Ludwig Börne

Karl Ludwig Börne (born Judah Löw Baruch; 6 May 1786 – 12 February 1837) was a German-Jewish political writer and satirist, who is considered part of the Young Germany movement.

Early life

Karl Ludwig Börne was born Loeb Baruch on 6 May 1786, at Frankfurt am Main, to a Jewish family living in the Frankfurter Judengasse. He was the third son of Jakob Baruch, a banker. His grandfather had been a government bureaucrat and funded the construction of a community synagogue.

Education

Börne and his brothers were privately tutored by Jacob Sachs, and later by Rector Mosche. At age 14, he studied medicine with Professor Hetzel at Gießen. After a year, he was sent to study medicine at Berlin under a physician, Markus Herz, in whose house he lived. At age 16, Baruch became infatuated by his patron's 38-year-old wife, Henriette Herz. After her husband died in 1803, he expressed his adoration in a series of letters. When he enrolled at Halle University, she was influential in his boarding with Professor Reil. He abandoned his medical studies in favor of constitutional law and political science at the University of Heidelberg and Giessen. There, he received his PhD in 1809 with the dissertation ''Ueber die Geometrische Vertheilung der Staatsgebiete''. He was admitted to Freemasonry in Frankfurt's lodge in 1808.

Career

On his return to Frankfurt, now constituted as a part of the grand duchy of Frankfurt under the sovereignty of the prince bishop Karl von Dalberg, who had granted the Jewish community broader citizenship rights, he received the appointment of police actuary in 1811.

In 1814, he was forced to resign his post because he was Jewish and those limited civil rights were revoked. Embittered by the oppression suffered by Jews in Germany, he took to journalism and edited the Frankfurt liberal newspapers ''Staatsristretto'' and ''Die Zeitschwingen''.

Later life

In 1818, he converted to Lutheran Protestantism and changed his name from Juda Löw Baruch to Ludwig Börne, in part because he hoped to access better professional opportunities. From 1818 to 1821, he edited ''Die Wage'', a paper distinguished by its lively political articles and its powerful but sarcastic theatrical criticisms. In these years he also wrote some of his major works on the history of Jewish Frankfurt, including ''Juden in der freien Stadt Frankfurt'' (1820).

''Die Wage'' was suppressed by the police, and in 1821, Börne took a pause from journalism and led a quiet life in Paris, Hamburg, and Frankfurt.

After the July Revolution (1830), he hurried to Paris, expecting to find society nearer to his own ideas of freedom. Although to some extent disappointed in his hopes, he did not look any more kindly on the political condition of Germany; this lent additional zest to the brilliant satirical letters (''Briefe aus Paris'', 1830–1833, published Paris, 1834), which he began to publish in his last literary venture, ''La Balance'', a revival of ''Die Wage''. The ''Briefe aus Paris'' was Börne's most important publication, and a landmark in the history of German journalism. Its appearance led him to be regarded as a leading thinker in Germany.

Death and legacy

He died in Paris in 1837.

Börne's works are known for brilliant style and for thorough French satire. His best criticism is to be found in his ''Denkrede auf Jean Paul'' (1826) – a writer for whom he had warm sympathy and admiration –, in his ''Dramaturgische Blätter'' (1829–1834), and the witty satire ''Menzel der Franzosenfresser'' (1837). He also wrote a number of short stories and sketches, of which the best known are the ''Monographie der deutschen Postschnecke'' (1829) and ''Der Esskünstler'' (1822).

In his first volume of Sigmund Freud's biography, Ernest Jones relates that "Böeme" icwas an especial favourite in Freud's adolescence, a half century later quoting many passages from the essay "How to Become an Original Writer in Three Days," which clearly played a part in the writing strategy Freud used in his self-analysis and developed into his free association method for during psychoanalysis:

In an essay published anonymously, Freud wrote that the Börne collection he had received as a teenager was one of the few childhood books he had kept, and, upon rereading "How to Become an Original Writer" in light of his theories of free association, observed, "It seems then that we can not rule out that this reference has uncovered one of those bits of cryptomnesia which in so many cases may be supposed to lie behind a seeming originality."

In 1885, Frankfurt's Jewish Market (Judenmarkt) was renamed '' Börneplatz'' in honor of his centennial, as was the synagogue built there in 1882. (The site was destroyed and renamed ''Dominikanerplatz,'' a reference to the nearby Dominican Monastery, by the Nazis in 1935, but the name was restored in 1978. Since 1996 it has been a Holocaust memorial maintained by the Jewish Museum Frankfurt.)

Two portraits of him, by the Jewish painter Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, are in the Israel Museum Collection.

The town of Boerne in the U.S. state of Texas, founded by German liberal immigrants ( Forty-Eighters), is named after him. The town is a part of the San Antonio metropolitan area.

The Ludwig Börne Prize has been awarded to German-language nonfiction writers since 1993; previous winners include Dan Diner, Robert Habeck, and Daniel Kehlmann.

The University of Giessen established the Ludwig Börne Professorship in 2015; the position is held by political scientist Claus Leggewie.

The Börne Gallery at the Jewish Museum Frankfurt in Frankfurt, Germany, is also named after him.

See also

* Frankfurter Judengasse
* Memorial Neuer Börneplatz
* Ludwig Börne Prize
* Young Germany
* Boerne, Texas

Bibliography

*
How to Become an Original Writer in Three Days
" (1823, trans. Leland de la Durantaye, 2006)
* ''Gesammelte Schriften'' (trans. "Collected Writings"), in 4 volumes (1829–1834)
* ''Nachgelassene Schriften'' (trans. "Posthumous Writings"), in 6 volumes (Mannheim, 1844–1850)
* ''Nachgelassene Schriften'' (trans. "Posthumous Writings"), in 12 volumes (Hamburg, 1862–1863, reprint 1868)
* ''Nachgelassene Schriften'' (trans. "Posthumous Writings") edited by A. Klaar in 8 volumes (Leipzig, 1900)
* ''Börnes Leben'' (trans. "The Life of Börne"), (Hamburg: K. Gutzkow, 1840)
* ''L. Börne, sein Leben und sein Wirken'' (trans. "L. Börne, his Life and his works"), (Berlin: M. Holzmann, 1888)
* ''Börnes Briefe an Henriette Herz'' (trans. "Börne's Letters to Henriette Herz"), (1802–1807) re-edited by L. Geiger (Oldenburg, 1905)
* ''Börnes Berliner Briefe'' (trans. "Börne's Berlin Letters") (Berlin, 1905)
* ''Historische Schriften'' (trans. "Historical Writings"), (Darmstadt: G. Gervinus, 1838). (essay)
* ''Hovedströmninger i det 19 de Aarhundredes Litteratur'' volume vi. (Copenhagen: G. Brandes, 1890; German trans. 1891; English translation 1905)
* ''Das junge Deutschland'' (trans. "The Young Germany") (Stuttgart: J. Proelss, 1892).
* ''Ludwig Börne zum zweihundertsten Gebrtstag: Für die Juden'' (trans. "Ludwig Börne on his bicentenary: For the Jews"), ed. Renate Heuer (Frankfurt: Archiv Bibliographia Judaica, 1986), a collection of his writings on Frankfurt's Jews and the Judengasse, including ''Juden in der freien Stadt Frankfurt'', trans. "Jews in the Free City of Frankfurt," 1820.

References

Sources

*

External links

*
*

''Juden in der freien Stadt Frankfurt'' ("Jews in the Free City of Frankfurt")
at the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek

{{DEFAULTSORT:Borne, Ludwig
1786 births
1837 deaths
Writers from Frankfurt
German Lutherans
Converts to Lutheranism from Judaism
Jewish German writers
University of Giessen alumni
German emigrants to France
German male writers
Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery
19th-century Lutherans