Background
Friedrich Hebbel was born on March 18, 1813, in Wesselburen, the Duchy of Holstein (nowadays Wesselburen, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany); the son of a poverty-stricken mason.
Maria-Louisen-Straße 114 Hamburg 22301 Germany
Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums, where Hebbel was educated.
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (main building), where Hebbel was educated in philosophy, history and literature.
Friedrich Hebbel Museum
Friedrich Hebbel, 1858
Stamps of Germany (DDR) 1963
Hebbel's house in Gmunden, Austria
Friedrich Hebbel was born on March 18, 1813, in Wesselburen, the Duchy of Holstein (nowadays Wesselburen, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany); the son of a poverty-stricken mason.
Hebbel was educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums, a grammar school in Hamburg, Germany. At the age of fourteen he was employed as a clerk by a parish official named Mohr, who allowed him to use his library. Mohr treated Hebbel as a common servant, however, and for this Hebbel never forgave him.
Harboring youthful literary ambitions, he journeyed to Hamburg as the protégé of Amalie Schoppe, a popular writer. Through her patronage, he was able to go to the University of Hamburg, but failed to qualify for the university.
In a year he went to Heidelberg University to study law, but gave it up and went on to the University of Munich, where he studied philosophy, history and literature.
In 1840 Hebbel completed his first successful drama, Judith, a study of motivation in which altruism gives way to a self-centered desire for revenge leading to tragedy. The same year appeared his second drama, Genoveva. It treats the vicissitudes of a virtuous 8th-century Countess of Brabant.
In 1842 he visited Copenhagen, where he obtained from King Christian VIII a small travelling studentship, which enabled him to spend some time in Paris and two years (1844–1846) in Italy.
In 1843 Hebbel described his dramatic theory in the essay Mein Wort über das Drama: the individual ego, whether willing good or ill, must in its unavoidable drive toward expression conflict with the totality of mankind existing in the flow of time; that is, the developing individual inevitably clashes with historical development.
In Paris he wrote his fine "tragedy of common life", Maria Magdalena (1844). In this bourgeois tragedy the conflict originates for the first time, as Hebbel said, "within the bourgeois milieu itself," where custom and tradition exert a paralyzing effect upon the principals.
After an Italian sojourn Hebbel settled in 1845 in Vienna. His subsequent career was successful and prosperous. Hebbel himself considered Herodes und Mariamne (1848) a "masterpiece." Here theory and dramatic effectiveness combine to expose the motives of two equally guilty and innocent principals, while the remarkable drama Agnes Bernauer (1852) depicts the innocently destructive power of great beauty in conflict with interests of state.
Hebbel's later dramas display a classicizing shift to verse. In Gyges und sein Ring (1854) he examines psychological motivation in ethical and religious terms, indicating how a Hegelian synthesis may emerge from antithetical views.
His most ambitious undertaking is the trilogy Die Niebelungen (1855-1860) - including Der gehörnte Siegfried (“The Invulnerable Siegfried”), Siegfrieds Tod (“Siegfried’s Death”), and Kriemhilds Rache (“Kriemhild’s Revenge”) - where, as he said, he sought to motivate in "purely human" terms the vital historical "turning point" when the Germanic peoples accepted Christianity.
His other works include two comedies, a volume of novellas and stories, collections of poems, and essays in literary criticism. Hebbel's verse tends toward the analytical and reflective, while his extensive diaries trace the development of his thought.
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1840Hebbel's best-known quotation on religion is "Religion is the highest vanity."
With the desperate seriousness of the self-educated man, Hebbel dedicated himself to presenting in artistic form his solution, sometimes characterized as "pantragic," of what he considered the ultimate philosophical problem, the incomprehensible escape of the individual from the Absolute or Idea, man's freedom in relation to God.
In Hebbel's dualism individual forms exist only by virtue of having differentiated themselves from the Absolute. Their struggle to maintain themselves as separate entities is a rebellion, the primeval sin of individuation. The sinfulness of the individual consists merely in the fact that he exists, and it is in no way dependent upon the nature or direction of his individual will. For his sinfulness the individual must be punished; he will have to submerge his particular being in the undifferentiated whole. The more splendid, vigorous, and powerful he is, the greater is the threat he poses to the Absolute and the more tragic is the struggle, which can end in only one way. There is only one necessity—that the Absolute maintain itself.
However, although the existence of individual forms threatens the Whole, it is precisely the process of individuation that gives life to this closed system. If it were not for the mysterious freedom of the individual forms, the Absolute would become rigid and lifeless. The total life process is dependent on the metabolic flow of individual forms, which may appear at one point; may be submerged forever; or may, whether they retain their identities or their elements enter into new combinations, reappear at another point only to lose individuality again in the never-ending compact flux of history, compact because nothing new enters the universe and nothing leaves it.
Quotations:
"It's incredible how much intelligence is used in this world to prove nonsense."
"If you hate something thoroughly without knowing why, you can be sure there is something of it in your own nature."
"One lie does not cost you one truth, but the truth."
"What you can become you are already."
"Whoever wants to be a judge of human nature should study people's excuses."
"Most people are good only so long as they believe others to be so."
"If language had been the creation not of poetry but of logic, we should only have one."
"With someone who holds nothing but trumps, it is impossible to play cards."
"In a good play, everyone is in the right."
"That Man, who flees from truth, should have invented the mirror is the greatest of historical miracles."
"What a vast difference there is between the barbarism that precedes culture and the barbarism that follows it."
"There are persons who always find a hair in their plate of soup for the simple reason that, when they sit down before it, they shake their heads until one falls in."
"If anything were FULLY explained, everything would be explained."
"Reason is the substance of the universe. The design of the world is absolutely rational."
While in Hamburg Hebbel established a relation with Elise Lensing, who later bore him two illegitimate sons. In 1845 he met the actress Christine Enghaus, whom he married in 1846. The marriage was a happy one and enabled Hebbel to take a place of honor in artistic and intellectual circles.