Jean Paul

German novelist

• Born: March 21, 1763
• Birthplace: Wunsiedel, Principality of Bayreuth (now in Germany)
• Died: November 14, 1825
• Place of death: Bayreuth, Bavaria (now in Germany)

Biography

Neither classicism nor Romanticism can lay claim to the works of Jean Paul (zhahn pawl), which differ from the classical works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller as much as from those of the Romantic authors E. T. A. Hoffmann, Joseph von Eichendorff, Heinrich von Kleist, and Novalis. While Goethe and Schiller had been opposed to granting the novel its own aesthetic worth, Jean Paul—as the practitioner of the novel of mood, irony, and spiritual exultation—made the novel the preferred genre of German literature. Jean Paul used humor, satire, love, and understanding to confront the finiteness of life and to depict psychic conditions of humankind; in his works, action emulates life, which becomes the mirror image of the world, reflecting its lack of order and lucidity. {$S[A]Richter, Johann Paul Friedrich;Jean Paul}

Jean Paul is the pseudonym of Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, son of the poor schoolmaster and pastor Johann Christian Christoph Richter. Jean Paul, a gifted student, copied important information and read books on all subject matter in a pastor’s library near Schwarzenau. His interest focused on philosophy, on the theory of enlightenment, and, to a lesser degree, on poetry. Reading, the acquisition of knowledge, was life itself to him. His writings reveal an immense storehouse of information which, he felt keenly, had to be shared so that his endeavors had not been for naught. His desire to learn and to excel caused an estrangement between father and son, and Jean Paul feared a complete break in their relationship. Two months after Jean Paul entered the Gymnasium (high school) at Hof, in 1779, his father died, leaving behind a widow, five sons, and many debts.

Theology was a field of study open to gifted but poor young men, and Jean Paul began his studies at the University of Leipzig in 1781. Further financial difficulties forced him to leave the university in 1784. The years until 1795 were especially hard: Jean Paul worked as a tutor, mourned his brother Heinrich’s death by suicide in 1789, and, in 1790, became schoolmaster in Schwarzenbach.

His initial writings, among them Grönländische Prozesse, were not very successful, but Auswahl aus des Teufels Papieren, The Invisible Lodge, and Life of the Cheerful Little Schoolmaster Maria Wutz in Auenthal were well received. Jean Paul’s schoolmaster Wutz lives a happy life in a rather confining environment. Life’s adversities are overcome by creativity and fantasy as Wutz writes his own books for a library devoid of them; he negates old age by escaping back into his youth. Jean Paul’s use of humor allows glimpses into Wutz’s mental processes as Wutz creates, in a most deliberate fashion, his own idyllic life. In Horn of Oberon, Jean Paul explored again the importance of humor as a poetic device.

Success and recognition came with the publication of his novel Hesperus in 1795. He traveled to Weimar and was befriended by Charlotte von Kalb and Friedrich Herder, but his relationship with Goethe and Schiller was a strained one. The individual as creator of his or her own happiness surfaces again in the main character of Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces, who desires the peace and tranquillity of simple life. He feigns illness and death to escape the materialism of his wife and the unhappiness in his first marriage and, upon his resurrection, finds true love and understanding in a second marriage. Walt and Vult depicts one character embodying deeds and one embodying sentiment. Naïve fantasy and cool rationalism are opposite forces that can coexist only through the interjection of humor, which serves not to overcome their strife but to make it more acceptable. A symbiosis between these two opposing forces could mean perfection. The fragmentation evident in this unfinished novel points to the duality of Jean Paul’s life, which included moving to Leipzig (1797), to Weimar (1798), and to Berlin (1800); marriage to Karoline Mayer (1801); moving to Meiningen and then Coburg; the birth of two daughters (Emma in 1802 and Odilie in 1804) and a son (Max in 1803); and, finally, settling in Bayreuth in 1804. The fragmentation also stands as a symbol for Germany: Jean Paul’s political writings include Dämmerungen für Deutschland, Friedens-Predigt an Deutschland, and Politische Fastenpredigten.

Jean Paul wrote chiefly about himself, his idiosyncrasies, and the struggle between the enthusiast and the realist within himself. His works, though humorous, contain biting sarcasm. They reveal his keen awareness of human finiteness, his love for humanity, and his desire for humankind’s acceptance of nature in its entirety. His treatise on education, Levana, reflects his deep insight into the total educational process, that of instilling knowledge and the schooling of the personality. Walt and Vult and Titan were the author’s most beloved works. Titan is a bizarre tale of love and yearning. The motives and correlation of characters and actions are interwoven and depict the spiritual and political situation in Germany. The arabesque style stands in direct contrast to the refined classicist model; it negates Romanticism’s irony and the overemphasizing of the ego, embraced during the Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) literary period. Neither Walt and Vult nor Titan enjoyed the public’s appreciation, and Jean Paul became withdrawn, living a life of public and political resignation. In 1809, Prince Karl Theodor von Dalberg granted Jean Paul a pension, which the state of Bavaria continued paying. Jean Paul’s son, Max, died in 1821, and, shortly before his own death, Jean Paul became totally blind.

Few writers have evoked such a contradictory response from their contemporaries and from future generations of readers and critics as did Jean Paul. Among his admirers were Adalbert Stifter, Jeremias Gotthelf, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, and Stefan George; his detractors included Goethe, Schiller, Heinrich Heine, and Friedrich Nietzsche. His name is well known, his works hardly read.

Bibliography

Blackall, Eric A. The Novels of the German Romantics. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983. Includes index and bibliography.

Hammer, Stephanie Barbe. Satirizing the Satirist: Critical Dynamics in Swift, Diderot, and Jean Paul. New York: Garland, 1990. Compares Jean Paul to Jonathan Swift and Denis Diderot. Includes bibliographical references.

Minter, Catherine J. The Mind-Body Problem in German Literature, 1770-1830: Wezel, Moritz, and Jean Paul. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Follows the development of mind-body problems in the novels and nonfictional writings of Johann Karl Wezel, Karl Philipp Moritz, and Jean Paul between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.