Johann Peter Hebel
Johann Peter Hebel (10 May 1760 – 22 September 1826)[1] was a German short story writer, dialectal poet, Lutheran theologian and pedagogue, most famous for a collection of Alemannic lyric poems (Allemannische Gedichte) and one of German tales (Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes – "Treasure Chest of Rhenish Tales").
Hebel's father, who had moved to southern Baden from the Hunsrück area, died of typhus early in 1761, as did his younger sister, who was only a few weeks old.
He took a broad interest in botany; he maintained a herbarium and rearranged the botanical terms and diagnoses in Flora badensis alsatica, written by his friend, botanist Karl Christian Gmelin.
[2] In 1805 he was offered the Lutheran parish of Freiburg im Breisgau, but he declined it at the behest of Charles Frederick, Grand Duke of Baden.
In 1819 he became a prelate of the Lutheran regional church, a leading position that brought with it a seat in the Upper House of the Parliament (Ständeversammlung) of Baden.
[13] In Allemannische Gedichte, Hebel depicts the local life and customs of his homeland, with topics ranging from a description of the river Wiese, through praise of the Breisgau area, to his work in the ironworks in Hausen.
Perhaps the most famous poem is "Die Vergänglichkeit", a dialogue in blank verse about death, in which the father (Alemannic: Ätti) tells his son (Bueb) a story based on Rötteln Castle, about how a glorious town like Basel will decline – and likewise the whole world.
Hebel was elated at this success and wrote in a letter: "In certain moments I feel all proud inside, and as if drunk with happiness, that I could make our otherwise despised and ridiculed language so classical and give it such artistic fame".
[13][15] Hebel's second famous work is his calendar stories, which he wrote from 1803 on for the Badische Landkalender and especially from 1807 for its successor, the Rheinländischer Hausfreund.
This old Lutheran calendar was selling poorly in the early 19th century, and Hebel was a member of the commission appointed to suggest improvements.
Hebel rounded off his story with the words: "The family friend knows to praise and venerate that, although he has never prayed to a rosary, else he would not write to the Lutheran calendar.
His criteria were that it should be clearly written and tell biblical stories in an exciting narrative style aimed at children from ten to fourteen.
[22] Hebel's admirers include Goethe, Gottfried Keller, Martin Heidegger, W. G. Sebald, Tolstoy, and Walter Benjamin.
Goethe, who tried to write a poem (the "Schweizerlied", Swiss song) in Alemannic himself, praised the Allemannische Gedichte highly.
August Vilmar, for example, praised Hebel's "Vergänglichkeit" (transience), saying that it gives the folk-like foreground a background not found in other poets who wrote folk idylls.
Hermann Hesse once commented, "As far as I know, in no literary history do we yet read that Hebel was the greatest German novelist, as great as Keller and more confident and purer and mightier in effect than Goethe.
"[29] Theodor W. Adorno lauded his essay Die Juden as "one of the most beautiful German prose plays in defence of the Jews".
[30] In Die gerettete Zunge, Geschichte einer Jugend, Elias Canetti described the influence that Hebel's Schatzkästlein had on him: "I never wrote a book, but that I did not secretly aspire to his style, and I began by writing everything in shorthand, the knowledge of which I owe to him alone."
Marcel Reich-Ranicki wrote, "Hebel's stories are among the most beautiful in the German language",[31] and included the "Schatzkästlein" and "Die Rose" in his Kanon Deutscher Literatur.
The 10,000-euro prize is awarded every two years to writers, translators, essayists, media representatives or scientists from the German district of Baden-Württemberg who write in Alemannic or are connected with Hebel.
