200th birthday of Joseph Baron of Eichendorff - Germany / German Democratic Republic 1988

200th birthday of Joseph von Eichendorff On the occasion of the 200th birthday of Joseph von Eichendorff, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of the German Democratic Republic issues a multi-colored special postage stamp block. No special first day cover envelope Special cancellation from March 8 to May 7, 1988 Joseph von Eichendorff and Robert Schumann Mondnacht Hardly anyone today reads poetry of neither the classics nor the Romantics, of which Joseph von Eichendorff counts, his novellas are only a few known and forget the novels. And yet we know more about Eichendorff than we often realize, sometimes perhaps only two lines of lyrics, such as "Whom God wills right grace, he sends into the wide world", to which the vernacular changed "he sends into the sausage factory "Or" In a cool reason there goes a mill wheel, "or even the title - hero of his novella" From the life of a good - for - nothing, "which became a popular term." Eichendorff himself knew about the popularity of poetry and music "Taugenicht", the verses from Weber's opera "Der Freischütz", recorded at that time, "We Wreath You The Maiden's Wreath." Before Joseph Eichendorff published his poems in 1837, he had already published many of them in atmospheric poems, as in "Hunch and Presence", in the "Taugenicht" and in "Das Marmorbild" u. a. And when Robert Schumann composed his Liederkreis op. 39 on 12 poems by Joseph von Eichendorff, the fifth of which is "Mondnacht", he took six poems from such prose works. Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff was born on March 10, 1788 at Lubowitz Castle in Upper Silesia and died on November 26, 1857 in Neisse. He studied law in Halle and Heidelberg (1805-07) and from 1816 bore the burden of a Prussian official until he finally succeeded in 1844 to come free. Nevertheless, and though participating as a volunteer hunter in Lützow's Free Corps on the War of Liberation 1813-1815, Eichendorff did not become a revolutionary poet. In Heidelberg, the leading thinkers and poets of Romanticism had deeply impressed him, and he found access to the German folk song, to the fairy tales, 1812 z. For example, the Brothers Grimm began to publish the children's and house fairy tales. Eichendorff's curriculum vitae was not romantic, it was bourgeois, and there is nothing to suggest the oft-quoted Romantic turmoil. In contrast, his artistic work is deeply romantic, d. H. it results from the typical German conditions of failed revolution. Eichendorff finds in his works no way out, no realistic ideals. It remains the discontent that expresses itself in yearning: "we long for home, and do not know where to go ...". In this sense, his natural poetry, the forest, the water, the moon and stars receive a deep, ideal and symbolic meaning. In a letter to August Schnelzer of February 20, 1837, the singer and poetic chronicler of the '48 revolution, Ferdinand von Freiligrath, estimates Eichendorff's newly published book of poems: "There is something delicious about the sense of nature that permeates her, and if I otherwise am not He agrees with everything that Gutzkow likes to express in everything, but he is certainly right when he says of Eichendorff somewhere: 'There are some situations of nature, which no one has felt so warm as this Prussian Government Council.' - I only felt that I had felt it while leafing through the rather obscure volume: I liked many of the songs which I had already read in short stories by Eichendorff ... Here, where it stood alone, I did not like it so well as in the story where the A poet is Eichendorff through and through: 'One hears the foliage, one smells the forest and gets warm in its twinkling sun through branches'. " Robert Schumann (1810-1856) seems to have felt the connection between the poem and its literary environment as well as Freiligrath. Schumann was not only a composer but also a writer, so he knew his way around in literature. And when he chose twelve poems by Eichendorff for his cycle, he put them together in such a way that they were at the bottom of an imaginary plot. The "moonlit night" represents the quiet, quiet center of the Liederkreises, comparable to the famous "reverie" in Schumann's piano cycle "Kinderszenen" op. 15. The text poet catalog of the German National Library shows about 3,100 settings Eichendorff's poems, 21 are by Robert Schumann. The "moon night" is one of his most famous songs, it is also the most common compulsory piece of any singing competition. Schumann composed this song according to the entry on the autograph on May 9, 1840. It was that time of the exuberant Song Spring, when he was in Berlin in April 1840 with his bride, Clara Wieck. Already this month he played many songs for her and his friend Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, including Eichendorffsche. He considered the "moonlit night" worthwhile in a transcript of his future mother-in-law's birthday on 15 May 1840. Maybe it's not a coincidence. that there is this and another connection with the lyrics of the song and Robert Schumann's life situation. The third stanza means: "And my soul stretched its wings far out, flew through the quiet lands, as if they fly home", at Eichendorff certainly cosmic meant - including heaven and earth - in Schumann possibly very real: once the home with Clara's mother, but also the upcoming marriage. For several times Schumann uses in the song the sound sequence e-h-e, contracted the word marriage. How did he write to his bride in a letter of May 22, 1840: "Eichendorff's cycle is probably my most romantic, and there is much of you in it." On Eichendorff's question "we long for home, and do not know where Schumann had a reply at that time." The special postal stamp on the occasion of the 200th birthday of Joseph von Eichendorff shows the illustration of two original manuscripts in the German State Library / Berlin - GDR It is the first stanza of the "moon night" with two lines each in the autograph Eichendorffs and Schumanns "It was as if the heaven / the earth had kissed quietly / that she must only dream in the flower shimmer / of him."