Bodenstedt, Friedrich Martin von (ennobled 1867)

Writer, poet, translator

born: 22.04.1819 in Peine

died: 18.04.1892 in Wiesbaden

Bodenstedt went to Moscow as a private teacher in 1840 and to Tbilisi in 1843. There he was introduced to the languages of the Caucasus region by the Azerbaijani poet Mirzɘ Șɘfi Vazeh (died 1852). He acquired knowledge of Tatar, Armenian and Georgian. He returned to Germany in 1846.

King Maximilian II of Bavaria appointed him to Munich, where Bodenstedt taught as a professor of Slavic studies and Old English from 1854, translated dramas by Old English poets and collaborated on a new edition of Shakespeare (9 vols., Leipzig 1866-1872). In 1864, he co-founded the German Shakespeare Society in Weimar, became director of the court theater in 1867 at the request of Duke Georg II of Sachsen-Meiningen and received the title of nobility in 1867.

He wrote about his stay in the USA in 1879/80 in the book "Vom Atlantischen zum Stillen Ozean" (1892). From 1881 to 1888, he published the "Tägliche Rundschau" in Berlin. Bodenstedt's "Songs of Mirza Schaffy" (1851) went through almost 300 editions after its first publication and was translated into most European languages, many of them even set to music; it was the most popular work of Orientalist poetry of the century.

His translations made Russian writers such as Alexander Pushkin and Ivan Turgenev known first in Germany.

From 1878, Bodenstedt lived as a freelance writer in Wiesbaden at Rheinstraße 78, which is commemorated by a plaque. He found his final resting place in a grave of honor in the North Cemetery. A street bears his name and a monument in the Nero Valley commemorates the poet.