Johann Jakob Bodmer

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Bodmer, Johann Jakob (Greifensee, Switzerland, 1698-1783, Schönenberg nr. Zurich), travelled in Italy, became in 1720 an official (Staatsschreiber) in Zurich, and in 1725 a senior teacher (Professor) of history and politics at the Zurich grammar school, a post which he held until 1775. He became a city councillor in 1737. With his friend and colleague J. J. Breitinger, Bodmer published a series of critical and aesthetic writings. In 1721 they founded a literary periodical entitled Die Discourse der Mahlern, which took its inspiration from Addison and continued until 1723. Von dem Einfluß und dem Gebrauch der Einbildungskraft (1727) treats imagination, not as something inspired, but as an agile faculty for the combination of perceptions. His interest in the English moralists drew his attention to Milton, who quickly aroused his enthusiasm. His translation of Paradise Lost into German (Der Verlust des Paradieses) was published in prose in 1732, in verse in 1742, and was further revised in 1754. In 1740 Bodmer published his Critische Abhandlung von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie, which, coinciding in the same year with Breitinger's Critische Dichtkunst, provoked a quarrel with J. C. Gottsched, which was further fanned by Bodmer's Critische Betrachtungen über die Poetischen Gemählde der Dichter (1741). From a distance of more than two centuries it is possible to discern considerable common ground of literary rationalism and common sense between the warring parties; but at the time Bodmer's and Breitinger's stand for a modest niche for the imagination seemed to mark a total opposition. Klopstock's religious epic Der Messias, which began to appear in 1748, so captivated Bodmer that he invited the young poet to Zurich, only to find that the singer of the Messiah was more worldly than he had expected. Fired by Klopstock's example, however, he wrote a religious epic (Noah, 1750) which was quickly followed by Jakob und Joseph (1751), Die Synd-Flut (1751), and Jakob und Rachel (1752). In 1752 he invited C. M. Wieland to Zurich, but was once more, though rather less quickly, disappointed in his guest. He published in 1757 MS. C of the Nibelungenlied without acknowledgement to its true discoverer, J. H. Obereit. In the 1770s Bodmer wrote mediocre tragedies on classical subjects (Electra, 1760; Ulysses, 1760; Julius Caesar, 1763), and a decade later tried his hand, equally unsuccessfully, at historical epic (Conradin von Schwaben, 1771). Bodmer's limited importance in the development of German literature ceased c.1745. He was twice visited by Goethe, in 1775 and 1779. He is a minor character in G. Keller's Novelle Der Landvogt von Greifensee.

A selection of Bodmer's works appeared as Schriften in 1938.

Henry Fuseli talking to Bodmer, 1778-1781.

Johann Jakob Bodmer (19 July 1698 – 2 January 1783) was a Swiss-German author, academic, critic and poet.

Life

Born at Greifensee, near Zürich, and first studying theology and then trying a commercial career, he finally found his vocation in letters. In 1725 he was appointed professor of Helvetian history in Zürich, a chair which he held for half a century, and in 1735 became a member of the "Grosser Rat." He published (1721-1723), in conjunction with JJ Breitinger and several others, Die Discourse der Mahlern, a weekly journal after the model of The Spectator. Through his prose translation of Milton's Paradise Lost (1732) and his successful endeavours to make a knowledge of English literature accessible to Germany, he aroused the hostile criticism of Gottsched and his school, a struggle which ended in the complete discomfiture of the latter.

Works

His most important writings are the treatises Von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie (1740; this and following years link to corresponding "[year] in poetry" articles) and Kritische Betrachtungen über die poetischen Gemählde der Dichter (1741), in which he pleaded for the freedom of the imagination from the restriction imposed upon it by French pseudo-classicism. Bodmer's epics Die Sundflutz and Noah (both 1751) are weak imitations of Klopstock's Messias, and his plays are entirely deficient in dramatic qualities. He did valuable service to German literature by his editions of the Minnesingers and part of the Nibelungenlied. He died at Zürich in 1783.

References

• T. W. Danzel, Gottsched und seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1848)
• J. Cruger, J. C. Gottsched, Bodmer und Breitinger (Stuttgart, 1884)
• F. Braitmaier, Geschichte der poetischen Theorie und Kritik von den Diskursen der Maler bis auf Lessing (Leipzig, 1888)
• Denkschrift zu Bodmers 200. Geburtstag (Zürich, 1900)

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