Nikolaus Welter

Nikolaus “Nik” Welter (2 January 1871 – 13 July 1951) was a Luxembourgish writer, playwright, poet, professor, literary critic (Germanic and Romance languages), and statesman. He wrote predominantly in German. He also served as a Minister for Education in the government of Émile Reuter.

After his university studies in Leuven, Paris, Bonn and Berlin, he became a teacher in Diekirch (1897-1906) and later at the Athénée de Luxembourg in Luxembourg City (1906-1918).

Welter mainly wrote plays and poetry. His work Griselinde (1901) inspired the Luxembourgish composer Alfred Kowalsky to write the opera of the same name. Other well-known works are Die Söhne des Öslings, Goethes Husar, Der Abtrünnige, Professor Forster and Lene Frank.

From early on, Nik Welter was involved with the Félibrige, a poets' movement in the Provence, and was in contact with the members of the Felibertum félibrige: Frédéric Mistral, Joseph Roumanille and Théodore Aubanel. He was often at Mistral's house in Bouches-du-Rhône and was taken up into the circle of the Féliber. In the same way, he also met German Romanists such as Eduard Koschwitz and August Bertuch. Along with the two German Romanists, he campaigned successfully for Frédéric Mistral to be awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Nik Welter recorded his travels in the Provence and in Tunisia in the book Hohe Sonnentage. In his book Im Werden und Wachsen, he wrote about his childhood in Mersch. He was the author of the first Luxembourgish schoolbook Das Luxemburgische und sein Schrifttum.