Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was born 250 years ago - one of the most famous German poets of all time. In this interview, Oldenburg philosopher Johann Kreuzer talks about the fascinating aspects of Hölderlin's work and his role in the history of philosophy.
Prof Dr Kreuzer, Hölderlin knew Goethe and Schiller and was friends with important philosophers such as Schelling and Hegel. However, many people know one thing above all about Hölderlin's life - namely that the poet spent the second half of his life seemingly insane in a tower room in Tübingen. Is this idea even correct?
Hölderlin had an illness, an experience of psychosis, that is clear. However, the image of the mad poet was shaped above all by the poet and writer Wilhelm Waiblinger, who visited Hölderlin from 1822 and went for walks with him. Previously, in 1805, a doctor from Nürtingen had written in an expert opinion that Hölderlin's "madness had turned into frenzy". But you have to know this: We are in the period after the French Revolution. There were also circles in Württemberg that were thinking about how the authoritarian system of rule could be changed. Hölderlin was friends with these people, such as Isaac Sinclair. He had attended a dinner with him in June 1804, at which an informer was present. Sinclair was convicted in a treason trial. The Nürtingen doctor's expert opinion ultimately protected Hölderlin from political persecution.
Hölderlin was admitted to Tübingen University Hospital at the age of 36 and was discharged in 1807 with a certificate stating that he still had two to three years to live.
However, he then lived for another 37 years in the building of master carpenter Zimmer on the Neckar in Tübingen. Zimmer had read Hölderlin's epistolary novel "Hyperion". The first volume of the novel was published in 1797, the second volume in 1799. Zimmer was fascinated by it and wanted to help Hölderlin. After Zimmer's death, his daughter Charlotte took over his care. Hölderlin had his peace and quiet in his tower room, a protected environment. There were other people who had rooms there, and Hölderlin played cards or smoked a pipe with them. But he was nervous! This can be seen from the fact that the master carpenter Zimmer often sent Hölderlin's mother invoices for shoe soles in the early years. The poet must have walked up and down the corridor a lot.
How did it come about that you, as a philosopher, became interested in the poet Hölderlin?
Hölderlin not only wrote poetry and the famous novel "Hyperion", but also theoretical texts, mostly fragments. The subject of my dissertation was the two most important of these theoretical fragments. In them, he developed an understanding of what justifies and necessitates poetic language, what language can and should achieve. These are reflections on the theory of consciousness, history and the philosophy of language. They attracted me.
What role does Hölderlin play in the history of philosophy?
Hölderlin is one of the central figures in the formative phase of German idealism - especially in the discussion around 1800 following the revolution in philosophical thought initiated by Immanuel Kant. A central point in Kant's main work "Critique of Pure Reason" is: "That: I think must be able to accompany all my ideas." This means that self-consciousness is to be thought of as a self-relationship that knows itself. This is the basic structure for what Hegel later called "spirit" - in other words, the instance that recognises itself as a relationship to itself in the relationship to others and is thus real. This is what distinguishes consciousness from what it relates to. My thesis, and I would defend it fiercely, is that it was originally Hölderlin's original insights on the basis of which Hegel developed his thoughts. Hölderlin was already in the college of the Jena philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte in the winter semester of 1794/95. In response to what Fichte presented for discussion there, he made notes on a flyleaf torn out of a book, which can be regarded as something like the birth certificate of speculative idealism. However, this leaf was only published in 1961 under the title "Urtheil und Seyn". By this time, however, Hölderlin's importance in the development of German Idealism was clear.
What do you find special about Hölderlin's poems?
I am fascinated above all by the reality of language. It has to be said that many of the important poems are only fragments. But there is, for example, the elegy "Brot und Wein" (Bread and Wine), of which we have a complete fair copy. The first verse begins like this: "All around, the city rests; the illuminated alley becomes quiet/ And, adorned with torches, the carriages rush away/..." The poet Clemens Brentano has already praised the entire first verse in the highest terms, saying it is an unrivalled standard of poetic language. Another quote already impressed me as a student. I read it in a programme booklet for a production of Hölderlin's "The Death of Empedocles" at the Berlin Schaubühne: "But soon, like a dog, my voice will be heard in the lanes of the gardens ...". I read that at the time and thought: I understood that. And then I asked myself: What did I understand? That's how it started.
And what went through your mind at the time?
Hölderlin doesn't mention "I see this and that". Rather, the verses share sub-layers of language in a way that perhaps only music can do. The Hölderlin sound is unmistakable. In the text published in 1961, which I mentioned above, it is formulated in such a way that something "communicates itself in language". This has a double meaning, because for Hölderlin "to communicate" does not only mean to communicate, but also that something is shared and thus becomes communicable.
What does this mean in concrete terms?
Every sentence takes the form of a judgement - in other words, it 'shares' what is originally 'one' as "sensual certainty", as Hegel calls it. You cannot say this One yourself, because the words in sentences always make judgements. But what eludes words can be communicated in the form with which words are structured in language. In Hölderlin's song "Friedensfeier", for example, it says that "when silence returns, there is also a language". Language is not reduced to propositional content - i.e. 'meanings' that we 'communicate'. Rather, it also has a sensual, gestural and musical dimension. Capturing this dimension in linguistic form - that is the fascinating thing about Hölderlin. That is what characterises his language. Incidentally, it is not decisive whether a text or poem is finished. What matters is the act of finding the language.
Why is Hölderlin still relevant today?
Hölderlin is above all a discovery of the 20th century. This can be seen in two great authors of the last century: the philosopher Martin Heidegger once said that the aim of his work was "to make Hölderlin's words heard". In an interview with the news magazine "Spiegel", he even called Hölderlin the "poet who points to the future". But for Heidegger's antipodean, Theodor W. Adorno, today's philosophy is also about doing justice to what, as he puts it, is "philosophically ahead of philosophy in Hölderlin's late hymns". This ties in with the linguistic reality that he achieves. It is no less important at the beginning of the 21st century than it was before. The Russian writer Olga Martynova recently wrote in an essay in the FAZ: 'No matter where you stand politically and on which continent you move - wherever there is talk of poetry, Hölderlin is involved. Hölderlin has been translated into 83 languages - so there is an enormous resonance.
So should we say to young people: read Hölderlin - there's more to it than just the words?
Yes, I think that works. When we look at what language is reduced to in the age of social media, my experience is that younger people in particular have a strong sensory sensitivity. It's not about a plaster-heavy Hölderlin standing on some kind of pedestal. You have to deal with his texts. And that also works - not least because they have an inner closeness to music, to musical formations. This opens up an approach that can still inspire young people for Hölderlin today.
Interview: Constanze Böttcher
