225th birthday of Johann Peter Hebel - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1985 - 80 Pfennig

225 years ago, on 10 May 1760, the Alemannic poet Johann Peter Hebel was born in the St. Johannes suburb of Basel. He was one of the most successful authors at the turn of the 19th century and at the same time a pedagogue, theologian and politician has developed a rich efficacy. Hebel grew up in Hausen in the Wiesental, thus coming from that Protestant area on the Upper Rhine border triangle, which in his diaspora situation demanded decisive support for his own religious standpoint. He decided early on to study theology. Through the Latin schools in Schopfheim and Karlsruhe, he came to the University of Erlangen, where he completed his studies in theology in 1778. Since 1780 he worked as a tutor in Markgräfler country, until 1783 teacher ("Präzeptoratsvikar") at the Pädagogium in Lörrach and 1791 subdeacon at the Karlsruhe Gymnasium. In 1798 he received the title of professor, became extra-professor of dogmatic theology at the Karlsruhe University and taught Hebrew, Greek, Latin and natural sciences. Since 1805 he bore the title of Protestant church council, 1808 he became director of the Lyceum, 1814 member of the highest school and church authority and 1819 prelate, d. H. highest leader of the protestant national church in Baden. In the same year he was elected a member of the First Chamber of the Baden Landtag. On September 22, 1826 Johann Peter Hebel died unmarried in Schwetzingen as one of the most respected theologians and literary figures of his time. Johann Peter Hebel earned himself literary fame primarily through his dialect poetry, especially his "Alemannic Poems for Friends of Rural Nature and Morals" (1802), which are still among the masterpieces of regional literature, especially since they have long since achieved a supraregional effect. The greatest success was achieved by the manifold stories of his "Rhineland Hausfreunde or Neue Calender" from 1802 ff. And his "treasure chest of the Rhenish house friend" from the year 1811, which identified him as the master of the anecdotes of folk calendar stories. His narrative talent went so far as to call him the "Homer from the Meadow Valley." Hebel wanted to entertain but also admonish and educate with his short stories and chronicle reports. Almost every one of his pieces concludes with morality, instruction, or instruction, for he is always concerned with benefiting his readers; H. to give them "reasonable insight". Nowhere does he succeed better than in his famous calendar story "Kannitverstan," in which he shows how one "can come to truth through error" if one is and remains only faithful, faithful, and pious. The call "Remember!", Which precedes many of his moral maxims, gives him the weight of an educational program. On the one hand, Johann Peter Hebel's transient significance lies in the fact that he raised the dialect of his Alemannic homeland to literary rank, and on the other hand in the fact that even the smallest of his stories and anecdotes he calls the 'undertone of the permanent, the valid, the eternal-human'. gave in (Theodor Heuss). He was able to sharply characterize even the simplest events of his environment, though he was not afraid to dress even the most rural idylls in antique meter, whenever his humanistic education drove him to do so; he translated his calendar story »Kannitverstan« himself into the Latin language. Johann Peter Hebel is also one of the representatives of the ecumenical idea. In a famous correspondence with the Constance Bishop Verwaser Ignaz von Wessenberg, he was looking for communication between the two Christian denominations. With his naive as well as pious piety and with the simplicity and comprehensibility of his linguistic images he remained for generations to come an unrecovered role model. (Text: Professor Dr. Dietz-Rüdiger Moser, Chair of Bavarian Literary History, Institute of German Philology, University of Munich)