![]() Here he worked until 1775 on the autobiographical dialogue “Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques”, which he then tried to deposit at the altar of Notre Dame, because he feared fresh persecution, but he was denied entry. From 1768, he lived in France again, sometimes under the alias Jean-Joseph Renou, and he even returned to Paris from 1770 where he was tolerated by the authorities owing to his growing fame. In 1766, he fled to England where he began to write his radically honest autobiography “Confessions”. Before he was expelled by Berne, he spent autumn 1765 on St. Peter’s Island in Lake Biel, studying its flora. Rousseau fled to Yverdon and then to Môtiers, where Frederick the Great granted him asylum. “Émile” was publicly burned in both Paris and Geneva while Geneva also set ablaze the “Contrat social” and issued an arrest warrant for the godless author. This was met with widespread acclaim and inspired Goethe’s “Werther”. Only the novel “Julie, or the New Heloise”, published in 1761, was able to circulate freely. He begins with the words: “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” The text was immediately banned because of its criticism of all religion, as was the educational novel “Émile”, published in the same year, which had been produced over the previous six years at aristocratic estates around Paris. However, it was his “Contrat social” (Social Contract) in 1762 that had the longest-lasting impact. ![]() His path to success was paved by twice winning the Academy of Dijon’s prize competition, in 1749 with his “Discours sur les sciences et les arts” and in 1755 with the “Discours sur l’inégalité”. As the secretary of the French ambassador, he lived in Venice for two years and then returned to Paris, where he was a private tutor and music copyist and began a lifelong relationship with the laundress Thérèse Levasseur, who bore him five children. ![]() Mainly musically trained, he moved to Paris in 1742 where he presented a new system of musical notation to the academy. He was only able to spend 19 of the 66 years of his life on the soil of modern-day Switzerland, while the rest of the time he was what would be referred to today as a Swiss citizen abroad had he not constantly been persecuted or sought by warrant.Īt the age of 16, he fled from Geneva to Savoy and spent 14 years as the charge of Madame de Warens in Annecy. However, the country which takes a pride in him today showed a very unwelcoming, even hostile, attitude towards the man who first made democratic freedom possible as a figure who paved the way for the French Revolution. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on 28 June 1712 in Geneva and died on 2 July 1778 in Ermenonville near Paris. He appeared twice – in 19 – in the splendid coffee-table books of the “great Swiss figures”. ![]()
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