Garlieb Helwig Merkel (October 31, 1769 - May 9, 1850) was a German Latvian writer and activist. October 31 is the 304th day of the year (305th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1769 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... May 9 is the 129th day of the year (130th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the game, see: 1850 (board game) Year 1850 (MDCCCL) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Sunday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ...
Merkel was born into the family of a rural priest in Livonia. From the age of 17 he worked as a tutor for upper-class families. In 1790 he joined the circle of Riga intellectuals. Influenced by the ideas he found there, he published the book Die Letten ("Latvians") in 1794, which described in the darkest terms the life of the peasantry and the atrocities of the German landowners and called upom the Russian government to intervene and ameliorate the lot of the Latvian people.
Merkel's book caused a storm of anger among the landowners of Latvia, and Merkel was forced into exile. He moved to Weimar, then in 1800 to Berlin, where was the co-editor with August von Kotzebue of the weekly Der Freimutige (1803-1806). August von Kotzebue August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue (May 3, 1761 in Weimar - March 23, 1819 in Mannheim) was a German dramatist. ...
In 1816 Merkel returned to Latvia. He published the book My Ten Years in Germany (1818) and Images and Characters from My Life (two volumes, 1839-1840). He also wrote the pamphlet Free Latvians and Estonians (1820) which was published in Leipzig.
External links
Raun, Toivo U. (2003). Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Estonian nationalism revisited. Nations and Nationalism 9.1, 129-147.
Merkel, Garlieb. Die Vorzeit Lieflands: Ein Denkmahl des Pfaffen- und Rittergeistes. 2 vols., Berlin: Vossische Buchhandlung, 1807.
The most remarkable achievement in public criticism of serfdom is Merkels pamphlet published in 1796 in Leipzig Die Letten, vorzüglich in Liefland am Ende des philosophischen Jahrhunderts (The Letts, especially in Livonia, at the End of the Philosophical Century), which primarily attacked the Baltic German nobility.
Merkel treated the ancient Livonian and Estonian peoples, or Latvians and Estonians, not only as suppressed peasants, but as nations forced into serfdom whose development had thus been artificially hampered.
The idealised picture of the life of Latvians and Estonians before the crusaders conquered the land, depicted in Merkels literary works, considerably influenced the treatment of history by the ideologues of the Estonian and Latvian national movements during the second half of the 19th century.
Fortunately he had written a comedy which flattered the vanity of the emperor Paul of Russia; he was quickly brought back, presented with an estate from the crown lands of Livonia, and made director of the German theatre in St Petersburg.
He returned to Germany when the emperor Paul died, and again settled in Weimar; he found it as impossible as ever to gain a footing in literary society, and turned to Berlin, where in association with GarliebMerkel (1769-1850) he edited Der Freimutige (1803-1807) and began his Almanach dramatischer Spiele (1803-1820).
Towards the end of 1806 he was once more in Russia, and in the security of his estate in Estonia wrote many satirical articles against Napoleon Bonaparte in his journals Die Biene and Die Grille.
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