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Home , Martin Opitz, Quirinus Kuhlmann

SALVATION THROUGH PHILOLOGY: THE POETICAL MESSIANISM OF (1651-1689)

WILHELM SCHMIDT-BIGGEMANN

I. Outlines qf Kuhlmann's Messianic Career

1. Erudite and Juvenile Melancholy Sometimes, the most radical figures in history are the most char­ acteristic ones as well. This seems to be the case with Quirinus Kuhlmann, a seventeenth century philologist, mystic, and philoso­ pher who, in his lifetime, had a very particular reputation as a mil­ lenarian mystic and poet between and Moscow. 1 Quirinus Kuhlmann was born in Breslau on February 26th 1651. His par­ ents were merchands; his father died only two or three years after Quirinus' birth, his mother survived her son more than 30 years. In the first years of his life, young Quirinus suffered from a speech impediment, he was-as he described it later-often mocked for this desease. This may be one of the reasons why he begun to study very early in the libraries of his native town. Seventeenth century Breslau in was one of the most cultivated towns in the for­ mer Reich; Silesia was famous for the erudite poetry of , , Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau and Daniel Casper von Lohenstein; they formed the "Schlesische Dichterschule". The Breslau educational institutions were excellent, there were two Lutheran gymnasia, the Elisabeth and the Magdalena school. The Lutheran

1 For Kuhlmann cf. esp.: Walter Dietze: Q_uirinus Kuhlmann. Ketzer und Poet. Versuch einer monographischen Darstellung von Leben und Werk. Berlin 1963. Neue Beitrage zur Literaturwissenschaft, vol. I 7. L. Parker and A.A. Forster: "Quirinus Kuhlmann and the Poetry of St. John of the Cross". Bulletin for Hispanic Studies XXV, 1958, pp. 1-23. Claus Victor Bock: Qyirinus Kuhlmann. Ein Beitrag zur Charakteristik des Ekstatikers. Bern 1957 (Basler Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur, Heft 18). Heinrich Erk: Qffenbarung und heilige Sprache im Kuhlpsalter Qyirinus Kuhlmanns. Diss. (Masch.) Gi:ittingen 1953. The outstanding recent interpretation, including critical remarks on the secondary sources of Kuhlmann is the essay of Sibylle Rusterholz: "Klarlichte Dunkelheiten. Quirinus Kuhlmanns 62. Kiihlpsalm". In: Martin Bircher und Alois M. Haas (eds.): Deutsche Barockfyrik. Gedichtinterpretationen von Spee bis Haller. Bern and Munique 1973, pp. 225-264. 260 WILHELM SCHMIDT-BIGGEMANN erudite public schools competed with a Jesuit gymnasium. Erudite and pious theater and poetry, both Latin and German, were per­ formed regularly, declamations and rhetoric displays were common on every school term. The fame of these performances and their poetical results was so wide-spread, that Gianbattista Vico reported in his Scienzia Nuova, some 80 years later, that Silesia's peasants were born poets. 2 Quirinus did not grow up in a wealthy situation; since his mother was a widow, he needed a scholarship for his education at school. In 1661 he indeed received a stipend for the "Ratsgymnasium bei Maria Magdalena". When he left this Gymnasium nine years later he had become a famous man, widely known for his erudition and his vers. In these years he wrote a song of praise to the German language3-this item of the peculiar commission of the German lan­ guage will be of some importance in his later poetical representa­ tion of his own revelations. In 16 71, he began his studies at the , then 20 years of age, again supported by a stipend donated by the Breslau burgher Georg Schabel. After Kuhlmann's messianic conversions, Schabel became one of Kuhlmann's closest disciples. In his first year at Jena Kuhlman began to study jurisprudence. It was in Jena, too, that Quirinus systematically began his career as a poet and poly­ math. This intensive life as an erudite poet did not leave much time for a serious study of jurisprudence. Instead of a juridic dissertation he finished two collections of poems: "Himmlische Liebesktisse", a col­ lection of poems in the spirit of the biblical Song of Songs, and an anthology entitled "Sonnenblumen", which embodied poems on the particular commitment of the German language4 and a reedition of

2 Vico: La Scuienza nuova secondo l'edi;:,ione de! MDCCXllV. (Introduzione e note di Paolo Rossi) Milano 1982, p. 332: Abbiam veduto i primi scrittori nelle novelle lingue d'Europa essere stati verseggiatori; e nella Silesia, provincia quasi tutta di contadino, nascon poeti. Libro secondo. Della sapienza poetica II Della Logica Poetica, 5. Corollari d'intomo all' origini della locuzion poetica, degli episodi, de! tomo, de! numero, de! canto e de! verso. Corresponds 3d ed. No. 4 71. 3 Dietze, p. 30. 4 Dietze, pp. 71 f. Der Teutsche hat noch mehr / als dort