Musen-Almanach
Encyclopedia
A Musen-Almanach was a kind of literary annual, popular in Germany from 1770 into the mid 19th century. They were modelled on the Almanach des Muses
published in Paris from 1765.
's Göttinger Musenalmanach
(GMA) of 1770. It was promoted by the mathematician Abraham Gotthelf Kästner
, and published by Heinrich Christian Boie
(in partnership with Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter
). As a literary outlet for students at the University of Göttingen, it received contributions from Johann Heinrich Voss, Ludwig Christoph Heinrich Hölty, Johann Martin Miller
and his relative Gottlob Dietrich Miller, Johann Friedrich Hahn
, Johann Thomas Ludwig Wehrs
, Johann Anton Leisewitz
, and others. In 1774 Boie made Voss editor, but Voss soon left for Hamburg
and started a competing almanac; in spring 1775, he was replaced by Leopold Friedrich Günther Goeckingk; he was joined the next year by Gottfried August Bürger
, who became sole editor in 1779. After Bürger's death in 1795 he was replaced by Karl Reinhard.
A semi-pirated imitation by Engelhard Benjamin Schwickert, Leipziger Almanach der deutschen Musen, simultaneously appeared in Leipzig
. Despite including nineteen stolen items, it was on sale before the GMA. The editor was Christian Heinrich Schmid, and in subsequent years it would include the work of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
, Christian Fürchtegott Gellert
, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim
and Karl Wilhelm Ramler
. From 1776 it was titled Leipziger Musen-Almanach, and from 1782 Benjamin took over as editor.
The third almanac to appear was that of the Johann Heinrich Voss previously mentioned, the Hamburger Musenalmanach. The first issue of 1776 lost money, and Voss transferred management to Carl Ernst Bohn, but continued to edit, with the help (from 1779 to 1786) of Goeckingk.
In Vienna in 1777, the Wienerischer Musenalmanach (or Wiener Musen-Almanach from 1786) appeared. The editor was Joseph Franz von Ratschky, and he was joined by Aloys Blumauer
in 1781, and later by Gottlieb von Leon and Martin Joseph Prandstätter. The last issue appeared in 1796.
's Anthologie (1782) which only appeared once. His second attempt was Musen-Almanach (1796-1800) which is the most famous example in the entire genre, because of the contributors: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
, Johann Gottfried Herder
, Ludwig Tieck
, Friedrich Hölderlin
and August Wilhelm Schlegel.
Inspired by his example, there followed Musenalmanache by August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck
(Tübingen 1802), by Johann Bernhard Vermehren
(Leipzig 1802 and Jena 1803), the Musenalmanach by Adelbert von Chamisso
and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense
(1804–1806), the Poetische Taschenbuch of Friedrich Schlegel (Berlin 1805–1806) and the Musenalmanach edited by Leo von Seckendorf (Regensburg 1807–1808).
The Musen-Almanach was gradually superseded by the Taschenbuch ("pocket book") and by the literary magazine as we know it today — some still bearing the word Musenalmanach in their titles. However, short-lived annuals of the same kind continued to appear as late as the 1860s.
Almanach des Muses
L'Almanach des Muses was a poetry journal founded in 1765 by Sautreau de Marsy.Almanacs had known a great vogue during the second half of the 18th century. The aim of the Almanach des Muses was to go beyond what previous almanacs had attempted by presenting to its readership a selection of recent...
published in Paris from 1765.
Development in the 1770s
The first example was Johann Christian DieterichJohann Christian Dieterich
Johann Christian Dieterich was the founder of the Dieterich’schen Verlagsbuchhandlung publishing house and close friend of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. He published the first Musen-Almanach....
's Göttinger Musenalmanach
Göttinger Musenalmanach
Göttinger Musenalmanach was the title of two different literary magazines published in Göttingen, Germany, one running from 1770 to 1807, the other 1896 to 1953...
(GMA) of 1770. It was promoted by the mathematician Abraham Gotthelf Kästner
Abraham Gotthelf Kästner
Abraham Gotthelf Kästner was a German mathematician and epigrammatist.He was known in his professional life for writing textbooks and compiling encyclopedias rather than for original research. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was one of his doctoral students, and admired the man greatly. He became...
, and published by Heinrich Christian Boie
Heinrich Christian Boie
Heinrich Christian Boie was a German author.He was born at Meldorf in Holstein...
(in partnership with Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter
Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter
Friedrich Wilhelm Gotter was a German poet and dramatist.He was born at Gotha. After the completion of his university course at Göttingen, he was appointed second director of the Gotha Archive. He subsequently went to Wetzlar, the seat of the imperial law courts, as secretary to the...
). As a literary outlet for students at the University of Göttingen, it received contributions from Johann Heinrich Voss, Ludwig Christoph Heinrich Hölty, Johann Martin Miller
Johann Martin Miller
Johann Martin Miller was a German theologian and writer.- Life :Miller was the son of an Evangelical pastor, Johann Michael Miller...
and his relative Gottlob Dietrich Miller, Johann Friedrich Hahn
Johann Friedrich Hahn
Johann Friedrich Hahn was a German lyric poet.Hahn, an evangelical Lutheran, began his studies on 22 April 1771 at the University of Göttingen, first law, then theology. On 12 September 1772 he helped to establish the Göttinger Hainbund literary group.After his graduation he became a confidante of...
, Johann Thomas Ludwig Wehrs
Johann Thomas Ludwig Wehrs
Johann Thomas Ludwig Wehrs was a German theologian and a founder of the Göttinger Hainbund literary group....
, Johann Anton Leisewitz
Johann Anton Leisewitz
Johann Anton Leisewitz was a German dramatic poet.-Biography:He went to Göttingen in 1770, and became a member of the circle of poets called Der Hainbund, which included Stolberg and Voss, and contributed two poems to the Göttinger Musenalmanach for 1775, both essentially dramatic and democratic...
, and others. In 1774 Boie made Voss editor, but Voss soon left for Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
and started a competing almanac; in spring 1775, he was replaced by Leopold Friedrich Günther Goeckingk; he was joined the next year by Gottfried August Bürger
Gottfried August Bürger
Gottfried August Bürger was a German poet. His ballads were very popular in Germany. His most noted ballad, Lenore, found an audience beyond readers of the German language in an English adaptation and a French translation.-Biography:He was born in Molmerswende , Principality of Halberstadt, where...
, who became sole editor in 1779. After Bürger's death in 1795 he was replaced by Karl Reinhard.
A semi-pirated imitation by Engelhard Benjamin Schwickert, Leipziger Almanach der deutschen Musen, simultaneously appeared in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
. Despite including nineteen stolen items, it was on sale before the GMA. The editor was Christian Heinrich Schmid, and in subsequent years it would include the work of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock was a German poet.-Biography:Klopstock was born at Quedlinburg, the eldest son of a lawyer.Both in his birthplace and on the estate of Friedeburg on the Saale, which his father later rented, young Klopstock passed a happy childhood; and more attention having been given...
, Christian Fürchtegott Gellert
Christian Fürchtegott Gellert
Christian Fürchtegott Gellert was a German poet, one of the forerunners of the golden age of German literature that was ushered in by Lessing.-Biography:...
, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim
Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim
Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim was a German poet.- Life :Gleim was born at Ermsleben near Halberstadt. Having studied law at the University of Halle he became secretary to Prince William of Brandenburg-Schwedt at Berlin, where he made the acquaintance of Ewald von Kleist, whose devoted friend he...
and Karl Wilhelm Ramler
Karl Wilhelm Ramler
Karl Wilhelm Ramler was a German poet.Ramler was born in Kolberg. After graduating from the University of Halle, he went to Berlin, where, in 1748, he was appointed professor of logic and literature at the cadet school...
. From 1776 it was titled Leipziger Musen-Almanach, and from 1782 Benjamin took over as editor.
The third almanac to appear was that of the Johann Heinrich Voss previously mentioned, the Hamburger Musenalmanach. The first issue of 1776 lost money, and Voss transferred management to Carl Ernst Bohn, but continued to edit, with the help (from 1779 to 1786) of Goeckingk.
In Vienna in 1777, the Wienerischer Musenalmanach (or Wiener Musen-Almanach from 1786) appeared. The editor was Joseph Franz von Ratschky, and he was joined by Aloys Blumauer
Aloys Blumauer
Aloys Blumauer was an Austrian poet.-Biography:His works, which are chiefly coarse satires on the clergy and on the Jesuits , enjoyed a wide popularity...
in 1781, and later by Gottlieb von Leon and Martin Joseph Prandstätter. The last issue appeared in 1796.
Schiller's Musenalmanach
Other similar almanacs were less successful, including Friedrich SchillerFriedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
's Anthologie (1782) which only appeared once. His second attempt was Musen-Almanach (1796-1800) which is the most famous example in the entire genre, because of the contributors: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
, Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried Herder
Johann Gottfried von Herder was a German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic. He is associated with the periods of Enlightenment, Sturm und Drang, and Weimar Classicism.-Biography:...
, Ludwig Tieck
Ludwig Tieck
Johann Ludwig Tieck was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Early life:...
, Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was a major German lyric poet, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his...
and August Wilhelm Schlegel.
Inspired by his example, there followed Musenalmanache by August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck
Ludwig Tieck
Johann Ludwig Tieck was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Early life:...
(Tübingen 1802), by Johann Bernhard Vermehren
Johann Bernhard Vermehren
Johann Bernhard Vermehren was an early Romantic poet and scholar.He earned a doctoral degree in philosophy from the University of Jena in 1799, obtaining habilitation one year later and teaching as Privatdozent until his early death from scarlet fever.His first poems appeared in Friedrich...
(Leipzig 1802 and Jena 1803), the Musenalmanach by Adelbert von Chamisso
Adelbert von Chamisso
Adelbert von Chamisso was a German poet and botanist.- Life :He was born Louis Charles Adélaïde de Chamissot at the château of Boncourt at Ante, in Champagne, France, the ancestral seat of his family...
and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense
Karl August Varnhagen von Ense
Karl August Varnhagen von Ense was a German biographer, diplomat and soldier.-Biography:He was born at Düsseldorf, with siblings including Rosa Maria Varnhagen. He studied medicine in Berlin, but spent more time on philosophy and literature, which he later studied more thoroughly at Halle and...
(1804–1806), the Poetische Taschenbuch of Friedrich Schlegel (Berlin 1805–1806) and the Musenalmanach edited by Leo von Seckendorf (Regensburg 1807–1808).
Mass marketing, and Taschenbücher
The heyday of the almanac was perhaps the 1820s, during which decade they gradually began to appear in England in an etiolated form as literary annuals. In 1823, a writer in the European Magazine of London commented:- In Germany, the most popular species of work is what is called their Almanacs. The booksellers are generally concerned in such speculations, and there is scarce a toilette on which one or several of them are not to be found. Such works contain the coups d'essai of swarms of maiden authors, and with the ephemeral and lighter pieces of writers whose reputation is established. Some of these Almanacs are of a more serious and useful character, and the whole of them are generally bound with taste and fancy, and are ornamented with elegant engravings.
The Musen-Almanach was gradually superseded by the Taschenbuch ("pocket book") and by the literary magazine as we know it today — some still bearing the word Musenalmanach in their titles. However, short-lived annuals of the same kind continued to appear as late as the 1860s.