German
For Seume, equality and freedom of movement were not just ideals, but personal issues. At the turn of the 1700s and 1800s, the value of a man depended - to quote Seume - "on church records, the weight of his father's purse and the orders of the court marshal." Seume's own childhood family had lost much of their property as a result of the famine and price rises that hit Germany in the 1770s. When his father, a tenant farmer and innkeeper, died in 1776, the 13-year-old Johann Gottfried's future was at the mercy of his benefactors. The boy had shown talent at the village school and was offered a patronage by Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenthal, who paid for Seume's studies at Leipzig University on condition that he chose theology as his subject. Theology did not suit a young man of enlightened ideas, who detested the greed and arbitrariness of the church above all else. In 1781, Seume, aged 21, put aside his books and set off on a walk to Paris. Paradoxically, his quest for freedom led to the loss of freedom when he was captured by a Hessian recruiting force along the road - unofficial, destitute and untitled men were a desirable and valuable bargaining chip for the Prince of Hesse-Kassel, who sold 17 000 of his subjects to the English. The English needed reinforcements for the war against the colonies across the sea, known in the history books as the American War of Independence, and Seume was one of the victims of human trafficking sent by cargo ship to Canada to fight the colonial army. Fortunately, the war was over before the ship reached Halifax harbour. After the American episode, Seume reluctantly survived in a Hessian, later Prussian, camp, escaped the army twice and was sentenced to running the gauntlet - a punishment from which very few survived. But Seume was saved at the last moment: he was pardoned because he was giving language lessons to the daughter of a major-general who did not want to lose her tutor.
Seume then taught languages for a time in Leipzig, and became tutor to count von Igelström, whom, in 1792, he accompanied to Warsaw. There he became secretary to General von Igelström, and, as a Russian officer, experienced the terrors of the Polish insurrection (Kościuszko Uprising). In 1796 he returned to Leipzig and entered the employment of the publisher Göschen.
In December 1801, he quit his job as an editor and set out on his famous nine months' walk to Sicily, described in his Spaziergang nach Syrakus (1803). Some years later he visited the Baltic countries, Russia, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, a journey which he describes in his travel journal Mein Sommer im Jahr 1805. His health now began to fail, and he died on 13 June 1810, in Teplitz, nowadays Teplice, Czech Republic
In 1950 he returned to Germany and worked at the Odenwaldschule and Bernsteinschule. He died in Suttgart in 1978.
As an author he published his memories in Gefilte Fisch. Eine Jugend in Königsberg in 1976.
Günter Karl Bose, born in 1951 in Debstedt, Geestland, studied German literature and Political science in Freiburg / Breisgau. He was a publisher in Berlin (Brinkmann & Bose) from 1980 to 1995 and Professor of Typography and Head of the Institute of Book Art at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig from 1993 to 2018. He has been working as a designer since the early 1980s.
His graphic works have been shown in exhibitions in Germany and abroad and can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Kunstbibliothek Berlin, the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, the Folkwang Museum Essen and the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt a. M. He has written numerous media and cultural studies.
His most recent book of essays are Elementum. Über Typografie, Bücher und Buchstaben, .. als geborener Märker und Kind vom Lande”. Richard Dehmel, Kremmen und die Mark [1863-1920], Der Stadtpark Schöneberg as well as Franz Kafka im Ostseebad Müritz [1923].
Born in 1948, Karl Schlögel studied Philosophy, Sociology and East European History in West-Berlin. Professor emeritus of East European History at European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder).
Earlier published works are Moskau lesen (1984) and Terror und Traum. Moskau 1937 (2008). His most recent publication in German is American Matrix (2023). In English: Moscow 1937 (Polity Press 2012), The Scent of Empires. Chanel No 5 and Red Moscow (Polity Press 2021), Ukraine. A Nation on the Borderland (Reaktion Books 2022) and The Soviet Century. Archeology of al Lost World (2023).
Among his awards are the Lessing-Preis der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg (2005), Leipziger Buchpreis zur Europäischen Verständigung (2009), Samuel-Bogumil-Linde-Preis (2010, together with Adam Krzemiński), Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse (2018) and Gerda Henkel Preis (2024).
Ulrich Freiherr von Schlippenbach was born in Kurzeme (Courland) on May 7, 1774. He came from the nobility, the son of a captain in the Prussian army. From 1790 Ulrich von Schlippenbach studied law and verbal sciences at the Universities of Königsberg and Leipzig.
When the Kosciuszko Uprising began in 1794, Ulrich von Schlippenbach enlisted in the Russian Imperial Army and remained there subsequently as a member of the St. Petersburg Guard, only to resign after the death of Catherine II.
Returning to Courland, Ulrich Hermann Freiherr von Schlippenbach served as a land notary of the district of Pilten from 1799 to 1807, then from 1807 to 1818 as Landrat of Pilten, and after the annexation of the Pilten district to Courland, in 1818, he was a counselor of the Courland Oberhofgericht, and from 1822 on also the chairman of the Courland Committee, which drafted a set of local laws for the provinces of the Baltic States. He owned the estates of Ulmalen and Jamaiken.
On von Schlippenbach's initiative, the Gesellschaft für Literatur und Kunst was founded in 1816 in Mitau (Jelgava).
Schlippenbach died on March 20, 1826, in the city of Mitau.