Joseph Eichendorff

Vocation

German poet and novelist, considered one of the great German Romantic lyricists. Eichendorff studied law at Heidelberg and in Berlin (1809–10) he met the leaders of the Romantic national movement. When the Prussian war of liberation broke out in 1813, Eichendorff enlisted and fought against Napoleon. The Napoleonic Wars, which brought about the decline of the Eichendorff family and the loss of the Lubowitz castle, are the sources of nostalgia in his poetry. In 1826 he published his most important prose work, "Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts" (Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing), which, with its combination of the dreamlike and the realistic, is considered a high point of Romantic fiction. In 1844 he retired from the civil service to devote himself entirely to his writing, publishing his history of German literature and several translations of Spanish authors. He died 26 November 1857, Neisse, Upper Silesia, now Poland. Link to Wikipedia biography