HÖLDERLIN, JOHANN CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH (1770–1843), German poet, was born on the 20th of March 1770, at Lauffen on the Neckar. His mother removing, after a second marriage, to Nürtingen, he began his education at the classical school there. He was destined by his relations for the church, and with this view was later admitted to the seminaries at Denkendorf and Maulbronn. At the age of eighteen he entered as a student of theology the university of Tübingen, where he remained till 1793. He was already the writer of occasional verses, and had begun to sketch his novel Hyperion, when he was introduced in this year to Schiller, and obtained through him the post of tutor to the young son of Charlotte von Kalb. A year later he left this situation to attend Fichte’s lectures, and to be near Schiller in Jena. The latter recognized in the young poet something of his own genius, and encouraged him by publishing some of his early writings in his periodicals Die neue Thalia and Die Horen. In 1796 Hölderlin obtained the post of tutor in the family of the banker J. F. Gontard in Frankfort-on-Main. For Gontard’s beautiful and gifted wife, Susette, the “Diotima” of his Hyperion, he conceived a violent passion; and she became at once his inspiration and his ruin. At the end of two years, during which time the first volume of Hyperion was published (1797), a crisis appears to have occurred in their relations, for the young poet suddenly left Frankfort. In spite of ill-health, he now completed Hyperion, the second volume of which appeared in 1799, and began a tragedy, Der Tod des Empedokles, a fragment of which is published among his works. His friends became alarmed at the alternate depression and nervous irritability from which he suffered, and he was induced to go to Switzerland, as tutor in a family at Hauptwill. There his health improved; and several of his poems, among which are Der blinde Sänger, An die Hoffnung and Dichtermut, were written at this time. In 1801 he returned home to arrange for the publication of a volume of his poems; but, on the failure of this enterprise, he was obliged to accept a tutorship at Bordeaux. “Diotima” died a year later, in June 1802, and the news is supposed to have reached Hölderlin shortly afterwards, for in the following month he suddenly left Bordeaux, and travelled homewards on foot through France, arriving at Nürtingen destitute and insane. Kind treatment gradually alleviated his condition, and in lucid intervals he occupied himself by writing verses and translating Greek plays. Two of these translations—the Antigone and Oedipus rex of Sophocles—appeared in 1804, and several of his short poems were published by Franz K. L. von Seckendorff in his Musenalmanach, 1807 and 1808. In 1804 Hölderlin obtained the sinecure post of librarian to the landgrave Frederick V. of Hesse-Homburg, and went to live in Homburg under the supervision of friends; but two years later becoming irremediably but harmlessly insane, he was taken in the summer of 1807 to Tübingen, where he remained till his death on the 7th of June 1843.
Hölderlin’s writings are the production of a beautiful and sensitive mind; but they are intensely, almost morbidly, subjective, and they lack real human strength. Perhaps his strongest characteristic was his passion for Greece, the result of which was that he almost entirely discarded rhyme in favour of the ancient verse measures. His poems are all short pieces; of his tragedy only a fragment was written. Hyperion, oder der Eremit in Griechenland (1797–1799), is a romance in letters, in which the stormy fervour of the “Sturm und Drang” is combined with a romantic enthusiasm for Greek antiquity. The interest centres not in the story, for the novel has little or none—Hyperion is a young Greek who takes part in the rising of his people against the Turks in 1770—but in its lyric subjectivity and the dithyrambic beauty of its language.
Hölderlin’s lyrics, Lyrische Gedichte, were edited by L. Uhland and G. Schwab in 1826. A complete edition of his works, Sämtliche Werke, with a biography by C. T. Schwab, appeared in 1846; also Dichtungen by K. Köstlin (Tübingen, 1884), and (the best edition) Gesammelte Dichtungen by B. Litzmann (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1897). For biography and criticism, see C. C. T. Litzmann, F. Hölderlins Leben (Berlin, 1890), A. Wilbrandt, Hölderlin (2nd ed., Berlin, 1891), and C. Müller, Friedrich Hölderlin, sein Leben und sein Dichten (Bremen, 1894).
HOLDERNESSE, EARL OF, an English title borne by Sir
John Ramsay and later by the family of Darcy. John Ramsay
(c. 1580–1626), a member of the Scottish family of Ramsay of
Dalhousie, was knighted for his share in rescuing James VI.
from the hands of John Ruthven, earl of Gowrie, in August
1600. In 1606 the king created him Viscount Haddington and
Lord Ramsay of Barns, and in 1621 made him an English peer
as earl of Holdernesse. Ramsay died without surviving issue
in February 1626, when his titles became extinct. In 1644
Charles I. created his nephew, Prince Rupert, earl of Holdernesse,
but when the prince died unmarried in November 1682 the
earldom again became extinct. Conyers Darcy (1599–1689),
who was made earl of Holdernesse in 1682 only a few days after
the death of Rupert, was the son and heir of Conyers Darcy,
Lord Darcy and Conyers (c. 1571–1654), and succeeded his
father in these baronies in March 1654. He was succeeded as 2nd
earl by his only son Conyers (c. 1620–1692), who was member
of parliament for Yorkshire during the reign of Charles II. In
his turn he was succeeded by his grandson Robert (1681–1722).
Robert’s only son, Robert Darcy, 4th earl of Holdernesse (1718–1778),
was a diplomatist and a politician. From 1744 to 1746 he
was ambassador at Venice and from 1749 to 1751 he represented
his country at the Hague. In 1751 he became one of the secretaries
of state, and he remained in office until March 1761, when he
was dismissed by George III. From 1771 to 1776 he acted as
governor to two of the king’s sons, a “solemn phantom” as
Horace Walpole calls him. He left no sons, and all his titles
became extinct except the barony of Conyers, which had been
created by writ in 1509 in favour of his ancestor Sir William
Conyers (d. 1525). This descended to his only daughter Amelia
(1754–1784), the wife of Francis Osborne, afterwards 5th duke of
Leeds, and when the 7th duke of Leeds died in 1859 it passed to
his nephew, Sackville George Lane-Fox (1827–1888), falling
into abeyance on his death. Hornby castle in Yorkshire, now
the principal seat of the dukes of Leeds, came to them through
marriage of the 5th duke with the heiress of the families of
Conyers and of Darcy.
HOLDHEIM, SAMUEL (1806–1860), Jewish rabbi, a leader
of reform in the German Synagogue, was born in Posen in 1806
and died in Berlin in 1860. In 1836 he was appointed rabbi
at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, in 1840 he was transferred to the
rabbinate of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He then became prominent
as an advocate on the one hand of religious freedom (much
trammelled at the time by Prussian state laws) and on the
other of reform within the Jewish community. Various rabbinical
conferences were held, at Brunswick (1844), Frankfort-on-the-Main
(1845) and Breslau (1846). At all of these Holdheim was
a strong supporter of the policy of modifying ritual (especially
with regard to Sabbath observance, marriage laws and liturgical
customs). In 1846 he was chosen Rabbi of the new Berlin
congregation and there exercised considerable influence on the
course of Jewish reform.
See I. H. Ritter in the Jewish Quarterly Review, i. 202. The same authority has written the life of Holdheim in vol. iii. of his Geschichte der jüdischen Reformation (Berlin, 1865). Graetz in his History passes an unfavourable judgment on Holdheim, and there were admittedly grounds for opposition to Holdheim’s attitude. A moderate criticism is contained in Dr D. Philipson’s History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (London, 1906).
HOLGUÍN, a town of the high plateau country in the interior
of Oriente province, Cuba, about 65 m. N.W. of Santiago de
Cuba. Pop. (1907) 7592. The town is near the Marañon and
Jigüé rivers, on a plain from which hills rise on all sides except
the E., on which side it is open to the winds of the plateau.
Holguín was long the principal acclimatization station for
Spanish troops. The oldest public buildings are two churches
built in 1800 and 1809 respectively. Holguín has trade in
cabinet woods, tobacco, Indian corn and cattle products, which
it exports through its port Gibara, about 25 m. N.N.E., with
which it is connected by railway. Holguín was settled about
1720 and became a ciudad (city) in 1751. In the Ten Years’
War of 1868–78 and in the revolution of 1895–98 Holguín was
an insurgent centre.
