Michael Beer (19 August 1800, Berlin – 22 March 1833,

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

) was a German Jewish poet, author and playwright.

Early life

Beer was born to a wealthy Jewish family, the son of salonnière Amalie Beer. His elder brother was the composer

Giacomo Meyerbeer Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jakob Liebmann Meyer Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart and Richard Wa ...

; another brother was the astronomer Wilhelm Beer. In the period 1817–1823 he frequently travelled with family members in Italy, where his brother Meyerbeer was studying. In 1819 Beer was a founder member of the movement '' Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden (Association for Culture and Science of the Jews)'', which attempted to provide an intellectual framework for considering the Jews as a people in their own right, and to validate their secular cultural traditions as being on an equal footing with those of the German people. Beer's co-founders included Eduard Gans, Moses Moser,

Heinrich Heine Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; ; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was an outstanding poet, writer, and literary criticism, literary critic of 19th-century German Romanticism. He is best known outside Germany for his ...

and

Leopold Zunz Leopold Zunz (—''Yom Tov Tzuntz'', —''Lipmann Zunz''; 10 August 1794 – 17 March 1886) was the founder of academic Judaic Studies ('' Wissenschaft des Judentums''), the critical investigation of Jewish literature, hymnology and ritual. Nah ...

Works

The first of Beer's works to be performed was ''Klytemnestra (

Clytemnestra Clytemnestra (, ; , ), in Greek mythology, was the wife of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and the half-sister of Helen of Sparta. In Aeschylus' ''Oresteia'', she murders Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan p ...

)'', (1819), influenced by the

classicism Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for a classical period, classical antiquity in the Western tradition, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. In its purest form, classicism is an aesthe ...

Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...

. His second stage-work ''Die Bräute von Aragonien (The Brides of

Aragon Aragon ( , ; Spanish and ; ) is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces of Spain, ...

)'', was also suggested by Goethe's poetry. Far superior to these early works was the one-act play ''Der Paria (The Pariah''), premiered in Berlin in 1823, and admired by Goethe, which was soon played on stages across Germany. In the play, the pariah Gadhi and his wife Maja choose to die so as to enable their son to live freely. The work can be construed as a cry of pain about the pariah status of Judaism in early nineteenth-century Germany. This is a topic which constantly recurs in Beer's correspondence with Meyerbeer. Beer's 1827 drama ''Struensee'' (based on the life of the German-Danish reformer

Johann Friedrich Struensee Count, Lensgreve Johann Friedrich Struensee (5 August 1737 – 28 April 1772) was a German-Danish physician, philosopher and statesman. He became royal physician to the mentally ill King Christian VII of Denmark and a minister in the Danish gov ...

) was initially banned from production in Prussia, and was premiered in 1828 in Munich, where Beer had briefly settled and where he became a friend of Schelling. Not until 1846 (thirteen years after the author's death) did the relaxation of censorship enable a performance in Berlin; for this King Frederick William IV commissioned Meyerbeer to provide an overture and incidental music. Beer's poetic output includes a series of 'Elegies' written in Italy, a protest at the injustice of criminal sentencing (''Im Gerichtssaal''), and a satirical poem on the paradoxes of extreme religiosity (''Der fromme Rabbi'').

Later life

Beer's personality is known mainly through his correspondence with his family and with the playwright Karl Leberecht Immermann. Beer spent many of his last years in Paris where he was acquainted with

, Ferdinand Hiller and

Felix Mendelssohn Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic music, Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions inc ...

, who was an occasional

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

-partner. Beer's early death was attributed to

neurasthenia Neurasthenia ( and () 'weak') is a term that was first used as early as 1829 for a mechanical weakness of the nerves. It became a major diagnosis in North America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries after neurologist Georg ...

. He is buried with his parents and siblings in the Jewish cemetery in Schönhauser Allee, Berlin.

Michael Beer Foundation

Beer was, in the tradition of his family, generous of his wealth and supported scholars and artists, including the orientalist Salomon Munk. He bequeathed a large fortune, which was turned into a foundation administered by the Berlin Academy of Arts. The annual income of the Michael Beer Foundation was awarded to two young artists, who had to be Jewish; this financed a one-year study period in Italy, of which they had to spend at least eight months in Rome.Kahn (1976), 158

References

;Notes ;Sources * Becker, Heinz & Gudrun, tr. Mark Violette (1989). ''Giacomo Meyerbeer: A Life in Letters''. London: Christopher Helm. * Conway, David (2012). ''Jewry in Music - Entry to the Profession from the Enlightenment to Richard Wagner''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . * Espagne, Michel (1996). ''Les juif allemands de Paris à l'époque de Heine: la translation ashkénase''. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. . * Hiller, Ferdinand, tr. M.E. von Glehn (1874). ''Felix Mendelssohn: Letters and Recollections''. London: Macmillan. *

Jewish Encyclopedia ''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on the ...

(1906).
Beer, Michael
* Kahn, Lothar (1976). 'Michael Beer (1800–1833)', in ''Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 1976'', pp. 149–160 * Sachar, Howard M. (1990). ''The Course of Modern Jewish History''. New York:Vintage. . {{DEFAULTSORT:Beer, Michael 1800 births 1833 deaths Writers from Berlin 19th-century German Jews Jewish poets Neurological disease deaths in Germany Burials at Schönhauser Allee Cemetery, Berlin German male poets German male dramatists and playwrights 19th-century German poets 19th-century German dramatists and playwrights 19th-century German male writers Giacomo Meyerbeer