Rabener, Gottlieb Wilhelm

Born into a noble family. He studied law and philosophy at the University of Leipzig.

He served as auditor and tax inspector in Leipzig and Dresden .

He belonged to a group of writers and poets closely associated with Gellert , was friends with poets of the literary circle of Johann Christoph Gottshed (Kramer, Gertner, Ebert , Schlegel , partly Klopstock ) and placed their works in the editions of Neue Beiträge zum Vergn undügen verstan , edited by Gertner " Or " Bremer Beiträge. "

G. Rabener is the author of satirical works of the most diverse form: short novels, short stories, poems, letters, meritorious speeches, wills, obituaries, descriptions of fantastic dreams, fairy tales, proverbs. Contemporaries sometimes called G. Rabener “German Swift ”, a vivid representative of the epistolary genre in German literature.

G. Rabener was not deprived of the satirical talent that even Goethe recognized; he was familiar with the work of Cervantes , Holberg , Swift , but the circle of his observations, according to the authors of the ESBE, is not wide, he did not touch many questions at all, he did not touch on politics and public life, partly because of fear of Saxon censorship.

The satirists were particularly successful in exposing ignorance , pedantry, arrogant arrogance and generally human stupidity ; his satires are a portrait gallery of incorrigible fools and nonentities of various kinds, sometimes very skilfully ridiculed.

G. Rabener never brought out certain persons, trying to expose vices , not vicious people; in his letters to friends ("Freundschaftliche Briefe", printed after his death, 1772) he was bolder and more frank.

Influenced on Russian satirical magazines of the Catherine’s time; Fonvizinsky "Letter to Starodum from the grandfather of the landlord Durykin" and "Letter from the university professor to Starodum" - an alteration into Russian customs of two articles by G. Rabener: "Schreiben eines vom Adel an einen Professor" and "Antwort des Professoren" .

His works were translated into French , English , Swedish and Danish .

• Sammlung Satyrischer Schriften (Leipzig, 1751–55)
• Sämmtliche Schriften ( Stuttgart , 1840).

• Rabener, Gottlieb-Wilhelm // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener (German) .