Born: Lubowitz, Silesia, Germany, 10 March 1788. Education: Educated at Katholisches Gymnasium, Breslau, 1801-04; Halle University, 1805-06; Heidelberg University, 1807-08; continued to study law in Vienna, 1810-12. Military Service: Served in the volunteer forces during the War of Liberation, 1813-14 and 1815; commissioned 1813. Family: Married Aloysia (Luise) von Larisch in 1815 (died 1855); two sons and three daughters. Career: Undertook a walking tour through the Harz mountains, 1805; travelled to Paris and Vienna, 1808; returned to Lubowitz to manage father’s estate, 1809; lived in Berlin, 1809-10; dispatch clerk, War Ministry, Berlin, 1815; trainee civil servant, 1816-19, and assessor, 1819-21, Prussian Royal Government; government councillor, Danzig, 1821, Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, Berlin, 1823, 1831-44, and Konigsberg, 1824. Died: 26 November 1857.
Publications
Collections
Samtliche Werke. 6 vols., 2nd edition, 1864.
Vermischte Schriften. 5 vols., 1866-67.
Werke, edited by Richard Dietze. 2 vols., 1891.
Werke, edited by Ludwig Krahe. 2 vols., 1908.
Samtliche Werke, edited by Wilhelm Kosch and August Sauer; continued by Hermann Kunisch and Helmut Koopmann. 9 vols., 1908-50; 2nd edition, 1962-.
Gedichte, Erzahlungen, Biographisches, edited by Max Wehrli. 1945.
[Selected Poems], edited by Gerhard Prager. 1946.
Neue Gesamtausgabe der Werke und Schriften, edited by Gerhart Baumann and Siegfried Grosse. 4 vols., 1957-58.
Werke, edited by Ansgar Hillach and Klaus Dieter Krabiel. 5 vols., 1970-88.
Werke, edited by Wolfgang Fruhwald, Brigitte Schillbach and Hartwig Schultz. 6 vols., 1985-.
Fiction
Ahnung und Gegenwart. 1815.
Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts und Das Marmorbild. Zwei Novellen nebst einem Anhange von Liedern und Romanzen. 1826; reprinted 1981; as Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing, translated by Charles Godfrey Leland, 1866, also translated by Bayard Quincy Morgan, 1955; Ronald Taylor, 1966; as The Happy-Go-Lucky, translated by A.L. Wister, 1906; as The Life of a Good-for-Nothing, translated by Michael Glenny, 1966; Das Marmorbild as ”The Marble Statue,” translated by F.E. Pierce, in Fiction and Fantasy of German Romance, edited by Pierce and C.F. Schreiber, 1927.
Viel Larmen um Nichts, in Der Gesellschafter, edited by F.W. Gubitz. 1832.
Dichter und ihre Gesellen. 1834.
Das Schloss DUrande. 1837.
Die EntfUhrung. 1839.
Die GlUcksritter. 1841.
Libertas und ihr Freier. 1864.
Eine Meerfahrt. 1864.
Auch ich war in Arkadien. 1866.
Novellen. 1927.
Erzahlungen. 1946.
Erzahlungen, edited by Werner Bergengruen. 1955.
Das Wiedersehen, edited by Hermann Kunisch. 1966.
Verse
Gedichte. 1837; revised edition, 1843.
Neue Gedichte. 1847.
Julian. 1853.
Robert und Guiscard. 1855.
Lucius. 1857.
Gedichte aus dem Nachlasse, edited by Heinrich Meisner. 1888.
Joseph und Wilhelm von Eichendorffs Jugendgedichte, edited by Raimund Pissin. 1906.
Eichendorffs Jugendgedichte aus seiner Schulzeit, edited by Hilda Schulhof. 1915; reprinted 1974.
Gedichte, edited by A. Schaeffer. 1919.
The Happy Wanderer and Other Poems, translated by Marjorie Rossy. 1925.
Gedichte. Ahnung und Gegenwart, edited by Werner Bergengruen. 1955.
Plays
Krieg den Philistern!. 1824.
Meierbeths Glack und Ende, in Der Gesellschafter, edited by F.W.
Gubitz. 1827.
Ezelin von Romano. 1828.
Der letzte Held von Marienburg. 1830.
Die Freier. 1833.
Das Incognito: Ein Puppenspiel. Mit Fragmenten und EntwUrfen anderer Dichtungen nach den Handschriften, edited by Konrad Weichberger. 1901; also edited by Gerhard Kluge, with Das Loch; oder, das wiedergefundene Paradies: Ein Schattenspiel, by Lud-wig Achim von Arnim, 1968.
Other
Die Wiederherstellung des Schlosses der deutschen Ordensritter zu Marienburg. 1844.
Zur Geschichte der neueren romantischen Poesie in Deutschland. 1846.
Uber die ethische und religiose Bedeutung der neueren romantischen Poesie in Deutschland. 1847.
Die geistliche Poesie in Deutschland. 1847.
Der deutsche Roman des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts in seinem Verhaltnis zum Christenthum. 1851.
Zur Geschichte des Dramas. 1854.
Geschichte derpoetischen Literatur Deutschlands. 2 vols., 1857.
Aus dem Nachlass. Briefe undDichtungen, edited by Wilhelm Kosch. 1906.
Fahrten und Wanderungen 1802-1814 der Freiherren Joseph und Wilhelm Eichendorff, edited by Alfons Nowack. 1907.
Lubowitzer Tagebuchblatter, edited by Alfons Nowack. 1907.
Liederbuch, illustrated by Josua Leander Gampp. 1922.
Schlesische TagebUcher (diaries), edited by Alfred Riemen. 1988.
Editor, Gedichte, by Lebrecht Dreves. 1849.
Translator, Der Graf Lucanor, by Juan Manuel. 1840.
Translator, Geistliche Schauspiele by Pedro Calderon de la Barca. 2 vols., 1846-53.
Translator, FUnf Zwischenspiele, by Miguel de Cervantes, edited by A. Potthoff. 1924.
Critical Studies:
Der Dichter des Taugenichts: Eichendorffs Welt und Leben, geschildert von ihm selbst und von Zeitgenossen edited by Paul Stocklein and Inge Feuchtmayer, 1957, and Eichendorff heute edited by Stocklein, 1960; ”Zum Gedachtnis Eichendorffs” by Theodor W. Adorno, in Akzente, (5), 1958; Eichendorff: Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts by G.T. Hughes, 1961; Versuche Uber Eichendorff by Oskar Seidlin, 1965, 2nd edition, 1978; ”The Metaphor of Death in Eichendorff,” in Oxford German Studies, (4), 1969, and ”Eichendorff und Shakespeare,” in German Romantics in Context: Selected Essays, 1992, both by Elisabeth Stopp; Eichendorff: The Spiritual Geometer by Lawrence Radner, 1970; Eichendorff-Kommentar by Ansgar Hillach and Klaus-Dieter Krabiel, 2 vols., 1971-72; Joseph von Eichendorff by Egon Schwarz, 1972; Spatiotemporal Consciousness in English and German Romanticism. A Comparative Study of Novalis, Blake, Wordsworth, and Eichendorff by Amala M. Hanke, 1981; Eichendorff und die Spatromantik edited by Hans-Georg Pott, 1985; Hieroglyphenschrift. Untersuchungen zu Eichendorffs Erzahlungen by Klaus Kohnke, 1986; Lyric Descent in the German Romantic Tradition by Brigitte Peucker, 1986; Joseph von Eichendorff by Wolfgang Fruhwald and Franz Heiduk, 1988; Ansichten zu Eichendorff. Beitrage der Forschung 1985 bis 1988 edited by Alfred Riemen, 1988; Eichendorff Issue of German Life and Letters, 42(3), 1989; Hindeutung auf das Hohere: A Structural Study of the Novels of Joseph von Eichendorff by Judith Purver, 1989; Lebendige Allegorie. Studien zu Eichendorffs Leben und Werk by Robert Muhlher, 1990; Eichendorff’s Scholarly Reputation: A Survey by Robert O. Goebel, 1994; Classical Rhetoric and the German Poet 1620 to the Present: A Study of Opitz, BUrger and Eichendorff by Anna Carrdus, 1996; Schumann’s Eichendorff Liederkreis and the Genre of the Romantic Cycle by David Ferris, 2000; Italy in the German Literary Imagination: Goethe’s Italian Journey and Its Reception by Eichendorff, Platen, and Heine by Gretchen L. Hachmeister, 2002.
Joseph von Eichendorff’s fame as the quintessential German Romantic writer rests primarily on a narrow segment of his total output: a selection of his lyric poetry and two or three stories, the most celebrated of which is Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing). Since very little of his work, apart from this tale and a few poems, has been translated into English, he is best known in the English-speaking world through the musical settings of his lyrics by such composers as Mendelssohn, Schumann (especially ”Dichterliebe,” Opus 39, 1840), Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Hans Pfitzner (the cantata ”Von deutscher Seele” [Of the German Soul], Opus 28, 1921), and Richard Strauss. His poems have been set to music more frequently than those of almost any other German writer; thus his importance in the context of the German Lied and its development is considerable. His work also influenced more 19th-century German poets than that of any other writer except Goethe, and has been assimilated, imitated, parodied, praised, and quoted to a remarkable degree by a wide variety of authors, from Theodor Storm and Theodor Fontane to Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Gunter Grass.
The full range of Eichendorff’s literary and other writings is, however, still relatively little known. He wrote over 500 lyric poems, nine stories, five plays, three epic poems, two novels, and a number of narrative, dramatic, and autobiographical fragments. His diaries (1798 to 1815) reveal many of the decisive influences on his formative years, including the Romantic thinkers and writers Joseph Gorres, Friedrich Schlegel, Henrik Steffens, Achim von Arnim, Clemens Brentano, and the Grimm brothers, whose example probably inspired him to begin, in 1808-09, a collection of Upper Silesian fairytales. In his later years, he again followed the Romantic example, both by translating from Spanish a number of ballads, as well as dramas by Calderon and Cervantes, and a 14th-century prose text, El Conde Lucanor [Count Lucanor] by Don Juan Manual, and by composing several essays and treatises on literature, the last and most comprehensive of which, Geschichte der poetischen Literatur Deutschlands [History of the Poetic Literature of Germany], appeared in 1857, the year of his death. In the same year, he began a biography of St. Hedwig, the patron saint of Silesia. In connection with his career in the Prussian Civil Service, Eichendorff also produced a number of historical and political writings, including pieces on secularization, constitutional questions, and press censorship, and on the two great symbolic Prussian architectural undertakings of the time, the completion of Cologne Cathedral and the restoration of the Marienburg castle near Danzig, with both of which he was, personally as well as professionally, closely involved. His correspondence, while less extensive than that of some of his contemporaries, provides valuable insights into his life, work, and thought, and into the unsettled times in which he lived.
The chaotic period of the Napoleonic Wars forms the background to Eichendorff’s first novel, Ahnung und Gegenwart [Divination and the Present], written 1810-12 in Vienna, but not published until 1815. Eichendorff’s intention in this work was to provide a ”complete picture . . . of that strange time of expectation, longing and grief, heavy with foreboding of the storm to come” which had preceded the Wars of Liberation in the German lands. Though by no means devoid of realistic detail, the novel is not a mimetic portrayal of the period, but rather an attempt to create, in the spirit of the theory and practice of the novel among the German Romantics, a structural and symbolic counterpart both to the confusion of the times, as it appeared to Eichendorff, and to the underlying order of the universe, guaranteed for him by his Catholic faith and his trust in an ultimate divine purpose shaping the world as a whole and the individual human life within it. Characteristically, the lyrical prose of the novel is interspersed with a large number of poems, among which are some of Eichendorff’s best known, such as ”Das zerbrochene Ringlein” [''The Broken Ring''], ”Abschied” [''Farewell''], and ”Waldgesprach” [''Conversation in the Forest''].
Apart from Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing, two of Eichendorff’s shorter narrative works, Das Marmorbild (”The Marble Statue”) and Das Schloss DUrande [DUrande Castle] deserve special mention. The first is based on a traditional European story concerning the betrothal of a young man to a statue of Venus, a theme which preoccupied Eichendorff throughout his life and which he here uses to reveal the psychological roots and destructive potential of the erotic drive, as well as the lure of an unbridled poetic imagination, both of which he saw as manifestations of the demonic forces of subjectivism which could only be controlled by Christianity. He saw the same forces at work in the French Revolution, which provides the subject matter of Das Schloss DUrande. Yet while he regards the Revolution as an unmitigated disaster, he is also sharply critical of the behaviour of the nobility which led up to it.
The first edition of Eichendorff’s collected poems appeared in 1837. Characteristic of his lyric vocabulary is the recurrence of a limited number of archetypal words and images, particularly nouns (often in the plural) referring to basic features of the landscape, such as mountains, forests, valleys, and rivers, verbs conveying movement and sense impressions, and unspecific but emotionally charged adjectives. These combine to give his verse an incantatory quality and an instantly recognizable tone, adapted from the folk-song tradition as transmitted through Arnim and Brentano’s collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn). Eichendorff’s conscious use of elements of popular tradition has often been misinterpreted as naive; in fact, it is subtle and ambivalent, stirring unconscious depths in the reader and evoking, through a densely woven net of symbols, a transcendent sphere beyond the physical world. He is also a fine prose stylist and spirited polemicist, using satire and irony to attack, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of his ideological opponent, Heine, both Romantic excesses and unromantic philistinism.
