Johann Peter Hebel - Reception and Legacy

Reception and Legacy

Hebel's admirers include Goethe, Gottfried Keller and Tolstoy. Goethe, who tried to write a poem (the "Schweizerlied", Swiss song) in Alemannic himself, praised the Allemannische Gedichte highly. According to him, Hebel "countrified the universe in the most naive, graceful fashion". But on the question of whether he would translate Hebel's works, Goethe said: "Such a great poet should be only read in the original! One just needs to learn this language!" The Brothers Grimm also admired Hebel, and he met Jacob Grimm in Karlsruhe in 1814.

Hebel's work reflects the links between popular culture and deeper ideas. August Vilmar, for example, praised Hebel's "Vergänglichkeit" (transience), saying that it gives the folk-like foreground a background not found in other poets who wrote folk idylls. Vilmar further emphasises Hebel's description of nature by the river Wiese, the poem "Sonntagsfrühe", and especially the stories of the Schatzkästlein: "In their mood, their deep and genuine feeling, the liveliness of their imagery, the stories are unsurpassable, and worth a whole cart-load of novels". Theodor Heuss praised Hebel's use of the native Alemannic language, not only for parody and vulgarity, but also to make it "a true tool of the poetic craft", and according to Heuss he created a work that "resonates with the durable, the valid, the eternal, the eternally human".

Later authors appreciated Hebel's work too. Hermann Hesse once commented, "As far as I know, in no literary history do we yet read that Hebel was the greatest German novelist, as great as Keller and more confident and purer and mightier in effect than Goethe." Theodor W. Adorno lauded his essay Die Juden as "one of the most beautiful German prose plays in defence of the Jews". In Die gerettete Zunge, Geschichte einer Jugend, Elias Canetti described the influence that Hebel's Schatzkästlein had on him: "I never wrote a book, but that I did not secretly aspire to his style, and I began by writing everything in shorthand, the knowledge of which I owe to him alone." Marcel Reich-Ranicki wrote, "Hebel's stories are among the most beautiful in the German language", and included the "Schatzkästlein" and "Die Rose" in his Kanon Deutscher Literatur. The first was also listed in the ZEIT-Bibliothek der 100 Bücher.

The Johann-Peter-Hebel-Preis was endowed in 1936 in honour of Hebel. The 10,000-euro prize is awarded every two years to writers, translators, essayists, media representatives or scientists from the German district of Baden-Württemberg who write in Alemannic or are connected with Hebel. The prizegiving ceremony takes place in Hausen im Wiesental, which is also home to the Hebelfest every 10 May. The community of Hausen also awards the annual Johann-Peter-Hebel-Plakette to personalities from the Upper Rhine.

The Lörracher Pädagogium was renamed the Hebel-Gymnasium in 1926. Several Gymnasien in Pforzheim and Schwetzingen were named after him. Basic schools, in Essen, Berlin and especially Südbaden bear his name, as do numerous German streets. Monuments to Hebel are found in the Karlsruhe Palace, in Basel, Hausen and in the Hebelpark Lörrach. The Hebelbund Lörrach, Müllheim and the Basler Hebelstiftung are dedicated to his life and work.