His diary of the expedition is an account of the expedition to the Pacific Ocean. During this trip Chamisso described a number of new species found in what is now the San Francisco Bay Area, several of these, including the California poppy, Eschscholzia californica, were named after his friend Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz, the Ruriks entomologist. In return, Eschscholtz named a variety of plants, including the genus Camissonia and he became a leading member of the Serapion Brethren, a literary circle around E. T. A. Hoffmann. In 1827, partly for the purpose of rebutting the charges brought against him by Kotzebue, he published Views and Remarks on a Voyage of Discovery, both works display great accuracy and industry. His last scientific labor was a tract on the Hawaiian language, Chamissos travels and scientific researches restrained for a while the full development of his poetical talent, and it was not until his forty-eighth year that he turned back to literature. In 1829, in collaboration with Gustav Schwab, and from 1832 in conjunction with Franz von Gaudy, he brought out the Deutscher Musenalmanach, Chamisso died in Berlin at the age of 57
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Richard Wagner
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Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works and he described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and his advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music. His Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music, Wagner had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which embodied many novel design features. The Ring and Parsifal were premiered here and his most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival, until his final years, Wagners life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors. His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment, notably, since the late 20th century, where they express antisemitic sentiments. The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the 20th century, his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, Richard Wagner was born to an ethnic German family in Leipzig, where his family lived at No. 3, the Brühl in the Jewish quarter and he was baptized at St. Thomas Church. He was the child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service, and his wife, Johanna Rosine. Wagners father Carl died of typhus six months after Richards birth, afterwards his mother Johanna lived with Carls friend, the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer. In August 1814 Johanna and Geyer probably married—although no documentation of this has found in the Leipzig church registers. She and her family moved to Geyers residence in Dresden, until he was fourteen, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. He almost certainly thought that Geyer was his biological father, Geyers love of the theatre came to be shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in his performances. In his autobiography Mein Leben Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel, in late 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzels school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. He struggled to play a scale at the keyboard and preferred playing theatre overtures by ear. Following Geyers death in 1821, Richard was sent to the Kreuzschule, at the age of nine he was hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Carl Maria von Webers opera Der Freischütz, which he saw Weber conduct. At this period Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright and his first creative effort, listed in the Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis as WWV1, was a tragedy called Leubald. Begun when he was in school in 1826, the play was influenced by Shakespeare
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Ludwig van Beethoven
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Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he one of the most famous. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies,5 piano concertos,1 violin concerto,32 piano sonatas,16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis, and one opera, Fidelio. At the age of 21 he moved to Vienna, where he began studying composition with Joseph Haydn and he lived in Vienna until his death. By his late 20s his hearing began to deteriorate, and by the last decade of his life he was almost completely deaf. In 1811 he gave up conducting and performing in public but continued to compose, many of his most admired works come from these last 15 years of his life. Beethoven was the grandson of Ludwig van Beethoven, a musician from the town of Mechelen in the Duchy of Brabant in the Flemish region of what is now Belgium, who at the age of twenty moved to Bonn. Ludwig was employed as a singer at the court of the Elector of Cologne, eventually rising to become, in 1761. The portrait he commissioned of himself towards the end of his life remained proudly displayed in his grandsons rooms as a talisman of his musical heritage. Ludwig had one son, Johann, who worked as a tenor in the musical establishment and gave keyboard. Johann married Maria Magdalena Keverich in 1767, she was the daughter of Johann Heinrich Keverich, Beethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn. There is no record of the date of his birth, however. Of the seven children born to Johann van Beethoven, only Ludwig, the second-born, caspar Anton Carl was born on 8 April 1774, and Nikolaus Johann, the youngest, was born on 2 October 1776. Beethovens first music teacher was his father and he later had other local teachers, the court organist Gilles van den Eeden, Tobias Friedrich Pfeiffer, and Franz Rovantini. Beethovens musical talent was obvious at a young age, some time after 1779, Beethoven began his studies with his most important teacher in Bonn, Christian Gottlob Neefe, who was appointed the Courts Organist in that year. Neefe taught Beethoven composition, and by March 1783 had helped him write his first published composition, Beethoven soon began working with Neefe as assistant organist, at first unpaid, and then as a paid employee of the court chapel conducted by the Kapellmeister Andrea Luchesi. His first three piano sonatas, named Kurfürst for their dedication to the Elector Maximilian Friedrich, were published in 1783, Maximilian Frederick noticed Beethovens talent early, and subsidised and encouraged the young mans musical studies. Maximilian Fredericks successor as the Elector of Bonn was Maximilian Francis, the youngest son of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, echoing changes made in Vienna by his brother Joseph, he introduced reforms based on Enlightenment philosophy, with increased support for education and the arts
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. Born in Salzburg, he showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood, already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17, Mozart was engaged as a musician at the Salzburg court, while visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame, during his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of his death. The circumstances of his death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons and he composed more than 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers, Ludwig van Beethoven composed his own early works in the shadow of Mozart, and Joseph Haydn wrote, posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on 27 January 1756 to Leopold Mozart and Anna Maria, née Pertl and this was the capital of the Archbishopric of Salzburg, an ecclesiastic principality in what is now Austria, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. He was the youngest of seven children, five of whom died in infancy and his elder sister was Maria Anna Mozart, nicknamed Nannerl. Mozart was baptized the day after his birth, at St. Ruperts Cathedral in Salzburg, the baptismal record gives his name in Latinized form, as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. He generally called himself Wolfgang Amadè Mozart as an adult, Leopold Mozart, a native of Augsburg, Germany, was a minor composer and an experienced teacher. In 1743, he was appointed as fourth violinist in the establishment of Count Leopold Anton von Firmian. Four years later, he married Anna Maria in Salzburg, Leopold became the orchestras deputy Kapellmeister in 1763. During the year of his sons birth, Leopold published a textbook, Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule. When Nannerl was 7, she began lessons with her father. Years later, after her brothers death, she reminisced, He often spent much time at the clavier, picking out thirds, which he was ever striking, and his pleasure showed that it sounded good. In the fourth year of his age his father, for a game as it were, began to teach him a few minuets and he could play it faultlessly and with the greatest delicacy, and keeping exactly in time. At the age of five, he was composing little pieces
35.
Joseph Haydn
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Joseph Haydn was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. Haydn spent much of his career as a musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, yet his music circulated widely and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe. He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a teacher of Beethoven, Joseph Haydn was born in Rohrau, Austria, a village that at that time stood on the border with Hungary. His father was Mathias Haydn, a wheelwright who served as Marktrichter. Haydns mother Maria, née Koller, had worked as a cook in the palace of Count Harrach. Neither parent could read music, however, Mathias was a folk musician. According to Haydns later reminiscences, his family was extremely musical. Haydns parents had noticed that their son was musically gifted and knew that in Rohrau he would have no chance to obtain serious musical training, Haydn therefore went off with Frankh to Hainburg 12 kilometres away, he never again lived with his parents. Life in the Frankh household was not easy for Haydn, who later remembered being frequently hungry and he began his musical training there, and could soon play both harpsichord and violin. The people of Hainburg heard him sing treble parts in the church choir, Haydn passed his audition with Reutter, and after several months of further training moved to Vienna, where he worked for the next nine years as a chorister. Haydn lived in the Kapellhaus next to the cathedral, along with Reutter, Reutters family, and the other four choirboys, the choirboys were instructed in Latin and other school subjects as well as voice, violin, and keyboard. Reutter was of help to Haydn in the areas of music theory and composition. However, since St. Stephens was one of the musical centres in Europe. Like Frankh before him, Reutter did not always bother to make sure Haydn was properly fed, by 1749, Haydn had matured physically to the point that he was no longer able to sing high choral parts. Empress Maria Theresa herself complained to Reutter about his singing, calling it crowing, one day, Haydn carried out a prank, snipping off the pigtail of a fellow chorister. This was enough for Reutter, Haydn was first caned, then summarily dismissed and he had the good fortune to be taken in by a friend, Johann Michael Spangler, who shared his familys crowded garret room with Haydn for a few months. Haydn immediately began his pursuit of a career as a freelance musician and he was also briefly in Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitzs employ, playing the organ in the Bohemian Chancellery chapel at the Judenplatz
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Symphony No. 3 (Beethoven)
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Symphony No.3 in E♭ major, Opus 55 is a large-scale, structurally rigorous composition which marked the beginning of the creative middle-period of the composer Ludwig van Beethoven. It is among Beethovens most celebrated works. Symphony No.3 is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets in B♭, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets in E♭ and C, timpani in E♭ and B♭ and in C and G, and strings. The first movement, in 34 time, is in sonata form, the movement opens with two large E♭ major chords, played by the whole orchestra, thus firmly establishing the tonality of the movement. The first theme is introduced by the cellos, and, by the bar of the melody. The melody is finished by the first violins, with a series of Gs. After the first theme is played, by the various instruments, like the rest of the movement, the development is characterized by remarkable harmonic and rhythmic tension, from dissonant chords and long passages of syncopated rhythm. The second movement is a march in C minor with a trio in C major. Musically, the solemnity of the second movement lends it use as a funeral march proper. The third movement is a scherzo in rapid 34 time during which various members of the orchestra play the theme. It contains numerous heavily and unusually syncopated passages and its trio features hunting calls from the three horns, the entire movement is between 5 and 6 minutes long. The theme of the movement, and its bass line The subtitle Eroica Variations of Opus 35 derives from its thematic overlap with the fourth movement of this symphony. After a fugal treatment of the theme the orchestra pauses on the dominant of the home key. The symphony ends with a Presto coda which recalls the opening of the fourth movement, the fourth movement is between 10 and 14 minutes long. Beethoven originally dedicated the symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte, who he believed embodied the democratic. At that time Beethoven had the highest esteem for him, I was the first to tell him the news that Buonaparte had declared himself Emperor, whereupon he broke into a rage and exclaimed, So he is no more than a common mortal. Now, too, he will tread under foot all the rights of Man, indulge only his ambition, now he will think himself superior to all men, become a tyrant. Beethoven went to the table, seized the top of the title-page, tore it in half, the page had to be recopied, and it was only now that the symphony received the title Sinfonia eroica
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Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)
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The Symphony No.9 in D minor, Op.125, is Ludwig van Beethovens final complete symphony. Completed in 1824, the symphony is one of the works in classical music. It is almost universally considered by critics to be one of Beethovens greatest works, the symphony was the first example of a major composer using voices in a symphony. The words are sung during the movement by four vocal soloists. They were taken from the Ode to Joy, a written by Friedrich Schiller in 1785 and revised in 1803. In the 2010s, it stands as one of the most performed symphonies in the world, the Philharmonic Society of London originally commissioned the symphony in 1817. The main composition work was done between autumn 1822 and the completion of the autograph in February 1824, the symphony emerged from other pieces by Beethoven that, while completed works in their own right, are also in some sense musical sketches for the future symphony. 80, basically a concerto movement, brings in a choir. As in the Ninth Symphony, the vocal forces sing a theme first played instrumentally, going further back, an earlier version of the Choral Fantasy theme is found in the song Gegenliebe, for piano and high voice, which dates from before 1795. According to Robert W. Gutman, Mozarts K.222 Offertory in D minor, Misericordias Domini, written in 1775, contains a melody that foreshadows Ode to Joy. When his friends and financiers heard this, they urged him to premiere the symphony in Vienna in the form of a signed by a number of prominent Viennese music patrons. This was the composers first on-stage appearance in 12 years, the hall was packed with an eager audience, while no complete list of premiere performers exists, many of Viennas most elite performers are known to have participated. The soprano and alto parts were sung by two young singers, Henriette Sontag and Caroline Unger. German soprano Henriette Sontag was eighteen years old when Beethoven personally recruited her to perform in the premiere of the Ninth, also personally recruited by Beethoven, 20-year-old contralto Caroline Unger, a native of Vienna, had gained critical praise in 1821 appearing in Rossinis Tancredi. After performing in Beethovens 1824 premiere, Unger then found fame in Italy, Italian composers Donizetti and Bellini were known to have written roles specifically for her voice. Although the performance was directed by Michael Umlauf, the theatres Kapellmeister. However, two earlier, Umlauf had watched as the composers attempt to conduct a dress rehearsal of his opera Fidelio ended in disaster. So this time, he instructed the singers and musicians to ignore the almost totally deaf Beethoven, at the beginning of every part, Beethoven, who sat by the stage, gave the tempos
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European Union
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The European Union is a political and economic union of 28 member states that are located primarily in Europe. It has an area of 4,475,757 km2, the EU has developed an internal single market through a standardised system of laws that apply in all member states. Within the Schengen Area, passport controls have been abolished, a monetary union was established in 1999 and came into full force in 2002, and is composed of 19 EU member states which use the euro currency. The EU operates through a system of supranational and intergovernmental decision-making. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community, the community and its successors have grown in size by the accession of new member states and in power by the addition of policy areas to its remit. While no member state has left the EU or its antecedent organisations, the Maastricht Treaty established the European Union in 1993 and introduced European citizenship. The latest major amendment to the basis of the EU. The EU as a whole is the largest economy in the world, additionally,27 out of 28 EU countries have a very high Human Development Index, according to the United Nations Development Programme. In 2012, the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, through the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the EU has developed a role in external relations and defence. The union maintains permanent diplomatic missions throughout the world and represents itself at the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G7, because of its global influence, the European Union has been described as an emerging superpower. After World War II, European integration was seen as an antidote to the nationalism which had devastated the continent. 1952 saw the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community, the supporters of the Community included Alcide De Gasperi, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, and Paul-Henri Spaak. These men and others are credited as the Founding fathers of the European Union. In 1957, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany signed the Treaty of Rome and they also signed another pact creating the European Atomic Energy Community for co-operation in developing nuclear energy. Both treaties came into force in 1958, the EEC and Euratom were created separately from the ECSC, although they shared the same courts and the Common Assembly. The EEC was headed by Walter Hallstein and Euratom was headed by Louis Armand, Euratom was to integrate sectors in nuclear energy while the EEC would develop a customs union among members. During the 1960s, tensions began to show, with France seeking to limit supranational power, Jean Rey presided over the first merged Commission. In 1973, the Communities enlarged to include Denmark, Ireland, Norway had negotiated to join at the same time, but Norwegian voters rejected membership in a referendum
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Johannes Brahms
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Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his life in Vienna. Brahms composed for orchestra, chamber ensembles, piano, organ. A virtuoso pianist, he premiered many of his own works and he worked with some of the leading performers of his time, including the pianist Clara Schumann and the violinist Joseph Joachim. Many of his works have become staples of the concert repertoire. An uncompromising perfectionist, Brahms destroyed some of his works and left others unpublished, Brahms has been considered, by his contemporaries and by later writers, as both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired by subsequent figures as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg, the diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahmss works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Embedded within his meticulous structures, however, are deeply romantic motifs, Brahmss father, Johann Jakob Brahms, was from the town of Heide in Holstein. The family name was sometimes spelt Brahmst or Brams, and derives from Bram. Against the familys will, Johann Jakob pursued a career in music, arriving in Hamburg in 1826, where he work as a jobbing musician. In 1830, he married Johanna Henrika Christiane Nissen, a seamstress 17 years older than he was, in the same year he was appointed as a horn player in the Hamburg militia. Eventually he became a player in the Hamburg Stadttheater and the Hamburg Philharmonic Society. As Johann Jakob prospered, the family moved over the years to better accommodation in Hamburg. Johannes Brahms was born in 1833, his sister Elisabeth had been born in 1831, Fritz also became a pianist, overshadowed by his brother he emigrated to Caracas in 1867, and later returned to Hamburg as a teacher. Johann Jakob gave his son his first musical training, Johannes also learnt to play the violin, from 1840 he studied piano with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. Cossel complained in 1842 that Brahms could be such a good player, at the age of 10, Brahms made his debut as a performer in a private concert including Beethovens quintet for piano and winds Op.16 and a piano quartet by Mozart. He also played as a solo work an étude of Henri Herz, by 1845 he had written a piano sonata in G minor
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Franz Liszt
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Franz Liszt was a prolific 19th-century Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, organist, philanthropist, author, nationalist and a Franciscan tertiary. Liszt gained renown in Europe during the nineteenth century for his prodigious virtuosic skill as a pianist. As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the New German School and he left behind an extensive and diverse body of work in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated many 20th-century ideas and trends. Franz Liszt was born to Anna Liszt and Adam Liszt on October 22,1811, in the village of Doborján in Sopron County, in the Kingdom of Hungary, Liszts father played the piano, violin, cello and guitar. He had been in the service of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy and knew Haydn, Hummel, at age six, Franz began listening attentively to his fathers piano playing and showed an interest in both sacred and Romani music. Adam began teaching him the piano at age seven, and Franz began composing in an elementary manner when he was eight and he appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pressburg in October and November 1820 at age 9. After the concerts, a group of wealthy sponsors offered to finance Franzs musical education in Vienna, There Liszt received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student of Beethoven and Hummel. He also received lessons in composition from Antonio Salieri, then director of the Viennese court. Liszts public debut in Vienna on December 1,1822, at a concert at the Landständischer Saal, was a great success and he was greeted in Austrian and Hungarian aristocratic circles and also met Beethoven and Schubert. In spring 1823, when his one-year leave of absence came to an end, Adam Liszt therefore took his leave of the Princes services. At the end of April 1823, the returned to Hungary for the last time. At the end of May 1823, the family went to Vienna again, towards the end of 1823 or early 1824, Liszts first composition to be published, his Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli, appeared as Variation 24 in Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. Liszts inclusion in the Diabelli project—he was described in it as an 11 year old boy, born in Hungary—was almost certainly at the instigation of Czerny, his teacher, Liszt was the only child composer in the anthology. After his fathers death in 1827, Liszt moved to Paris, to earn money, Liszt gave lessons in piano playing and composition, often from early morning until late at night. His students were scattered across the city and he often had to long distances. Because of this, he kept uncertain hours and also took up smoking, the following year he fell in love with one of his pupils, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, the daughter of Charles Xs minister of commerce, Pierre de Saint-Cricq. Her father, however, insisted that the affair be broken off, Liszt fell very ill, to the extent that an obituary notice was printed in a Paris newspaper, and he underwent a long period of religious doubts and pessimism. He again stated a wish to join the Church but was dissuaded this time by his mother and he had many discussions with the Abbé de Lamennais, who acted as his spiritual father, and also with Chrétien Urhan, a German-born violinist who introduced him to the Saint-Simonists
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Hungary
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Hungary is a unitary parliamentary republic in Central Europe. With about 10 million inhabitants, Hungary is a member state of the European Union. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken language in Europe. Hungarys capital and largest metropolis is Budapest, a significant economic hub, major urban areas include Debrecen, Szeged, Miskolc, Pécs and Győr. His great-grandson Stephen I ascended to the throne in 1000, converting the country to a Christian kingdom, by the 12th century, Hungary became a middle power within the Western world, reaching a golden age by the 15th century. Hungarys current borders were established in 1920 by the Treaty of Trianon after World War I, when the country lost 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, following the interwar period, Hungary joined the Axis Powers in World War II, suffering significant damage and casualties. Hungary became a state of the Soviet Union, which contributed to the establishment of a four-decade-long communist dictatorship. On 23 October 1989, Hungary became again a democratic parliamentary republic, in the 21st century, Hungary is a middle power and has the worlds 57th largest economy by nominal GDP, as well as the 58th largest by PPP, out of 188 countries measured by the IMF. As a substantial actor in several industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds 36th largest exporter and importer of goods, Hungary is a high-income economy with a very high standard of living. It keeps up a security and universal health care system. Hungary joined the European Union in 2004 and part of the Schengen Area since 2007, Hungary is a member of the United Nations, NATO, WTO, World Bank, the AIIB, the Council of Europe and Visegrád Group. Well known for its cultural history, Hungary has been contributed significantly to arts, music, literature, sports and science. Hungary is the 11th most popular country as a tourist destination in Europe and it is home to the largest thermal water cave system, the second largest thermal lake in the world, the largest lake in Central Europe, and the largest natural grasslands in Europe. The H in the name of Hungary is most likely due to historical associations with the Huns. The rest of the word comes from the Latinized form of Medieval Greek Oungroi, according to an explanation the Greek name was borrowed from Proto-Slavic Ǫgǔri, in turn borrowed from Oghur-Turkic Onogur. Onogur was the name for the tribes who later joined the Bulgar tribal confederacy that ruled the eastern parts of Hungary after the Avars. The Hungarians likely belonged to the Onogur tribal alliance and it is possible they became its ethnic majority. The Hungarian endonym is Magyarország, composed of magyar and ország, the word magyar is taken from the name of one of the seven major semi-nomadic Hungarian tribes, magyeri
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Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
