August Kopisch was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 poet and painter.

Biography

Kopisch was born on 26 May 1799 in Breslau, Prussia (now Wroclaw, Poland). In 1815 he began studying painting at the Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

 academy, but an injury to his hand damaged his prospects of success as an artist, and he turned to literature.

After residences in Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 and Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 Kopisch proceeded in 1822 to Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. At Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

 he became close friends with the poet August von Platen-Hallermünde; and when out swimming he and the painter Ernst Fries

Ernst Fries

Ernst Fries was a German painter.-Biography:Fries was a pupil of Karl Kuntz at Karlsruhe, and afterwards studied in Munich and in Italy. Examples of his work are: “A View of Tivoli,” “Sorrento and the House of Tasso,” “The Waterfall of Liris at Isola di Sora,” “The Castle of Massa,” and “A View of...

 discovered the "Blue Grotto

Blue Grotto

The Blue Grotto is a noted sea cave on the coast of the island of Capri, Italy. Sunlight, passing through an underwater cavity and shining through the seawater, creates a blue reflection that illuminates the cavern.-Colour:...

" of Capri

Capri

Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...

.

In 1828 he settled at Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and was granted a pension by Frederick William IV of Prussia

Frederick William IV of Prussia

|align=right|Upon his accession, he toned down the reactionary policies enacted by his father, easing press censorship and promising to enact a constitution at some point, but he refused to enact a popular legislative assembly, preferring to work with the aristocracy through "united committees" of...

, who in 1838 conferred upon him the title of professor.

In 1847 he moved to Potsdam

Potsdam

Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....

 and wrote an account of royal residences there and in the neighborhood.

He died on 6 February 1853 at Berlin.

Works

Kopisch produced some original poetry, light in language and in form. He specialised in re-telling legends and popular subjects, and among his Gedichte (Berlin, 1836) are some naïve and humorous little pieces such as Die Historie von Noah

Noah

Noah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...

, Die Heinzelmännchen, Das grüne Tier and Der Schneiderjunge von Krippstedt, which became popular.

He also published a translation of Dante

Dante Alighieri

Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...

's Divine Comedy (Berlin, 1840), and under the title Agrumi (Berlin, 1838) a collection of translations of Italian folk songs.

Literature

• Agrumi, volksthümliche Posien aus allen Mundarten Italiens und seiner Inseln. Crantz Verlag, Berlin 1838.
• Allerlei Geister. Gedichte und Erzählungen. Mörike Verlag, München 1913 (mit der Ballade Die Heinzelmännchen zu Köln)
• Dieter Richter (Hrsg.): Entdeckung der blauen Grotte auf der Insel Capri
  Entdeckung der blauen Grotte auf der Insel Capri
  Entdeckung der blauen Grotte auf der Insel Capri is an 1838 book by German writer and painter August Kopisch, in which he describes his 1826 rediscovery of the Blue Grotto on Capri together with his friend Ernest Fries...
  
  . Wagenbach Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-8031-1163-3
• Die göttliche Komödie des Dante Alighieri
  Dante Alighieri
  Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
  
  . Metrische Uebersetzung nebst beigedrucktem Originaltexte. Brachvogel & Ranft, Berlin 1887.
• Gedichte (1836)
• Die Heinzelmännchen
  Heinzelmännchen
  The Heinzelmännchen are a race of creatures appearing in a tale connected with the city of Cologne in Germany.The little house gnomes are said to have done all the work of the citizens of Cologne during the night, so that the inhabitants of Cologne could be very lazy during the day...
  
   zu Köln. Emons, Köln 2007, ISBN 978-3-89705-493-6.
• Ein Karnevalsfest auf Ischia. Hausen, Saarlouis 1892.
• Die königlichen Schlösser und Gärten zu Potsdam. Von der Zeit ihrer Gründung bis zum Jahre 1852. Ernst & Korn, Berlin 1854.
• Mein allererstes Märchenbuch: Die Heinzelmännchen zu Köln. Edition Paletti, Köln 2004, ISBN 3-89893-892-1.
• Der Träumer. Hübener, Berlin 1948.
• Carl Böttcher (Hrsg.): Gesammelte Werke (Collected works). Weidmann, Berlin 1856 (5 Bde.)

Select Paintings

• Der Krater des Vesuvs mit der Eruption von 1828 (Gemälde 1828)
• Ein Schiff auf dem Meere von Delphinen umschwärmt (Gemälde)
• Die Pontinischen Sümpfe (Gemälde 1848)

External links

• August Kopisch at Web Gallery of Art
• Works by August Kopisch at Projekt Gutenberg-DE
  Projekt Gutenberg-DE
  Projekt Gutenberg-DE is a collection of German language literary texts, distributed via the web and on CD-ROM. It is run by a small publishing company called Hille Partner, run by Gunter Hille, and its web presence is hosted by the weekly magazine Der Spiegel....