Johann Gottfried Herder

Hi visitor!
I am Johann Gottfried Herder, a German philosopher, writer and preacher (1744-1803, so I'm 200 years older as it is shown on MySpace).
When I was young I have been a student of Johann Georg Hamann and Immanuel Kant, later - in my late days - I wrote the first critic against Kant's "Critic of pure reason", my "Meta-Critic of pure reason", because I was fearing that the powerful being of emotions and mystical, religious feelings may getting absolutely lost in philosophy.
Travelling on board of a ship to France and other countries I was the centre in the middle of the ocean, the whole world with its unthinkable great variety was my horizon. This impression was the birth of a period called "storm and impulse".
I worked as a christian preacher of wide, free and open Humanity - any kind of dogmatism was alien to me!
When I was 21 years old I've joined the order of Freemasonry in Riga (June, 1766). On the one hand I really was not an active Mason in my life. That means I have visited no lodge since I left Riga in the year 1769 (I didn't like the system of Masonry of that time - called Strict Observance). On the other hand there was and is a wide influence of my philosophy of humanity on coming Freemasonry. So my relation to the brotherhood is a little bit strange, because I am important for the development of modern Freemasonry without being an active member of the early years. Mainly I've been a part of an order founded by Adam Weishaupt in Ingolstadt, 1776, which became prohibited soon. After the prohibition of Illuminati I turned back towards Freemasonry (without being in a lodge) and wrote some Masonic rites with my friend Friedrich Ludwig Schroeder.
I've got a title of nobility in the year 1802, but I never cared about much, such a title makes no difference to me.
One of my biggest hobbies was the translation of foreign poems, I am said to be a pioneer of Romanticism. With this work I tried to enable the Germans to become open-minded by the impression of world wide feelings in literature, by hearing the voices of every nation. (Not like the nazi-idiots in the first part of the 20th century.)
Yeah, I've done a lot in my life. The young Johann Wolfgang Goethe for example would be a lawyer and no writer, but he met me in Strasbourg and we've talked a little. Than he started to write his "Faust", which became one of the greatest tragic plays of German literature. Some people are thinking that I am the origin of the figure Faust.
Now I am an old man, physically dead since 1803, but alive on MySpace.
Nice to meet you here!
Yours Johann Gottfried Herder
Pictures by my biographer Bro. Robert Matthees :
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Here is an etching by Bro. Jens Rusch :
More information about Johann Gottfried von Herder:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Gottfried_Herder
(englisch)
http://www.johann-gottfried-herder.de
(german)