Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (10 March 178826 November 1857) was a German poet, novelist, playwright, literary critic, translator, and anthologist. Eichendorff was one of the major writers and critics of Romanticism. Ever since their publication and up to the present day, some of his works have been very popular in German-speaking Europe.

Eichendorff first became famous for his 1826 novella ''Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts'' (freely translated: ''Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing'') and his poems. The ''Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing'' is a typical Romantic novella whose main themes are wanderlust and love. The protagonist, the son of a miller, rejects his father's trade and becomes a gardener at a Viennese palace where he subsequently falls in love with the local duke's daughter. As, with his lowly status, she is unattainable for him, he escapes to Italy – only to return and learn that she is the duke's adopted daughter, and thus within his social reach. With its combination of dream world and realism, ''Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing'' is considered to be a high point of Romantic fiction. One critic stated that Eichendorff's ''Good-for-Nothing'' is the "personification of love of nature and an obsession with hiking." Thomas Mann called Eichendorff's ''Good-for-Nothing'' a combination of "the purity of the folk song and the fairy tale."

Many of Eichendorff's poems were first published as integral parts of his novellas and stories, where they are often performed in song by one of the protagonists. The novella ''Good-for-Nothing'' alone contains 54 poems. Provided by Wikipedia