Johann Paul Friedrich Richter Biography

Dromo's Den

Johann Paul Friedrich Richter

RICHTER, Johann Paul Friedrich, usually called by the name he chose himself, Jean Paul (1763–1825). The most widely known of German humorists. He was born at Wunsiedel, a town in Upper Franconia, and spent the impressionable years of his boyhood in the country at Joditz and Schwarzerbach, going in 1779 to attend the Gymnasium at Hof. Soon his father died, leaving his wife and Jean Paul to be cared for by Jean Paul's grandparents at Hof. On their death the mother and son were penniless and had to make what shift they could while Jean Paul studied at the Gymnasium. In 1781 he went to Leipzig to study theology, but he soon fell under the influence of Rousseau and of English humorists and satirists. He had earlier begun to make a collection of jests and anecdotes. Finding no opening as a teacher, he turned to literature. The Encomium Moriœ of Erasmus set him to writing his Lob der Dummheit, but this book was not published till after his death. In his anonymously published Grönländische Prozesse (1783–84) he satirized authors, women, theologians, ancestral pride, etc., but his satire fell rather flat. Poverty soon drove him to flee from Leipzig to avoid his creditors (1784). The next years he spent in reading, hack writing, and desultory rambling. Then some parents were induced to trust him with the education of their children, and for nine years he practiced his original pedagogic theories, writing the while some clever satires, Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren (1789), the more famous idyls Schulmeister Wuz (1793), Quintus Fixlein (1796; trans. by Carlyle, 1827), with its appendix, Fälbels Reise (1796), and the novels Die unsichtbare Loge (1793) and Hesperus (1794; trans., 1865). Hesperus attracted the attention of Charlotte von Kalb, who, in 1796, invited Richter to Weimar, where Goethe received him with cool politeness, as did Schiller at neighboring Jena, his influence being contrary to their own aspirations for a classical German literature. Herder's welcome was warm, and Charlotte von Kalb tendered her heart with her hand, Weimar society being in those days still "imperfectly monogamous."

In the first flush of his good fortune Richter wrote Blumen-, Frucht- und Dornenstücke, oder Ehestand, Tod und Hochzeit des Armenadvokaten Siebenkäs (1796–97; trans., 1844, 1871, 1877), said by Meredith to be the finest bit of humorous writing in German, and Das Kampanerthal (1797). He fascinated the Weimar ladies with his conversation and still more by his sympathetic listening smile. He returned to Hof, only to take wing for longer flights to Weimar, Leipzig, and Berlin, where he married Caroline Mayer (1801). After three years of wedded wandering he settled in Bayreuth. Here he passed the rest of his life, 21 years, in somewhat eccentric quiet. The rather unsuccessful novel Titan (1801–03), showing the influence of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, had already appeared. The first fruit of Bayreuth was the uneven and unfinished Flegeljahre (1804–05). with passages of charming description, humorous satire, and delicate fancy that suggest Laurence Sterne. This is Richter's last work of pure imagination that one is not glad to forgive and forget. But in his last years he made valuable contributions to pedagogy in Levana (1807), to art in his Vorschule der Aesthetik (1804), and to politics in his Dämmerungen für Deutschland (1809) and Fastenpredigten (1810–12), continued with redoubled scorn in 1817. Levana, though disconnected and unfinished, was full of fruitful suggestion, especially in its portions dealing with the education of women. Goethe praised it warmly for "the boldest virtues, without the least excess." The Aesthetik is valuable chiefly for its keen analysis of humor and happy praise of wit. It closes with a glowing eulogy of Herder and is a fragmentary development of his theory. The political papers, the most virile and practical of Richter's works, were bold denunciations of Napoleon and the German sycophants, whereas those of 1817 held up to even more merited shame the German princes who mocked the promises by which they had regained power. Disease troubled the peace of Richter's last years. He traveled much, and might to advantage have written less. He died in Bayreuth, Nov. 14, 1825. An Autobiography appeared in 1826. Though once quite popular and prized by many good judges of literary work, Richter is difficult and therefore very little read, nor did he exert a lasting influence on German literature.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XIX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 811.