Christian Friedrich Hebbel

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The plays of the German author Christian Friedrich Hebbel (1813-1863) combine realistic presentation with highly theoretical and philosophical principles.

Friedrich Hebbel was born on March 18, 1813, in Wesselburen, Holstein, the son of a poverty-stricken mason. Harboring youthful literary ambitions, he journeyed to Hamburg as the protégé of Amalie Schoppe, a popular writer. He failed to qualify for the university but met and established a relation with Elise Lensing, who later bore him two illegitimate sons. With her financial support he sought in vain to enter Heidelberg University in 1836 and then moved on to Munich.

After nearly 3 years of private study and privation Hebbel returned to Hamburg and completed a successful first drama, Judith (1840), a study of motivation in which altruism gives way to a self-centered desire for revenge leading to tragedy. A second drama, Genoveva (1840), treats the vicissitudes of a virtuous 8th-century Countess of Brabant. In 1843 Hebbel described his dramatic theory in the essay Mein Wort über das Drama: the individual ego, whether willing good or ill, must in its unavoidable drive toward expression conflict with the totality of mankind existing in the flow of time; that is, the developing individual inevitably clashes with historical development.

In the bourgeois tragedy Maria Magdalena (1844) the conflict originates for the first time, as Hebbel said, "within the bourgeois milieu itself," where custom and tradition exert a paralyzing effect upon the principals. After an Italian sojourn Hebbel settled in 1845 in Vienna and in 1846 married Christine Enghaus, a prominent actress. His subsequent career was successful and prosperous. Hebbel himself considered Herodes und Mariamne (1848) a "masterpiece." Here theory and dramatic effectiveness combine to expose the motives of two equally guilty and innocent principals, while the remarkable drama Agnes Bernauer (1852) depicts the innocently destructive power of great beauty in conflict with interests of state.

Hebbel's later dramas display a classicizing shift to verse. In Gyges und sein Ring (1854) he examines psychological motivation in ethical and religious terms, indicating how a Hegelian synthesis may emerge from antithetical views. His most ambitious undertaking is the trilogy Die Niebelungen (1855-1860), where, as he said, he sought to motivate in "purely human" terms the vital historical "turning point" when the Germanic peoples accepted Christianity.

Hebbel's verse tends toward the analytical and reflective, while his extensive diaries trace the development of his thought. He died in Vienna on Dec. 13, 1863.

Further Reading

The most recent full-length treatment of Hebbel in English is Sten G. Flygt, Friedrich Hebbel (1968). An excellent analysis of Hebbel's work is T. M. Campbell, The Life and Works of Friedrich Hebbel (1919). Useful background information on the development of 19th-century German drama is the "introduction" to T. M. Campbell, ed., German Plays of the Nineteenth Century (1930).

Additional Sources

Flygt, Sten Gunnar, Friedrich Hebbe, New York, Twayne Publishers, c1968.

Flygt, Sten Gunnar, Friedrich Hebbel's conception of movement in the absolute and in history, New York, AMS Press, 1966, c1952.

Friedrich Hebbel, Agnes Bernauer, Stuttgart: P. Reclam, 1974.

Garland, Mary, Hebbel's prose tragedies: an investigation of the aesthetic aspect of Hebbel's dramatic language, Cambridge Eng. University Press, 1973.

Gerlach, U. Henry (Ulrich Henry), Hebbel as a critic of his own works: "Judith", "Herodes und Mariamne," and "Gyges und sein Ring," Gèoppingen, A. Kèummerle, 1972.

Hebbel, Friedrich, Three plays, Lewisburg Pa. Bucknell University Press 1974.

Kofman, Sarah, Freud and fiction, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1991; Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991.

Niven, William John, The reception of Friedrich Hebbel in Germany in the era of national socialism, Stuttgart: H.-D. Heinz, 1984.

Hebbel, Friedrich (Wesselburen, Dithmarschen, 1813-63, Vienna), a mason's son, lived in poverty in his native market town until he was 22. His father, who had tried in vain to force the boy to manual labour, died in 1827. Hebbel's mother was devoted to her sons, but could make no provision for them. For eight years Hebbel carried out duties as clerk (Kirchspielschreiber) to J. J. Mohr, the parish mayor and magistrate (Kirchspielvogt), with whom he lodged. Though highly sensitive about his humble station, he benefited from his employer's library. In 1835, through the influence of Amalie Schoppe, he went to Hamburg in order to prepare for university study.

In 1836 Hebbel sampled university life at Heidelberg, attending lectures on law, history, and philosophy. Six months later he moved to Munich where he found greater opportunities to pursue his intellectual interests. In 1839 poverty forced him to return on foot to Hamburg. Meanwhile he had heard of his mother's death, and of that of Emil Rousseau, a young lawyer, who had been his only close friend in Heidelberg. From his early Hamburg days until the age of 30 Hebbel remained dependent on the generosity of an unmarried woman, Elise Lensing, who shared her modest earnings as a seamstress with selfless devotion. Upon his return she nursed him through a serious illness caused by his privations. She bore him two sons who died in infancy.

The decade of Hebbel's close relationship with Elise, whom he refused to marry, were years of intense inner conflict. He believed in his vocation as a writer, to which he was prepared to sacrifice all. He first proved his aptitude as a dramatist in Judith (1841). This prose play was followed by the verse Genoveva (1843). His first comedy, Der Diamant (1847, completed in 1841), derives from established models, principally Kleist's Der zerbrochne Krug. The play's bitter temper reflects Hebbel's natural inclination towards tragedy. The distinction between tragedy and comedy was to him a matter not of idea, but of form. In 1842 he published a collection of poems (Gedichte). His writings secured him a grant from Christian VIII, King of Denmark and sovereign of his native province, which he used to satisfy his urge for travel. He studied for a few months in Copenhagen, where he was in contact with the Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen (1768-1844). Having applied unsuccessfully for a chair of aesthetics at Kiel University, he turned his back on the north and went to Paris for a year (1843-4). He met Heine, but he was lonely in the French capital, crippled by poverty and personal problems. He completed the domestic tragedy Maria Magdalene (1844), and on the advice of a loyal friend, Felix Bamberg, wrote the Vorwort zur Maria Magdalena betreffend das Verhältnis der dramati-schen Kunst zur Zeit und verwandte Punkte (1844, see Maria Magdalene). The Vorwort and an earlier tract on theory, Mein Wort über das Drama! (1843), written in response to provocative criticism by J. L. Heiberg, earned him a doctorate from Erlangen University (1844). A further essay, Über den Stil des Dramas, was written in 1847. A despondent Hebbel resumed his travels and journeyed to Italy. In Naples he met H. Hettner. The southern environment and climate afforded a respite, but the Danish grant ran out and was not renewed. The decision not to return to Elise and to Hamburg was virtually taken when Hebbel set out for Vienna, where, in fact, he settled for the remainder of his life.

Hebbel's love for the gifted actress Christine Enghaus and their subsequent marriage (1846) introduced stability and a lively partnership into his life, though H. Laube for years obstructed their collaboration with the Burgtheater. In Vienna Hebbel completed a one-act tragedy in blank verse, Ein Trauerspiel in Sizilien (1847), which contains a strong element of social criticism and is an attempt at tragicomedy, and a three-act tragedy in prose, Julia (1851), a successor to Maria Magdalene. The following years were highly productive. Herodes und Mariamne (1849) was nearing completion during the street fighting of 1848 (see Revolutionen 1848-9). The three-act Märchen-Lustspiel in blank verse, Der Rubin (1851), begun in 1849, is based on Hebbel's own Märchen Der Rubin (published by Th. Mundt in 1843), which he had first planned in 1836. He dedicated the play to F. G. Kühne. From his early conception of this work derives his motto ‘Wirf weg, damit du nicht verlierst!’, suggesting that the retention of one's inner worth depends on the abandonment of one's most precious possession. Many variations on this seemingly paradoxical principle can be traced throughout his work, including his treatment of the theme of the Nibelungen treasure. Hebbel's Märchen-Lustspiel is set in Baghdad. The youth Assad, by throwing away a precious ruby, breaks the evil spell which has turned Princess Fatime into a unique precious stone. He thus unwittingly wins her hand and the Kalif's crown. The play was not appreciated at its first performance on 21 November 1849 at the Burgtheater.

Hebbel turned to a religious drama, Moloch, and then wrote his two-act play in flowing blank verse, Michel Angelo, which he dedicated to Robert Schumann. The play is a kind of Künstlerdrama, and owes its inspiration to Kühne, who had impressed Hebbel by his understanding of the artist who pursues his creative work regardless of public indifference, a view which Hebbel endorses in the play. It is an introduction to the first of his two ‘deutsche Trauerspiele’, the five-act tragedy in prose Agnes Bernauer (1852). It has as its theme the necessity for sacrifice on the part of the ruler and, more strikingly, for the sacrifice of an innocent individual. This theme is linked with the idea that perfect beauty constitutes tragic guilt, a conception peculiar to Hebbel. Gyges und sein Ring (1856), a five-act tragedy in blank verse, originates from Hebbel's desire to accommodate political and ethical ideas in classical form. Hebbel's last completed tragedy and his second German tragedy is the dramatization of the medieval Nibelungenlied, Die Nibelungen. Ein deutsches Trauerspiel in drei Abteilungen (1862). To him the Nibelungen epic represented Germany's only national literary heritage of universal appeal. The evolution of mythologies and of history, and the exposure of the workings of the human mind are the forces directing the ‘watchmaker’ who claimed, after he had been assured of the success of his Nibelungen, that he had merely restored an old clock.

Though Hebbel had by now abandoned his Moloch, he still contemplated a Christus, a project which he envisaged as a combination of drama and oratorio. His interest in the relationship between music and drama is reflected in Ein Steinwurf oder Opfer um Opfer. Ein musikalisches Drama (posth., 1883), which he wrote for the Russian composer Anton Rubinstein (1830-94), who paid for it but did not set it to music. Conscious of the power of his vision, but hindered by the unequal flow of creativity, Hebbel concentrated more and more, as death drew near, on Demetrius. He had originally planned to complete Schiller's fragment in time for the centenary of Schiller's birth. The work reached the fifth act and, although unfinished, assimilated ideas which show a pervasive grasp of present and future political issues and their dependence on the intricacies of human ethics and spirituality.

Hebbel referred to his brief novel Schnock. Ein niederländisches Gemälde (1850, written in 1837) as ‘ein kleines Büchlein’. It is his longest narrative work, and owes its inspiration to early reading of Jean Paul, and to the cholera epidemic of the thirties, which shocked him into his grim brand of humour. In 1855 Hebbel published seven Novellen, notable for their density of form: Matteo, Herr Haidvogel und seine Familie, Anna, Pauls merkwürdige Nacht, Die Kuh, Der Schneider Nepomuk Schlägel auf der Freudenjagd, and Eine Nacht im Jägerhause. Hebbel's only epic, Mutter und Kind. Ein Gedicht in sieben Gesängen (1859) is written in the flexible hexameters of Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea, and earned him a prize instituted to commemorate Goethe's work. Hebbel published Neue Gedichte in 1848, and in 1857 Gedichte von Friedrich Hebbel, his final collected and revised edition. His poetry includes the cycles Dem Schmerz sein Recht, Des Dichters Testament, and Sonette, as well as epigrams. His extensive writings on literature, art, and travel also include commentaries on the events of 1848. They reveal his preoccupation with human existence in isolation, with ethical and metaphysical philosophy, mythology, and religion. Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben were written between 1846 and 1854, Selbstbiographie für Saint René Taillandier and Selbstbiographie für F. A. Brockhaus (modelled on the former) in the fifties. Hebbel's valuable Tagebücher were begun on 23 March 1835 and continued into the year of his death. The sub-title to the Erstes Tagebuch is indicative: ‘Reflexionen über Welt, Leben und Bücher, hauptsächlich aber über mich selbst, nach Art eines Tagebuchs’. Emil Kuh was Hebbel's first biographer and editor (Friedrich Hebbels sämmtliche Werke, 12 vols., 1865-7). Sämtliche Werke, edited by R. M. Werner, 1901 ff., consist of three parts: Werke, 12 vols., Tagebücher, 4 vols., and Briefe, 8 vols.; Werke, 5 vols., edited by G. Fricke, W. Keller, and K. Pörnbacher, appeared in 1963-7, and Neue Hebbel-Briefe, ed. A. Meetz, in 1963.

Quotes:

"What you can become you are already."

Christian Friedrich Hebbel
Born	March 18, 1813
Died	December 13, 1863
Occupation	poet and dramatist
Nationality	Germany
Notable work(s)	Judith; Maria Magdalene; Herodes and Mariamne; Agnès Bernauer; Gyges and His Ring
Notable award(s)	Schiller Prize

Christian Friedrich Hebbel (March 18, 1813 – December 13, 1863), was a German poet and dramatist.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Works 3 External links 4 Films 5 References

Biography

Hebbel was born at Wesselburen in Ditmarschen, Holstein, the son of a bricklayer. Despite his humble origins, he showed a talent for poetry, resulting in the publication, in the Hamburg Modezeitung, of verses which he had sent to Arnalie Schoppe (1791-1858), a popular journalist and author of nursery tales. Through her patronage, he was able to go to the University of Hamburg.

A year later he went to Heidelberg to study law, but gave it up and went on to the University of Munich, where he devoted himself to philosophy, history and literature. In 1839 Hebbel left Munich and walked all the way back to Hamburg, where he resumed his friendship with Elise Lensing, whose self-sacrificing assistance had helped him over the darkest days in Munich. In the same year he wrote his first tragedy, Judith (published 1841), which in the following year was performed in Hamburg and Berlin and made his name known throughout Germany.

In 1840 he wrote the tragedy Genoveva, and the following year finished a comedy, Der Diamant, which he had begun at Munich. In 1842 he visited Copenhagen, where he obtained from King Christian VIII a small travelling studentship, which enabled him to spend some time in Paris and two years (1844-1846) in Italy. In Paris he wrote his fine "tragedy of common life," Maria Magdalene (1844). On his return from Italy Hebbel met at Vienna two Polish noblemen, the brothers Zerboni di Sposetti, who in their enthusiasm for his genius urged him to remain, and supplied him with the means to mingle in the best intellectual society of the Austrian capital.

Hebbel's old precarious existence now became a horror to him, and he made a deliberate breach with it by marrying (in 1846) the beautiful and wealthy actress Christine Enghaus, giving up Elise Lensing (who remained faithful to him until her death), on the grounds that "a man's first duty is to the most powerful force within him, that which alone can give him happiness and be of service to the world": in his case the poetical faculty, which would have perished "in the miserable struggle for existence". This "deadly sin," which, "if peace of conscience be the test of action," was, he considered, the best act of his life, established his fortunes. Elise, however, still provided useful inspiration for his art. As late as 1851, shortly after her death, he wrote the little epic Mutter und Kind, intended to show that the relation of parent and child is the essential factor which makes the quality of happiness among all classes and under all conditions equal.

Long before this Hebbel had become famous. German sovereigns bestowed decorations upon him; and in foreign capitals he was feted as the greatest of living German dramatists. From the grand-duke of Saxe-Weimar he received a flattering invitation to take up his residence at Weimar, where several of his plays were first performed. He remained, however, at Vienna until his death.

Works

Die Nibelungen cover

Besides the works already mentioned, Hebbel's principal tragedies are:

• Herodes and Mariamne (1850)
• Julia (1851)
• Michel Angelo (1851)
• Agnès Bernauer (1855)
• Gyges and His Ring (1856)
• the magnificently conceived trilogy Die Nibelungen (1862), his last work (consisting of a prologue, Der gehörnte Siegfried, and the tragedies, Siegfrieds Tod and Kriemhilds Rache), which won for the author the Schiller prize.

Of his comedies Der Diamant (1847), Der Rubin (1850) and the tragi-comedy Ein Trauerspiel in Sizilien (1845), are the more important, but they are heavy and hardly rise above mediocrity. All his dramatic productions, however, exhibit skill in characterization, great glow of passion, and a true feeling for dramatic situation; but their poetic effect is frequently marred by extravagances which border on the grotesque, and by the introduction of incidents the unpleasant character of which is not sufficiently relieved. In many of his lyric poems, and especially in Mutter und Kind, published in 1859, Hebbel showed that his poetic gifts were not restricted to the drama.

His collected works were first published by E. Kuh in 12 volumes at Hamburg, 1866-1868.

External links

• Works by Christian Friedrich Hebbel at Project Gutenberg
• The Complete Poems of Friedrich Hebbel (in german)

Films

• 1975 Glutmensch (A man aglow), 90 min.; Writer and Director: Jonatan Briel; SFB and “Literarisches Berliner Kolloquium” – Production

Plot: Werner Brunn plays Friedrich Hebbel, who is confined to his sickbed on his 50th birthday, and recalls his youth in his feverish dreams.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Persondata
NAME	Hebbel, Christian Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Hebbel, Friedrich
SHORT DESCRIPTION	German poet and dramatist
DATE OF BIRTH	March 18, 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH	Wesselburen in Ditmarschen, Holstein
DATE OF DEATH	December 13, 1863
PLACE OF DEATH

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