Julius Mosen
Encyclopedia
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and author of Jewish descent, associated with the Young Germany
Young Germany
Young Germany was a group of German writers which existed from about 1830 to 1850. It was essentially a youth ideology . Its main proponents were Karl Gutzkow, Heinrich Laube, Theodor Mundt and Ludolf Wienbarg; Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne and Georg Büchner were also considered part of the movement...
movement, and now remembered principally for his patriotic poem the Andreas-Hofer-Lied.
Life
Julius Mosen (Julius Moses) was born at Marieney in the Saxon VogtlandVogtland
The term Vogtland refers to a region reaching across the German free states of Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia and into the Czech Republic . The name of the region contains a reference to the former leadership by the Vögte of Weida, Gera and Plauen, which translates approximately to advocates or lord...
, the son of Johannes Gottlob Moses, the cantor
Cantor (church)
A cantor is the chief singer employed in a church with responsibilities for the ecclesiastical choir; also called the precentor....
and schoolmaster of Marieney. He studied at the Gymnasium
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
in Plauen
Plauen
Plauen is a town in the Free State of Saxony, east-central Germany.It is the capital of the Vogtlandkreis. The town is situated near the border of Bavaria and the Czech Republic.Plauen's slogan is Plauen - echt Spitze.-History:...
from 1817 to 1822, and afterwards studied law at the University of Jena. During a two- year-long visit to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, he received the inspiration that resulted several years later in his major works (Ritter Wahn, Cola Rienzi, Der Kongreß von Verona).
On his return, he finished his law studies at Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, where he then worked as a lawyer. From 1835 to 1844 he was an independent advocate in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
. He had meanwhile shown great literary promise in his Lied vom Ritter Wahn (1831). This was followed by the more philosophical Ahasvar (1838), and by a volume of poems, Gedichte (1836, 2nd ed., 1843), among which Andreas Hofer and Die letzten Zehn vom vierten Regiment became popular. As an active freemason in Dresden he encountered several important literary figures, including Ludwig Tieck
Ludwig Tieck
Johann Ludwig Tieck was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Early life:...
, Ludwig Uhland
Ludwig Uhland
Johann Ludwig Uhland , was a German poet, philologist and literary historian.-Biography:He was born in Tübingen, then Duchy of Württemberg, and studied jurisprudence at the university there, but also took an interest in medieval literature, especially old German and French poetry...
, Georg Herwegh
Georg Herwegh
Georg Friedrich Rudolph Theodor Herwegh was a German revolutionary poet.-Biography:He was born in Stuttgart on 31 May 1817, the son of an innkeeper...
, Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
and Gottfried Semper
Gottfried Semper
Gottfried Semper was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture, who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden and was put on the government's wanted list. Semper fled first to Zürich and later...
, and was soon himself reckoned to be among the best-known German poets.
He also wrote the historical plays Heinrich der Fünfte (Leipzig, 1836), Cola Rienzi, Die Bräute von Florenz, Wendelin und Helene and Kaiser Otto III (the four last being published in his Theater 1842). His tragedies were very well received and were performed at the Dresden court theatre (Dresdner Hofbühne). For his services to German theatre the faculty of Philosophy at the University of Jena awarded him an honorary doctorate.
In addition he tried his hand at fiction, in his only novel, the politico-historical Der Kongress von Verona (1842), and in a collection of short stories published in 1846, Bilder im Moose.
In 1844 the Grand Duke Paul Friedrich August von Oldenburg offered him the appointment of dramaturgist at the Court Theatre in Oldenburg
Oldenburg
Oldenburg is an independent city in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated in the western part of the state between the cities of Bremen and Groningen, Netherlands, at the Hunte river. It has a population of 160,279 which makes it the fourth biggest city in Lower Saxony after Hanover, Braunschweig...
, which he accepted, in the hope of putting into practice his vision of German national theatre. In the same year he had his family name changed from "Moses" to "Mosen" by Dresden ministerial decree. In 1846 he was stricken with paralysis as the result of a rheumatic illness, and after remaining bed-ridden for the rest of his life, died at Oldenburg on 10 October 1867. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Gertrude's Chapel (Gertrudenfriedhof) in Oldenburg.
Of his later works may be mentioned Die Dresdner Gemäldegallerie (1844), and the tragedies Herzog Bernhard (1855) and Der Sohn des Fürsten (1858). A collection of his works, Sämtliche Werke, appeared in 8 volumes in 1863 (a new edition was produced by his son, with a biography, in 6 volumes in 1880).
Artistic work
His best-known poem is the text of the "Andreas-Hofer-LiedAndreas Hofer
Andreas Hofer was a Tirolean innkeeper and patriot. He was the leader of a rebellion against Napoleon's forces....
" ("Zu Mantua in Banden"), the present anthem of the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n Bundesland of the Tyrol
Tyrol (state)
Tyrol is a state or Bundesland, located in the west of Austria. It comprises the Austrian part of the historical region of Tyrol.The state is split into two parts–called North Tyrol and East Tyrol–by a -wide strip of land where the state of Salzburg borders directly on the Italian province of...
. Robert Schuman
Robert Schuman
Robert Schuman was a noted Luxembourgish-born French statesman. Schuman was a Christian Democrat and an independent political thinker and activist...
wrote a lied
Lied
is a German word literally meaning "song", usually used to describe romantic songs setting German poems of reasonably high literary aspirations, especially during the nineteenth century, beginning with Carl Loewe, Heinrich Marschner, and Franz Schubert and culminating with Hugo Wolf...
using as lyrics his poem 'Der Nussbaum' (the walnut tree).
There are three principal themes in Mosen's life and work: love of the home country, the battle for freedom, and the now-destroyed German-Jewish symbiosis.
In Erinnerungen ("Memories"), he writes of the "dependency on the soil of home, the Vogtland" that draws and holds the gaze "as though yonder, far back in the distance beneath the sap-dripping pines, there where the mountains rise up like terraces in dark blue, some secret were hidden that lures us to it and that would gladly reveal itself to us". The Vogtländer for him are the "Saxon Tyrolese, only pleasanter, livelier, more persistent in the pursuit of their goal, but just as sober, if also rougher."
Works
- Ritter Wahn, epic poem, 1831
- Gedichte, poems, 1836 (2nd ed 1843)
- Heinrich der Fünfte, drama, 1836
- Ahasvar, 1838
- Der Kongreß von Verona, novel, 1842
- Kaiser Otto der Dritte, drama, 1842
- Cola Rienzi, drama, 1842 (in Theater)
- Wendelin und Helene, drama, 1842 (in Theater)
- Kaiser Otto III, drama, 1842 (in Theater)
- Die Bräute von Florenz, drama, 1842 (in Theater)
- Die Dresdner Gemäldegallerie, 1844
- Bilder im Moose, collection of novellas, 1846
- Bernhard von Weimar, drama, 1855
- Der Sohn des Fürsten, drama, 1858
- Erinnerungen, autobiography