Paul Fleming (poet)

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Paul Fleming
Born(1609-10-05)5 October 1609
Hartenstein, Holy Roman Empire
Died2 April 1640(1640-04-02) (aged 30)
Hamburg, Holy Roman Empire
Other namesPaul Flemming
EducationSt. Thomas School, Leipzig
Alma materLeipzig University
Occupations
  • Physician
  • poet

Paul Fleming (also spelt Flemming; 5 October 1609 – 2 April 1640[1]) was a German physician and poet.

As well as writing notable verse and

Reval on the coast of Estonia
, where he wrote many love-songs.

Life

Born at Hartenstein, Saxony, the son of Abraham Fleming, a well-to-do Lutheran pastor, Fleming received his early education from his father before attending a school at Mittweida and then the famous St. Thomas School at Leipzig. He received his initial medical training at Leipzig University, where he also studied literature and graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy before gaining his medical doctorate at the University of Hamburg.[2][3]

The

Gottorp some of the party, including Fleming, remained in Reval.[5] In the event, Fleming was there for about a year, during which he organized a poetry circle called "the Shepherds".[6] Not long after his arrival in Reval, Fleming began his courtship of Elsabe Niehus, the daughter of Heinrich Niehus, a merchant originally from Hamburg.[7] He wrote love poems for her, and they became engaged to be married. In 1636 the embassy proceeded to Persia, by way of a further visit to Moscow, and Elsabe was left behind.[8] Fleming's Epistolae ex Persia were four letters in verse written during his time in Persia, between 1636 and 1638.[9] The embassy was at Isfahan in 1637. On returning to Reval, Fleming found that Elsabe had married another man and became engaged to her sister, Anna Niehus.[8][10]

Statue of Fleming at Hartenstein

In 1639 Fleming resumed his medical studies at the

University of Leiden, and in 1640 was awarded a doctorate.[8] He settled in Hamburg
, where he died on 2 April 1640.

Poetry

With his contemporaries Martin Opitz (1597–1639), Andreas Gryphius (1616–1664), Christian Hoffmann von Hoffmannswaldau (1616–1679) and the rather later Daniel Casper von Lohenstein (1635–1683), Fleming is one of the writers now called "the Silesian poets" or "the Silesian school".[11] As a lyricist he stands in the front rank of German poets.[2]

Fleming's well-known poems include Auf den Tod eines Kindes (On the Death of a Child) and Madrigal.

Muse of tragedy.[13]
His Teutsche Poemata (Poems in German), published posthumously in 1642, was later renamed Geistliche und weltliche Gedichte (Spiritual and Secular Poems) and contains many notable love-songs.

Fleming wrote in Latin as well as in German, and his Latin poems were published in a single volume in 1863, edited by Johann Martin Lappenberg.[14] Fleming has been called a man of "real poetic genius",[15] "the only good poet in Germany during the Thirty Years' War",[16] "possibly the greatest German lyric poet of the seventeenth century"[17] and "the German Herrick".[11] Günter Grass has called him "one of the major figures in German seventeenth-century literature".[18]

Musical settings

Fleming wrote the hymn in nine stanzas "In allen meinen Taten" (In all that I do) on the melody of "Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen" by Heinrich Isaac,[19] which is contained in several hymnals.[20] Johann Sebastian Bach used the final stanza to close both cantatas Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen (BWV 13) and Sie werden euch in den Bann tun (BWV 44). The complete hymn is the base for Bach's chorale cantata In allen meinen Taten (BWV 97).[20][17] Already in the 17th century another composer, David Pohle (1624–1695), had set twelve of Fleming's love-songs to music.[21] Johannes Brahms set "Lass dich nur nichts bedauern" as Geistliches Lied, Op. 30.[22] Pauline Volkstein also set Fleming’s texts to music.[23]

Works

Gedichte (1870)
  • Rubella seu Suaviorum Liber (1631)
  • Klagegedichte über das unschüldigste Leiden undt Tod unsers Erlösers Jesu Christi (Laments concerning the most innocent Suffering and Death of our Saviour Jesus Christ) (1632)
  • Prodromus (1641)
  • Teutsche Poemata (Poems in German) (1646)
    • Geistliche und weltliche Gedichte (Spiritual and Secular Poems) was the title of later editions of Teutsche Poemata

Source: "Paul Fleming (1609–1640)" (PDF). Die Barockepoche im Spiegel der Lyrik (in German). University of Konstanz. Retrieved 3 October 2018.

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ Flemming, Willi (1961), "Fleming, Paul", Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German), vol. 5, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, p. 238; (full text online)
  2. ^ a b John Wesley Thomas, German verse from the 12th to the 20th century in English translation (AMS Press, 1966), p. 25
  3. ^ a b Friedrich Max Müller, Early German classics from the fourth to fifteenth century, vol. 2 (1858), p. 490: Geboren 1609 zu Hartenstein im Voigtlande; besuchte die Schule zu Meissen, und studirte Medicin in Leipzig. Der Dreissigjährige Krieg trieb ihn nach Holstein, wo er sich der Gesandtschaft anschloss...
  4. ^ Gabriella Szögedi, 'Versuch eines autonomen Verhaltens im Poetischen. Paul Flemings deutsche Liebesgedichte im Diskurs der constantia at inst.at, accessed 10 January 2012: "Fleming... spent six years of his short life on a diplomatic mission from Holstein to Russia and Persia" (translated from the German)
  5. ^ Sperberg-McQueen (1990), p. 81.
  6. ^ a b Elena Rannu, The living past of Tallinn (1993), p. 106: "It happened that the German poet Paul Fleming (1609–1640), a doctor by profession, was one of that Holstein Embassy too. Like his comrades, he spent about a year in the town... He organized a poetry group which was called "Shepherds"... Some of Paul Fleming's sonnets were connected directly with Tallinn, others with the places along which the embassy travelled..."
  7. ^ Karen Brand, Diversität der deutschen Liebeslyrik von Paul Fleming (2010), p. 4: "Vermutlich im März 1635 begann die Liebesbeziehung zu Elsabe Niehus..."
  8. ^ a b c Hans Dieter Betz, Religion past and present (2008), p. 140
  9. ^ Sperberg-McQueen (1990), p. 133.
  10. ISBN 0-313-30827-6
    .
  11. ^ a b Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, The political, social, and literary history of Germany (1881), p. 242: "Paul Fleming of Silesia (1609–1640), the "German Herrick," stands; the head of all the lyric poets of the seventeenth century."
  12. ^ A German treasury (University of Salzburg, 1995), pp. 90–91
  13. ^ Sperberg-McQueen (1990), p. 46.
  14. ^ J. M. Lappenberg, ed., Paul Flemings Lateinische Gedichte (Stuttgart, 1863)
  15. ^ M. F. Reid, A handy manual of German literature (1879), p. 80
  16. ^ Edward Lowbury, Poetry (Oxford Reference Online accessed 10 January 2012, subscription required), orig. in Stephen Lock, John M. Last, and George Dunea, eds., The Oxford Companion to Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2001)
  17. ^ a b Richard Stokes, ed., J. S. Bach: the Complete Cantatas, p. viii
  18. ^ Günter Grass, The Meeting at Telgte (1990), p. 139
  19. ^ "Chorale Melodies used in Bach's Vocal Works / O Welt, ich muss dich lassen". bach-cantatas.com. 2009. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
  20. ^ a b "In allen meinen Taten / Text and Translation of Chorale". bach-cantatas.com. 2006. Retrieved 9 January 2012.
  21. ^ Friedrich Blume, Ludwig Finscher, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart: allgemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik (1996), p. 304: "David Pohle, 12 Liebesgesänge von Paul Fleming für 2 St."
  22. ^ Geistliches Lied, Op. 30 (Brahms): Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
  23. ^ "Pauline Volkstein und ihre Volkslieder. Von Dr. Armin Knab. - Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek". www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de (in German). Retrieved 4 March 2023.

Sources

  • Sperberg-McQueen, Marian R. (1990). The German poetry of Paul Fleming: studies in genre and history. University of North Carolina Press.
  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wood, James, ed. (1907). "Fleming, Paul". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. London and New York: Frederick Warne.

External links

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