bavarikon4UPortfolio Emanuel Geibel
This portfolio from the estate of the Munich literary and art historian Hyacinth Holland (1827-1918) contains newspaper articles collected by Holland on Emanuel Geibel (1815-1884).
Geibel was the dominating figure among the "crocodiles", as "pope of poets" he was the embodiment of poetic presumption, as eclecticist he was the most successful poet of his time. At the soirees at the court of the Bavarian king he sat at his right hand; it was only after many attempts that Paul Heyse (1830-1914) was able to convince him not to elude the closer union of poets newly called to Munich and to form his own circle in addition to that of the king. At Geibel's instigation, for example, a drama competition was held in 1856 by King Max II (1811-1864) for the best tragedy, which Paul Heyse finally won. Geibel's literary criticism was also influenced by his translations of French poetry from the age of the Revolution to the his own days, which he published together with his "crocodile" colleague Heinrich Leuthold (1827-1879) in 1862. The "Münchner Dichterbuch", an anthology with contributions by 16 authors of the Munich "crocodiles", which he published in the same year, was no less important from a programmatic point of view.
In addition to copies of Geibel's poems written by others and by Geibel himself, this portfolio provides an overview of his effectiveness, including memoirs by the archaeologist and classical historian Ernst Curtius (1814-1896), memorial pages by the poet Wilhelm Jensen (1837-1911), poems by Paul Heyse, and Munich theatre critiques (e.g. on Geibel's tragedy "Brunhild" of 1857) and an impression of Geibel’s tenth elegy "Escheberg" in Westermanns Monatshefte (1881). Further press cuttings are dedicated to the unveiling of his monument in his native town of Lübeck, to which Geibel had returned as a great celebrated poet and where would die in 1884, report about his poems from the estate or celebrate him as the "singer of the alpine world" on his 100th birthday.