The writer was vital poet, translator, theologian and philosopher of history and culture of the Weimar Classics. He was one of the most influential thinkers of his time and, with Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, for “four star” of the Weimar Classics. Johann Gottfried Herder had decisively shaped by his early writings critical of the Enlightenment era of storm and stress period. In it he argued for a more overall view of Christianity and humanity, for the intrinsic value of human cultures and a progressive humanitarianism. In particular, he recognized the humanity of man as a constant challenge. Herder continued to play a major translator of poetry …
Johann Gottfried Herder on 25 Dignified 1744, the son of the cantor and teacher Gottfried Herder and his second wife Anna Elisabeth, born in East Prussia Peltz Morag born.
He grew up in modest circumstances. Influenced by his pietistic religious parents, he should study the young Herder theology. Herder studied theology in Königsberg in 1762. When the younger brother Carl Friedrich died, he wrote his first poem “On my first dead! The most precious thing I lost in this world.” He attended the lectures of Immanuel Kant and made the acquaintance of the writer and philosopher Johann Georg Hamann. In 1764 he took a position as teacher and preacher at the cathedral in Riga. But he felt as oppressive conditions there and went on a voyage to France.
This company, he also describes in the “Journal of my trip in 1769.” A year later he went to Strasbourg, with the Netherlands, Hamburg and Darmstadt left behind. In Strasbourg, the first time he met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who gave him a position as General Superintendent at Weimar, but the relationship to Goethe was not without tension. John Godfrey Herder was having major impacts on the Sturm und Drang movement through its critical early writings in which he determined the concept of genius and his conception of folklore and fairy tales as a direct expression of emotion.
This perspective is also his broad concept of the folk song together, and his pool of folk songs. Herder also authored writings on theology and philosophy of history, in whom he thought Christianity and humanitarianism. He had strong thoughts on the humanity of Weimar Classicism. Herder’s thoughts were still connecting to the historical intrinsic value of cultures and a progressive humanity is of major importance, where he also recognized the destructive navy in the service of humanity. In particular, the humanity he saw as the strongest expression of Christianity, which belongs to the permanent task of man.
In his late works were his translations of the Latin poems of, among other things Jacob Balde and the Spanish “Cid” meaning. His works contain “On newer German literature. Fragments.” (1766-1767), “also a philosophy of history for the education of mankind” (1774), “Brutus. A drama with music” (1774), “Oldest Document of the human race” (1774-1776), “Songs of Like” (1778), “From the mind of the Hebrews Poetry” (1782-1783), “Letters to the advancement of humanity” (1793-1797), “Terpsichore” (1795-1796), “Kallogone” (1800) or “Adrastea” (1801-1803).
Johann Gottfried Herder died on 18 December 1803 in Weimar
