Joseph von Eichendorff

Joseph von Eichendorff, born in 1788 at Lubowitz Castle in Upper Silesia and died in 1857, was a German poet, novelist, playwright, literary critic, translator and anthologist, and one of the major writers and critics of Romanticism. He first became famous for his 1826 novella Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, translated as Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing, a typical Romantic novella whose main themes are wanderlust and love, and for his poems. Many of his poems were first published inside his novellas and stories, where a protagonist often sings them; the Taugenichts novella alone contains 54 poems. He descended from an old noble family, studied at Breslau, and in Berlin came into contact with Romantic writers such as Clemens Brentano, Adam Müller and Heinrich von Kleist. His works have remained popular in German-speaking Europe up to the present day.