Friedricht A.T. Kreyssig

* 5.10.1818 in Gottesgabe bei Mohrungen; ✝ 20.12.1879 in Frankfurt (Main)

Pedagogue, Scholar

Biography

Kreyssig, who came from East Prussia, began by attending teacher training colleges in Jenkau and Königsberg, but did not stay for long in his first teaching position at a primary school.  Between 1838 and 1843 he studied philology and history in Königberg. As this qualified him for higher teaching positions, he gained employment at the new secondary school in Wehlau, from 1845 onwards at the secondary school in Elbing – under Director Wilhelm Hertzberg, the prominent Shakespeare translator. After the latter’s departure in 1858, Kreyssig himself became Director of the school. After a short interlude in Kassel he was appointed in 1871 to direct the Frankfurt Wöhler school and set about uniting the city’s individual polytechnic institutes. However, he did not live to see his reforming efforts come into fruition.

Kreyssig, who must be reckoned in the national-liberal camp, also intervened energetically in the ‘Realschulfrage’ (a debate about the structure of German secondary education) and advocated the type of ‘Realschule’ not least because it was – by comparison with the grammar schools – more decidedly orientated towards modern languages. On top of that, Kreyssig dealt with historical, literary and pedagogical themes in numerous treatises and on the lecture circuit.  Alongside his Geschichte der französischen Nationallitteratur (1851), the Vorlesungen über Shakespeare (1860) in particular enjoyed numerous reprints during the 19th century.

Treatises

• Vorlesungen über Shakespeare. 3 vols. Berlin, 1860.
• Ueber die sittliche und volksthümliche Berechtigung des Shakespeare-Cultus: Festrede, bei der Shakespeare-Feier in Elbing am 23. April 1864. Elbing, 1864.
• Shakspeare-Anthologie. Die schönsten und bedeutsamsten Schilderungen und Weisheitssprüche aus den Dramen des Dichters. Hamburg, 1864.
• Shakespeare-Fragen. Kurze Einführung in das Studium des Dichters. In sechs populären Vorträgen. Leipzig, 1871.

Literature

Primary Literature

• Geschichte der französischen Nationallitteratur. Berlin, 1851.
• Vorlesungen über Goethes Faust. Berlin, 1866.
• Vorlesungen über den deutschen Roman der Gegenwart. Berlin, 1870.
• Über Realismus und Realschulwesen. Berlin, 1871.

Secondary Literature

• N.N.: ‘Friedrich Kreyssig, Nekrolog’, Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, 15 (1880). P. 432.

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