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SCHUMACHER, HEINRICH CHRISTIAN. 



SCHWANTHALER, LUDWIG MICHAEL. 



344 



Wieland as his model, and in which he caught the charming style and 

 versification of that master. 



Had he prosecuted the career thus begun at the age of eighteen, he 

 would probably have become one of the most popular as well as the 

 most gifted of German poets. Circumstances however converted him 

 into a visionary enthusiast. He conceived a deep attachment for an 

 amiable and accomplished girl, named Cecilia, the daughter of one 

 of the professors; and her death, within a year or two afterwards, 

 left him inconsolable. He resolved to immortalise his passion and her 

 name and perfections : accordingly, with only an interval during 

 which he served as a volunteer in the war of 1813-14, he applied him- 

 self to the composition of ' Cecilia,' a romantic poem in twenty cantos, 

 completed by him in December 1815. Unfortunately the intensity of 

 his own feelings overpowered his judgment; for the plan of the work 

 is so complex, and so wild and improbable, that the fancy and genius 

 displayed in it have been wasted upon a subject which scarcely any 

 poetical power could invest with interest for the public. It is rich in 

 striking scenes and incidents, in beautiful details, in graceful imagery, 

 in harmonious versification; but it is wanting in that which fixes 

 attention, and which is especially required in a work of such length. 

 It is impossible not to admire the talent which it displays, and it is 

 equally impossible not to regret that it should have been so ill 

 applied. 



His subsequent romantic poem, 'Dio Bezauberte Rose,' or ' Enchanted 

 Rose,' in three cantos, in regular ottava rima, which obtained the prize 

 offered by the publishers of the ' Urania ' for the best production of 

 the kind, and first published in that pocket-book, 1818, is the produc- 

 tion by which he will continue to be known. It has passed through 

 several editions, and may now be considered a standard work of its 

 class in German literature. The poet himself however did not live to 

 eujoy the honour it conferred upon his name; for after having been 

 long in a gradually declining state, he died at his father's house at 

 Celle, June 22nd 1817, the victim of consumption, but also of morbid 

 and overstraiued feeling. A collection of his poems and literary 

 remains was published by his friend and instructor Bouterwek, in 

 4 vols. 8vo. 



SCHUMACHER, HEINRICH CHRISTIAN, was born on Sep- 

 tember 3, 1780, at Bramstedt in Holstein. He distinguished himself 

 by his mathematical proficiency and by his predilection for astronomy. 

 At the age of thirty he was created professor-extraordinary of astro- 

 nomy in the University of Copenhagen, whence he was called in 1813 

 to be director of the observatory at Mannheim, returning to Copenhagen 

 in 1815 as professor of astronomy and director of the observatory 

 there. In 1817 he was employed by the Danish government to 

 measure the degrees of longitude from Copenhagen to the west coast 

 of Jutland, and those of latitude from Skagen, the northern cape of 

 Jutland, to Lauenburg, on the frontiers of Hanover ; afterwards con- 

 tinued through Hanover by Gauss. In 1821 he received from the 

 Royal Scientific Society of Copenhagen the direction of the survey and 

 mapping of Holstein and Lauenburg ; and in that year the king caused 

 a small but excellently furnished observatory to be built for him at 

 Altona, where he resided till his death. In 1824, in conjunction with 

 the English Board of Longitude, he fixed the measure of differences 

 between the observatories of Greenwich and Altona, for which pur- 

 pose the English admiralty furnished a steam-vessel, provided with 

 twenty eight English and eight Danish chronometers. In 1830 he was 

 employed in ascertaining the length of the seconds' pendulum, which 

 had been made the base of the Danish scale of measures. In 1813 he 

 commenced the publication of the ' Astronomische Nachrichten,' a 

 work that is still continued, and is the only one that serves as a 

 vehicle for the communication of opinions and facts from the astro- 

 nomers of all the world, and contains a number of highly valuable 

 essays. From 1820 to 1829 he published his 'Astronomische Hiilfs- 

 tafeln,' a good example of a carefully calculated ephemeris. In 1836 

 in conjunction with Bessel he undertook the editing of the 'Astrono- 

 mischen Jahrbuchs.' He was a diligent and correct observer; in 

 1822 he announced the exact distances of Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and 

 Saturn from the earth ; and the phenomena connected with Encke's 

 planet Astrcea attracted much of his attention in the latter part of his 

 life. He died at Altona on December 28, 1850. Schumacher united 

 great talents with much modesty; he enjoyed the confidence of his 

 sovereign, which he repaid by his diligent services, and he uniformly 

 treated his fellow labourers with the greatest courtesy, and imparted 

 his assistance with unostentatious liberality. 



SCHUMANN, ROBERT, a composer who has a great reputation in 

 Germany, but whose works are little known in this country. He was 

 bom about the year 1815, and spent a retired and uneventful life, 

 chiefly at Leipzig, immersed in the study and practice of his art. His 

 excepsive application disordered his mind ; and when he died, July 

 29, 1856, he had been several years the inmate of a lunatic asylum. 

 He married Clara Wieck, the most celebrated female pianist of the 

 day, who, with several children, survives him. Schumann was un- 

 doubtedly a man of great genius ; but he has injured his reputation 

 with his contemporaries by his endeavours to found a musical school, 

 or sect, professing to disregard the authority of the older masters 

 and to establish a new system of musical composition. As music has 

 always been in a progressive state, posterity may perhaps do him 

 justice by adopting his innovations of stylo. His only work of ma-- 



nitude which has been publicly performed in England is a cantata, 

 'Paradise and the Peri,' the words of which are a translation of 

 Moore's poem. It was produced at one of the Philharmonic Society's 

 concerts last season, when the principal part was sung by Madame 

 Goldschmidt (Jenny Lind), and, though our critics were at variance 

 respecting its merits, yet it was generally regarded as a work of no 

 ordinary power and beauty. 



SCHWANTHALER, LUDWIG MICHAEL, one of the most 

 eminent of modern German sculptors, was born at Munich on the 

 26th of August 1802. For some generations his ancestors had been 

 sculptors in the Tyrol ; his father, Franz Schwanthaler, was settled 

 in Munich, where he acquired a very respectable standing as a monu- 

 mental sculptor. Ludwig received a good classical and general educa- 

 tion ; and being intended to pursue the family calling was early 

 initiated into the arts of drawing and modelling, and the use of the 

 chisel in his father's studio. At the Munich Academy of the Fine 

 Arts he was regarded with coldness if not dislike on account of his 

 free notions in art by Von Langer the director, who is said to have 

 urged his friends to devote him to some other profession. The death 

 of his father in 1821, by rendering it necessary that he should conduct 

 the business for the maintenance of the family, fixed his destiny as 

 a sculptor. The first commission which opened to him a prospect 

 of making himself known was one from the King Maximilian Joseph in 

 1824, to design a centre ornament in silver for the table. It was to 

 be of very large size, and the figures in relief, each about six inches 

 in height, were to represent the procession of the gods of Olympus 

 to the palace of Jupiter. So much as was executed is described as 

 being very beautiful, but the death of Maximilian (October 1825) 

 prevented its completion. 



Schwanthaler now proceeded to Rome, where he remained a year, 

 deriving great benefit from the advice and friendship of Thonvaldscn. 

 He carried back with him to Munich two elegant bassi-rilievi of the 

 ' Birth of Venus ' and ' Cupid and Psyche,' and through the influence 

 of Cornelius he was employed to execute two extensive Homeric 

 bassi-rilievi friezes for the Glyptothek, then in course of construction. 

 Among other works which about this time he produced were a statue 

 of Shakspere for the theatre, and a grand basso-rilievo frieze, extend- 

 ing in all to a length of 150 feet, of the ' Apotheosis of Bacchus ' for 

 the dining-room of the palace of Duke Maximilian. In 1832 he again 

 went by desire of King Ludwig to Rome, to complete Rauch's design 

 for the south pediment of the Walhalla as well as to execute various 

 other royal commissions for the new palace. 



From the period of his return in 1833 his life was one of unceasing 

 activity. The admitted head of the sculptors of Munich, the pro- 

 fessor of sculpture (from 1835) in the Academy there, and the 

 favourite of the art-loving King Ludwig, whose constant guide and 

 assistant he was in planning and working-out the sculpturesque 

 decorations of his vast architectural undertakings, Schwanthaler 

 produced in rapid succession an astonishing number of works of 

 unusual magnitude and grandeur, and was the centre of a crowd of 

 able and devoted scholars and assistants. During the few remaining 

 years of his life, all spent in ill-health, he executed a succession of 

 great works, such as would seem more than enough to have tasked 

 the energy and industry of the most indefatigable and laborious work- 

 man whose days had been extended to the longest span, and who had 

 been blessed with the most robust health. 



We can name but some of his more prominent works. The southern 

 pediment of the Walhalla at Ratisbon, filled with a design intended to 

 typify the liberation of Germany from the French, was only in part by 

 him ; but the design in the northern pediment, a later work, was 

 wholly by himself, and was of a much higher order of merit. It is 

 called the ' Hermann-Schlacht,' or ' Battle of Arminius/ and is one of 

 the finest renderings of old Teutonic story which has ever been realised 

 by the sculptor's chisel. He also executed some of the statues in the 

 Walhalla, and the fourteen caryatides representing the Walkyren of 

 the Teutonic mythology. For Ludwig's New Palace (Neue Konigsbau), 

 Schwanthaler not only executed several friezes and statues, but made 

 the cartoons for numerous pictures which were painted in encaustic 

 by Hiltensperger, Streidel, and others. Among these are a series of 

 twenty-four compositions from ^Eschylus, twenty-one from Sophocles, 

 twenty-seven from Aristophanes, a series from the tales of the Argo- 

 nauts, another from the 'Works and Days' and the ' Shield of Hercules ' 

 of Hesiod. His most famous piece of sculpture here is however the 

 ' Myth of Aphrodite,' but the story of Venus was never more coldly 

 told. For the Fest-Saalbau ho designed the two lions, and the eight 

 figures representing the eight circles of Bavaria, on the entablature ; 

 the frieze in relief of the ' Crusade of Barbarossa ' (' Der Kreuzzug des 

 Kaisers Friedrich Barbarossa '), placed above the paintings by Schnorr 

 [ScHNORR, JULIUS VON KAROLSFELD], one of his best works ; the bassi- 

 rilievi of Greek Dancers in the Ball-Room ; and the twelve colossal 

 gilt bronze statues of the princes of the House of Wittelsbach, in the 

 Throne-Room, &c. For the fagade of the Pinakothek he executed 

 statues of twenty-five of the greatest painters. For the pediment of 

 the New" Art Exhibition Gallery (Neue Kunstanstellungs-Gebaiide) he 

 executed a representation of the Arts placing themselves xinder the 

 protection of Bavaria. For the magnificent Ludwigs Kircho he 

 modelled statues of Christ and the four Evangelists, which are placed 

 in a row of niches over the porch, and for the ends of the gable two 



