Christian Fürchtegott Gellert

Christian Fürchtegott Gellert , born the July 4th 1715 in Hainichen (Saxony) and dead the December 13rd 1769 with Leipzig, is a fabulist and German moralist .

Gellert accepted in the house of his/her father, who was Pasteur, a very Christian education. Of an large family and poor, it had to work early to copy commercial acts. However its political vocation appeared some thirteen years age by some parts which one still rents the grace.

To fifteen years, it was sent to the school of Meissen, or it bound with Rabener and Gärtner. Five years later, it went to study the Théologie in Leipzig, where it was given up with its taste for the Littérature. It was familiarized there with the Latin authors and the French writers; he embraced the principles of Gottsched and was one of the best collaborators of the Récréations of Schwabe and then of the Recueil of Bremen . Later it separated from the school saxonne and repented to have sacrificed, under its inspirations, with the French imitation.

Because of its timidity and its low health, Gellert renonça with its idea to enter the ministry and, is established in 1745 like Privat-docent in Philosophie with the Université of Leipzig, where he taught the Poésie, the Rhétorique and the Littérature with much of success. In 1751, it was named extraordinary professor of moral Philosophie, station which it occupied until his death.

Gellert enjoyed, as carries national, of an extreme popularity and which was maintained. It is one of the rare authors of its time “which one still reads, a critic said German, in the hut as in the palate”. The princes and the kings, Frederic Large the inter alia, went to visit him to Leipzig.

Tributes of homages were addressed to him of all the parts of Germany, and its death was a public mourning. Its tomb became a goal of pilgrimage and the object of demonstrations if sharp that the authority had to prohibit them.

What one tasted in Gellert, it was a pure, gracious talent, inspired by an honest groin, obscured by the melancholy, and answering each day more the national character. Interpret intimate feelings, it teaches the virtue, the religion; it purifies art to introduce it into the family.

Klopstock addresses these worms to him: “The most beautiful girl and most liked more beautiful of the mothers will have to read you, become more beautiful by reading you, and, seeing you deadened, to be embraced with frankness. ”

It is necessary to also quote this enthusiastic judgment of the philosopher Garve: “As a long time as the Germans will understand their language, they will read the writings of Gellert, and the men will honor his character as long as they will respect the virtue. ”

Its works - in particular its Fables - counted in Germany during the transitional period between the Aufklärung, the Empfindsamkeit and the Sturm und Drang. Its extraordinary popularity declined after its death when the disciples of Sturm und Drang described it as poet moralizer “for girls of pastors of countryside”.

Gellert composed of the works of extremely various kinds, of lyric and didactic poetries, the Conte S, the Fable S, the Comédie S, the literary essays, the moral works, religious poetries and the Cantique S, but it is especially famous for its Fabeln und Erzählungen ( Fables and Contes ), whose first collection appeared in 1746 and a second in 1748, and who obtained a popular vogue. The language in is pure, easy, elegant, the morals is rather high which practices. Each subject made up and is developed with a certain epic width which the defect is a little redundancy. Several of its fables are all personal Cl have naked entirely German seal. Its tales are of a pleasant simplicity, with more prolixity. Its lyric poetries include/understand Odes and Hymns ( Oden und geistliche Lieder , 1758), where one finds rather a feeling intimate, a sincere faith, that a true poetic glare, were accepted with an equal consideration by the catholics and the Protestants.

Of its comedies, die Betschwester ( the Over-devout , 1745), Das Loos in der Lotterie ( the First prize , 1746), Die zärtlichen Schwestern ( the Tender Sisters , 1747), the first alone deserves to be noticed; it is copied on the Sanctimonious hypocrite .

Gellert had also composed a Romance domestic sentimental: Das Leben der Schwedischen Gräfin von G *** ( Life of the Swedish Countess von G *** ; Leipzig, 1746, 2 vol.), imitated Pamela of Richardson, notable in so much like first German attempt at psychological novel.

It left Moralische Vorlesungen ( Leçons morals ), which were published only after its death (1770) and the purpose of which is to spread in the people the love of the Juste and the feelings high. Its Briefwechsel Christian Fürchtegott Gellert' S put Demoiselle Lucius: nebst einem Anhange… Sämmtlich aus den bisher meist noch ungedrukten Originalen , published by Friedrich Adolf Ebert ( Letters with Miss Lucius of Dresden ), was the first models, in Germany, of the epistolary style .

It was given several general editions of its Œuvres ( Gellerts Sämmtliche Werke ; Leipzig, 1769 - 1774, 10 vol.; 1841, 6 vol. in-12).

Its Fables was translated into prose per All Saints' day, Berlin, 1768, and was put in worms by Marianne Wilhelmine Mercier of Stevens, Breslau, 1777; its Morale was translated by Louis Ésaïe Pajon de Moncets, Utrecht, 1775.

Its complete Œuvres in 10 vol. in-8° appeared with Leipzig, 1784, 1841, etc

Two statues were high in Gellert in 1865, in its birthplace and in Leipzig.

He is the brother of the scientist metallurgist Christlieb Ehregott Gellert.

Source

Gustave Vapereau, universal Dictionary of the literatures , Paris, Hatchet, 1876, p. 866

External bonds

'' Choix of German fables of Gottlieb Conrad Pfeffel, Christian Fürchtegott Gellert and Friedrich von Schiller '', transl. in French worms by Joseph Schmeltz, Haguenau, V. Edler, 1863

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