200th birthday of Joseph von Eichendorf - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1988 - 60 Pfennig

Like no other poet of Romanticism, Joseph von Eichendorff has remained alive in the consciousness of the public for over two centuries. His works are published and received, staged and recited, composed, illustrated and parodied. Poems like "O valleys far, o heights", "in a cool reason" or "to whom God wants to show right favors" are missing in no common anthology of German poetry; The narrative work finds (not least by high-circulation paperback editions) widest dissemination and attention; The novella "From the Life of a Good-for-nothing" - now translated into all the literary languages ​​of the world and filmed and dramatized several times - is re-issued almost every year and is a model of romantic narrative art as a literary canon of German lessons in the upper secondary school. Eichendorff's poetry is as romantic as it seems, and the life of the poet himself seems largely unromantic: Joseph von Eichendorff was born on 10 March 1788, the second son of Baron Adolf von Eichendorff, at Lubowitz Castle in Upper Silesia. The noble country life, the experience of nature and the experience of the culture of the decaying Rococo shape his childhood and determine his later life and work in the wistful memory of the lost "old beautiful time". The "idyll of Lubowitz" soon turns out to be fragile and deceptive. By mismanagement and mis-speculation of the father, the family goods are lost, and Eichendorff is urged to 1805 take a legal "bread study". Significant for the future as a poet is especially the study time in Heidelberg (1807/08), in which he meets the leading representatives of the Younger Romanticism; In 1808 he published his first poems under the pseudonym »Florens«. The oppressive economic conditions, however, allow no life as a freelance writer, and Eichendorff enters after completion of his studies and return from the wars of liberation in 1815 in the Prussian civil service, in order to secure a livelihood for his rapidly growing family. In 1815 his first novel ("Hunch and Presence") appears, followed in 1818 by his first novel ("The Marble Picture"). At about the same time, the poet "in hours free of duty" begins work on his master narrative (published in 1826) "From the Life of a Good-for-Nothing". The administrative career proves to Eichendorff as unsatisfactory. The career path leads him across the Prussian lands of Breslau (1816 - 1821) via Danzig (1821 - 1823), Berlin (1823/24) and Königsberg (1824 - 1831) back to Berlin (1831 - 1844), without him ever to achieve the desired executive position. However, the period of civil service proves to be exceedingly productive in literary terms. In the 1920s and 1940s, most of his poems, dramas and narratives were printed alongside the programmatic novel Dichter und ihr Gesellen (1834). After his (voluntary early) dismissal from the civil service (1844) Eichendorff turns mainly to translations from the Spanish and literary-historical studies, in which he persistently seeks to uphold the banner of romance in a more and more unromantic environment. When Eichendorff dies in Neisse (Upper Silesia) on November 26, 1857, one of the most important epochs in German literary history comes to an end, after having reached its last valid, time-lasting character in the poet's multifaceted work. (Text: Prof. Dr. Eckhard Grunewald, Cologne)