Nikolaus Lenau
Encyclopedia
Timisoara
Timișoara is the capital city of Timiș County, in western Romania. One of the largest Romanian cities, with an estimated population of 311,586 inhabitants , and considered the informal capital city of the historical region of Banat, Timișoara is the main social, economic and cultural center in the...
, Hungary
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary comprised present-day Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia , Transylvania , Carpatho Ruthenia , Vojvodina , Burgenland , and other smaller territories surrounding present-day Hungary's borders...
– 22 August 1850, Oberdöbling
Oberdöbling
Oberdöbling was an independent municipality until 1892 and is today a part of Döbling, the 19th district of Vienna. It is also one of the 89 Katastralgemeinden.- Geography :...
, near Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
), was a German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
.
Biography
He was born at Schadat near Temeschwar in Hungary, now LenauheimLenauheim
Lenauheim is a commune in Timiş County, Banat, Romania. It is composed of three villages: Bulgăruş, Grabaţ and Lenauheim.-History:...
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
. His father, a Habsburg government official, died at Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
in 1807, leaving his children in the care of their mother, who in 1811 married again. In 1819 Nikolaus went to the University of Vienna
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...
; he subsequently studied Hungarian law at Pozsony (Bratislava
Bratislava
Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and, with a population of about 431,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two independent countries.Bratislava...
) and then spent the best part of four years in qualifying himself in medicine. Unable to settle down to any profession, he had already begun to write verse; and the disposition to sentimental melancholy inherited from his mother, stimulated by disappointments in love and by the prevailing fashion of the romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
school of poetry, descended into gloom after his mother's death in 1829.
Soon afterwards, a legacy from his grandmother enabled him to devote himself wholly to poetry. His first published poems appeared in 1827, in Johann Gabriel Seidl
Johann Gabriel Seidl
Johann Gabriel Seidl was an Austrian archeologist, poet, storyteller and dramatist. He wrote the lyrics to "Gott erhalte, Gott beschütze unsern Kaiser, unser Land!" This was the 1854 version of the Austrian Imperial Anthem, music by Joseph Haydn .Born in Vienna, Johann Gabriel Seidl was the son of...
's Aurora. In 1831 he went to Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
, where he published a volume of Gedichte (1832) dedicated to the Swabian poet, Gustav Schwab
Gustav Schwab
Gustav Benjamin Schwab was a German writer, pastor and publisher.-Life:Gustav Schwab was born in Stuttgart, the son of a professor and was introduced to the humanities early in life...
. Here he also made the acquaintance of Ludwig Uhland
Ludwig Uhland
Johann Ludwig Uhland , was a German poet, philologist and literary historian.-Biography:He was born in Tübingen, then Duchy of Württemberg, and studied jurisprudence at the university there, but also took an interest in medieval literature, especially old German and French poetry...
, Justinus Kerner
Justinus Kerner
Justinus Andreas Christian Kerner was a German poet and medical writer.-Life:He was born at Ludwigsburg in Württemberg...
, Karl Mayer
Karl Mayer (poet)
Karl Friedrich Hartmann Mayer was a German jurist and poet of the Swabian school of poets, the circle of Justinus Kerner and the Serach poets' circle under count Alexander von Württemberg . His younger brother Louis Mayer was a landscape painter....
and others; but his restless spirit longed for change, and he determined to seek for peace and freedom in America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
In October 1832 he landed at Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
and settled on a homestead in Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
. He also lived six months in New Harmony, Indiana
New Harmony, Indiana
New Harmony is a historic town on the Wabash River in Harmony Township, Posey County, Indiana, United States. It lies north of Mount Vernon, the county seat. The population was 916 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Evansville metropolitan area. Many of the old Harmonist buildings still stand...
, with a group called the Harmony Society
Harmony Society
The Harmony Society was a Christian theosophy and pietist society founded in Iptingen, Germany, in 1785. Due to religious persecution by the Lutheran Church and the government in Württemberg, the Harmony Society moved to the United States on October 7, 1803, initially purchasing of land in Butler...
. But the reality of life in the primeval forest fell lamentably short of the ideal he had pictured; he disliked the Americans with their eternal English lisping of dollars (englisches Talergelispel); and in 1833 he returned to Germany, where the appreciation of his first volume of poems revived his spirits.
From then on he lived partly in Stuttgart and partly in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. In 1836 appeared his Faust
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
, in which he laid bare his own soul to the world ); in 1837, Savonarola, an epic in which freedom from political and intellectual tyranny is insisted upon as essential to Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. In 1838 his Neuere Gedichte proved that Savonarola had been the result of a passing exaltation. Of these new poems, some of the finest were inspired by his hopeless passion for Sophie von Löwenthal, the wife of a friend. In 1842 appeared Die Albigenser, and in 1844 he began writing his Don Juan
Don Juan
Don Juan is a legendary, fictional libertine whose story has been told many times by many authors. El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra by Tirso de Molina is a play set in the fourteenth century that was published in Spain around 1630...
, a fragment of which was published after his death.
Soon afterwards his never well-balanced mind began to show signs of aberration, and in October 1844 he was placed under restraint (after jumping out of a window one morning and running down a street, while shouting "Revolt! Freedom! Help! Fire!" ) for the rest of his life. He died in the asylum at Oberdöbling near Vienna and was buried in the cemetery of Weidling, near Klosterneuburg
Klosterneuburg
Klosterneuburg is an attractive small town in Lower Austria, Austria with a population of 24,442.It is located on the Danube, immediately north of Vienna, from which it is separated by the Kahlenberg and Leopoldsberg hills...
.
On his grave is the replica of an open book with an extract from one of his poems (An Frau Kleyle) inscribed on the lefthand page, while on the righthand page there is the final stanza from his poem Vergangenheit. The city of Stockerau
Stockerau
Stockerau is a town in the district of Korneuburg in Lower Austria, Austria.Leisure facilities are various: wellness centre, sports centre with three gyms, judo and table tennis gym, skittle alley and football stadium...
in Lower Austria has proclaimed itself the "Lenau City", because Nikolaus Lenau went on extensive walks in the alluvial forests next to Stockerau and the Danube
Danube
The Danube is a river in the Central Europe and the Europe's second longest river after the Volga. It is classified as an international waterway....
and was inspired to write one of his most famous lyric poems, "Schilflieder", during this time. He has various streets and squares named after him in Vienna and the surrounding area.
Lenau's fame rests mainly upon his shorter poems; even his epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
s are essentially lyric in quality. His excellent poem, "Herbst", expresses the sadness and melancholy he felt after his sojourn in the United States and his strenuous travels across the Atlantic to return to Europe. In it, he mourns the loss of youth, the passing of time and his own sense of futility. The poem is archetypal of Lenau's style and culminates with the speaker dreaming of death as a final escape from emptiness. He is the greatest modern lyric poet of Austria, and the typical representative in German literature of that pessimistic Weltschmerz
Weltschmerz
Weltschmerz is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul and denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind...
which, beginning with Lord Byron, reached its culmination in the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi
Giacomo Leopardi
Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi was an Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist...
.
Lenau's Sämtliche Werke were first published in 4 vols. by Anastasius Grün in 1855,
but there are several more modern editions, as those by Max Koch
Max Koch (academic)
Max Koch was a German historian and literary critic.-Biography:He studied in Munich and Berlin, and was a docent at Marburg beginning 1880...
in Joseph Kürschner
Joseph Kürschner
Joseph Kürschner was a German author and editor most often cited for his critical edition of classics from German literature.-Biography:...
's Deutsche Nationalliteratur of 1888 (vols. 154 and 155), and E. Castle (2 vols., 1900).