EICHENDORFF, JOSEPH. - The last German Romantic poet, b. at Lubowitz on 10 March 1788, d. at Neisse on 27 Nov. 1857. He is great because of the marked predominance of the lyrical element, which even in the novel and the drama prevails over narrative and action, but which gave him Lieder of incomparable lightness, bordering on dream and music. Such a temperament, leading him to translate the ideal into action, also left its mark on his real life.
Having foreseen the coming conflicts for his homeland in Ahnung und Gegenwart (a novel already completed in 1811), a bitter enemy of foreign domination, he enlisted as a volunteer at the moment of the struggle and took part in the campaigns of 1813-15. A fervent Catholic, he not only exalted his religion in numerous literary, historical and artistic writings, also aimed at a revision of the dominant Protestant critical judgment and celebrating Catholicism as the sole source of modern poetry (Über die ethische und religiöse Bedeutung der neueren romantischen Poesie in Deutschland, 1847; Der deutsche Roman des 18. Jahrh. in seinem Verhältnis zum Christentum, 1851; Zur Geschichte des Dramas, 1854; Geschichte der poetischen Literatur Deutschlands, 1857; as well as the excellent German translation of Calderón's religious dramas, 1846-57), but he also carried out consistent action (working, for example, for the restoration of the Marienburg convent, and being dismissed from the Ministry of Cults in Berlin for his rigid Catholic sentiment; an attitude harmful in the end to his art, which would too often yield to a preoccupation with content: Julian, 1853; Robert und Guiscard, 1855; Lucius, 1857). And he was the popular Romantic lyric poet (his poetry was considerably shaped by the Volkslied, hence his collaboration on Arnim and Brentano's Wunderhorn), of pure faith, candid senses, boundless love of nature, and harmless humour, who between sensual pleasure and religion resolutely chooses the latter (Marmorbild). His Poesie (which had already appeared in 1813) were collected in 1857. The abundance of Lieder in his novels and novellas proves the predominance of sentiment; the same Life of a Good-for-Nothing (his most famous novella) can therefore please only the true friends of poetry. His epic is difficult to read; the best tragedy is Der letzte Held von Marienburg.