Anton Fürnstein

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Johann Anton Ignaz Fürnstein (7 July 1783 – 11 November 1841) was a German poet.

His poems caught the attention of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who published three of Fürnstein's poems in his journal Über Kunst und Altertum.

Biography

Anton Fürnstein was born in Falkenau, Bohemia, the son of the burgher and master miller Johann Georg Fürnstein (1741–1802) and Theresia, née Zürchauer (1747–1803). In his seventh year he fell seriously ill, so that he got contracted twisted limbs and could use his hands only with difficulty, but could hardly move his legs. This illness, indicating a possibly spastic or contractile event, made it impossible for him to attend a higher school. Nevertheless, he gradually succeeded in moving his hands, learning to write, and acquiring his education even from books through thorough and assiduous study. He was particularly intensively concerned with the German poets. Gradually he developed a poetic talent.

When he wanted to escape the noise of his brother-in-law's (Franz Zürchauer, married to his sister Maria Theresia Fürnstein) cooper workshop, where he lived after the death of his parents, and write poetry, he was pushed in his wheelchair to the gates of the city. There, according to his own account, the beauty of nature filled him with deeply gratifying and pious feelings. Most of his poems reflect these impressions. Fürnstein always described his sad lot as a still enviable one, because the gift of poetry and the love of his friends seemed to him a rich compensation for his physical infirmities. Fürnstein's siblings, one brother and three sisters, lovingly cared for their brother.

In 1818, a poetry society was formed in Falkenau by young men who encouraged each other to write and recite poetic and also scientific works. Every two weeks, the members recited essays with a poetic focus. Fürnstein was one of the founders of the association and one of its most talented members.

When Falkenau's poetry society later disbanded, Fürnstein successfully applied for the position of Lotto Record Office (1837) in order to make a living. He held this position until his death. Anton Fürnstein died on November 11, 1841 in Falkenau of a stroke as the result of an exhaustive suppuration of a mid-flesh abscess.

Promotion by Goethe

When Goethe visited Falkenau with the Cheb police councilor Joseph Sebastian Grüner on August 3, 1822, and also met with the local Bergmeister Ignaz Lößl (1782–1849) to visit the latter's mineral cabinet, Goethe was also presented by Lößl with some of the poems of the Poets' Society, especially those by Fürnstein, whereby Lößl pointed out Fürnstein's physical infirmities, lack of schooling, and at the same time his own extensive education.

Goethe himself writes in his diaries about the visit to Falkenau: "a well-built place ... which I often saw, driving to Carlsbad, lying very charmingly in the valley on the river Eger..." about the meeting with Fürnstein: "...One also presented poems of a nature man, named Firnstein, on whose, since the seventh year contracted body a very good head has developed. His works bear completely the stamp of the so-called nature poets..." When he arranged to meet Fürnstein the following day, August 4, 1822, Goethe wrote, "...I saw him (Fürnstein) curled up in his little armchair on my paths — a heartrending sight, for chewed up as he was, he could have been covered with a moderate cubus. He greeted me kindly, pointed to his misery and testified to good courage, while I hardly dared to look at him. At a cursory glance, I soon realized how a cerebral system had developed out of this disfigured body, with which a regular figure could well have been satisfied..." Goethe recognized his talent and decided to promote it by giving him the task of writing a poem about hop cultivation. After leaving Fürnstein, he was visibly affected.

Fürnstein implemented the task Goethe had set him and wrote his poem Der Hopfenbau. When it was presented to Goethe, he wrote about it: "How he solves this task, how he begins actively, and inculcates everything that has to be done, one thing after the other, at the same time interweaving a moral word, always continues in this way, and knows how to bring these vines closer to the grapevines, needs no interpretation; the whole thing lies brighter and under a sunny favorable sky, and will certainly be felt with the greatest interest by everyone on the spot, especially during quite active working hours. I would like to call these poems the rising ones, they still hover on the ground, do not leave it, but glide gently over it." Goethe praised in Fürnstein's poems a certain grace, the presence of open nature, comfort in a limiting sociability, pleasure and hope and a humanly noble seriousness.

Goethe published Fürnstein's poem Der Hopfenbau, An den April and Ermunterung an den Winter in his journal Über Kunst und Altertum in 1823. In the same year, Goethe set him the task of writing a weaver's poem.

Fürnstein's original manuscripts were considered lost as early as 1882. His works were published by the Verein für Geschichte der Deutschen in Böhmen in an offprint and in 1880 by Ludwig Schlesinger in their entirety.

Work

  • Der Hopfenbau (1823)

External links