Who doesn't know it? The friendly greeting "My dear friend and engraver," which has become a household name over the 200 years of its existence.
However, its author, Friedrich Rückert, is probably less well known. Linguistic genius, who is considered the founder of German Oriental Studies went down in history. For 14 years he held a professorship for Oriental Languages and Literatures at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen.
Born in Schweinfurt, the son of a tax official (employee of a state or ecclesiastical financial administration in the 18th century) initially studied law, philology and aesthetics in Würzburg and Heidelberg (1805-1809) before qualifying as a professor in Jena in 1811.
His first fame as poet He achieved this in 1814 with his "Armored Sonnets," which he wrote against the Napoleonic occupation. During a stay in Rome in 1817, he met, among others, the German illustrator and engraver Carl Barth, with whom a good friendship developed. The two maintained a lively correspondence, in which Rückert, in his address, provided the source of the now famous quote: “My dear friend and engraver”.
After unsettled years of travel, during which he learned Persian, Turkish and Arabic in Vienna in 1818/1819, he went to Coburg as a private scholar in 1820.
In the autumn of 1826 he took up a professorship for Oriental Languages and Literatures in Erlangen and developed a lively teaching career. From the summer of 1827, he offered courses in Sanskrit, which was then rarely taught. In 1839, he taught Tamil to prospective missionaries in South India.
In 1841, he accepted a position at the University of Berlin, which he held successfully until 1848. Afterward, he retired to his home in Neuses, where he owned an estate. Friedrich Rückert dominated 44 languages, including such unusual ones as the little-known Turkic language Chagatai or a Dravidian (South Asian) language such as Malayalam.
It is said that Friedrich Rückert lived a mostly secluded life with his large family. In 1833, his six children contracted scarlet fever. His favorite daughter, Luise, died of the disease at the age of three, as did his five-year-old son, Ernst.
In 1872, he published "Kindertodtenlieder," a collection of over 400 poems he wrote during his period of mourning in 1833/1834. Six of them were set to music by the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). The most famous conductor of his time had eleven siblings, six of whom died in childhood. He also lost his five-year-old daughter Anna in 1907.
Traces of Friedrich Rückert in Erlangen:
- Rückertstraße is dedicated to him
- The Rückert fountain in the castle garden and the Friedrich-Rückert-Schule bear his name
- Memorial plaque Southern City Wall Street 28