Friedrich Martin Bodenstedt

* 22.04.1819 in Peine; ✝ 18.04.1892 in Wiesbaden

Writer

Biography

The son of a brewer in Peine near Hannover, he was born on 22nd April 1819.  He was to begin with education by a family tutor, and after attending a commercial college in Brunswick he became an apprentice merchant. Later he studied history and foreign languages at the University of Göttingen and was family tutor in the home of Duke Gallitzin in Moscow between 1840 and 1843. After a sojourn in Tblisi as grammar-school teacher for Latin and French he returned to Germany in 1845 and was appointed Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at Munich in 1854. In 1867he took over the direction of the Court Theatre and the Court ensemble in Meiningen, posts accompanied by his elevation to the nobility. He was active in this position until 1874 and lived from 1878 onwards in Wiesbaden. Between 1881 and 1888 he was the editor of the Berlin newspaper Tägliche Rundschau. He died on the 18th April 1892 in Wiesbaden.

Bodenstedt’s first work Die Lieder des Mirza Schaffy (1851) was a great success, being reprinted 264 times by 1917.  In addition he was a prominent translator of Persian poets and Russian authors (inter alia Puschkin, Raskow, Turgenew).  He also made a name for himself as Shakespeare critic and translator.  Along with translations of the plays (1871), his translation of the sonnets (1862) won great acclaim.

Shakespeare Translations

• Sonette (1862)
• King Lear (1865)
• Die Kunst, eine böse Sieben zu zähmen (1865)
• Othello, der Mohr von Venedig (1867)
• Macbeth (1867)
• Romeo und Julia (1868)
• Der Kaufmann von Venedig (1868)
• Ein Sommernachtstraum (1869)
• Hamlet, Prinz von Dänemark (1870)
• Der Sturm (1870)
• Maß für Maß (1871)

Other Translations

• Michaïl Lermontoff's Poetischer Nachlass. 2 Bde. Berlin, 1852.
• Alexander Puschkin's Poetische Werke. 3 Bde. Berlin, 1854-1855.

Treatises

• Shakespeares Zeitgenossen. 3 vols. Berlin, 1858-60.
• William Shakespeare. Ein Rückblick auf sein Leben und Schaffen. Leipzig, 1871.
• Shakespeares Frauencharaktere. Berlin, 1875.

Literature

Primary Literature

• William Shakespeare's Sonette, in deutscher Nachbildung. Berlin, 1862.
• William Shakespeare’s Dramatische Werke. Ed. Friedrich Bodenstedt. 38 vols. Leipzig, 1867-71.
• A Lover's Complaint. Deutsche Übersetzungen von 1787 bis 1894. Ed. Christa Jansohn. Berlin, 1993.

Secondary Literature

• McClain, William H.: „Friedrich von Bodenstedt“. In: James Hardin und Siegfried Mews (eds.): Nineteenth-Century German Writers, 1841-1900. Detroit, MI, 1993. Pp. 17-24.
• Meyer, Alexander: „Friedrich von Bodenstedt, Nekrolog“, Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, 28 (1893). Pp. 337-341.
• Rappich, Horst: „Bemerkungen über I. S. Turgenevs und F. Bodenstedts Beziehungen zu Shakespeare und zur 'Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft'“, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 11 (1963). Pp. 386-393.
• Reichert, Klaus: „Deutschland ist nicht Hamlet: Bemerkungen zur Hamlet-Übersetzung von Friedrich Bodenstedt“, in: Reinhold Grimm et al. (ed.): Der deutsche Shakespeare. Basel, 1965. Pp. 95-101.

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