The poet started an artistic career as a landscape painter, turned to political poetry in the pre-March and finished his life as one of the most vital German writers of the 19th Century. Gottfried Keller was one of the fantastic storytellers of bourgeois realism by his two novels “Green Henry” and “Martin Salander” and through his novels and other narrative forms. His extraordinary report-telling is an scarce diversity of expression, enigmatic characterized by biting satire, irony and humor …
Gottfried Keller was born on 19 Born in Zurich in July 1819.
His father was a master wood turner, who died in 1824th Keller spent his childhood and youth in modest circumstances. This world, he always remained connected. A student strike in 1834 prevented further visit the basement of the Cantonal School of Industry. He had to leave them. He started an apprenticeship at a landscape painter. During this time he not only painted but also devoted himself to reading and writing poems. From 1840 Keller studied with the help of financial support of his mother at the Art Academy in Munich. He broke off and went back to Zurich in 1842. There he joined the liberal German emigrants.
From 1848 he started studying in Heidelberg, he was the Zurich cantonal government through scholarships and support of the nut. He got to know Ludwig Feuerbach, whose materialist philosophy impressed him and influenced. From 1850 to 1855 he lived in Berlin. During this time he made major prose works such as “Green Henry”, plays with his other hand he had no success. During this time he made contact with Georg Herwegh, Ferdinand Freiligrath, Georg Friedrich Theodor Vischer and Semper. But he returned to Zurich.
His literary works ranging from but not for their own livelihood, he lived until 1861 without its own merit in the mother and his sister Regula. In that year he became chief clerk of the Canton of Zurich city. The office he held for 15 years with fantastic self-discipline and meticulousness. Then Gottfried Keller worked exclusively literary. As a democrat with a view to the common excellent cellar struck a balance between a radical democratic ethos and bourgeois class consciousness. He maintained forthcoming relations with the painter Arnold Böcklin and a forthcoming correspondence with Paul Heyse and Theodor Storm.
The autobiographical novel colored “Green Henry” is considered the most vital novel of development of bourgeois realism. It is available in two versions. Once the education in the “Green Henry” is not hopeful and disappointing approaches to a positive conclusion. The balance between personal fulfillment and social needs can not. In the other translation there is even a stoppage of the artist Henry Clover, but in the end he finds as a chief official activities as a helpful sense of life fulfillment. This conclusion is based on perspective, Keller generic model of Goethe. The first translation was developed in the years 1854 to 1855, the second wording, between 1879 and 1880.
Keller’s narrative works to present a wide range of narrative art, which he missed his own touch. Already in the first cycle of his small tales, fairy tales and tales, “The people of Seldwyla” (1865) – were made in the Berlin period – he a master of the grotesque, satirical, cheerful, comic and tragic style. The second cycle was 1874th In both parts, as in his other novels remain arrested basement native materials and breaks through to a literature-programmatic, represent general historical events. He always goes out from the concrete as a sign of solidarity with the civil society. In the five tales of the cycle, “Zurich novellas” (1878), he presents the background of historical examples of the value of civil society or the humanity in the focus and also is pursuing an learning purpose.
Already in this work is announced at Keller distanced attitude towards the evolving presence. In the like tales of the “epigram” (1881), it is antithetical to the theme of appearance and reality. They are considered high point in the novella by Keller. The second novel, “Martin Solander” continues the present attitude of the author averted by capitalist ideology and belief in progress as revealing accuses task of democratic thoughts of 1848. Gottfried Keller’s lyrical work always remained behind his narrative performance. His lyrical works, he packed into traditional stanzas and verse forms as a song, sonnet, ghazal or ballad. He was inspired by the political poetry of the 1840s such as Georg Herwegh, Anastasius or green. Unlike them, turns the basement concrete reality and to suppress the rhetorical pathos.
In the first edition of “Poems” (1846) published works and political nature poetry in the sense of the pre-March. Disappointed by the results of 1848, he devoted himself only to nature lyricism, in which is not only the beauty of the untreated phenomena mentioned, but also of Feuerbach’s critique of religious conviction. The hard seals on occasions such as singers, shooters or celebrations Cadets are signs of interest from the basement on native affairs. Was the beginning of Keller’s professional life of continual up and marked by uncertainty and Ab, the Swiss author was at the end of his life as a well-known German writer.
Gottfried Keller died on 15 July 1890 in Zurich.
