Friedrich Rückert

Johann Michael Friedrich Rückert (German: [ˈʁʏkɐt]; 16 May 1788 – 31 January 1866) was a German poet, translator, and professor of Oriental languages.

Biography

Johann Michael Friedrich Rückert was born 16 May 1788 in Schweinfurt and was the eldest son of a lawyer, Johann Adam Rückert, and his wife, Maria Barbara (née Schwappach). He was educated at the local Gymnasium and at the universities of Würzburg and Heidelberg. From 1816 to 1817, he worked on the editorial staff of the Morgenblatt at Stuttgart. Nearly the whole of the year 1818 he spent in Rome, and afterwards he lived for several years at Coburg (1820–1826), where he married Luise Wiethaus-Fischer in 1821.

He was appointed a professor of Oriental languages at the University of Erlangen in 1826, and, in 1841, he was called to a similar position in Berlin, where he was also made a privy councillor. In 1849 he resigned his professorship at Berlin, and went to live full-time in his Gut (estate) at Neuses (now a part of Coburg).

When Rückert began his literary career, Germany was at war with Napoleon; and in his first volume, Deutsche Gedichte (German Poems), published in 1814 under the pseudonym Freimund Raimar, he gave, particularly in the powerful Geharnischte Sonette (Sonnets in Arms/Harsh Words), vigorous expression to the prevailing sentiment of his countrymen. From 1815 to 1818, appeared Napoleon, eine politische Komödie in drei Stücken (Napoleon, a Political Comedy in Three Parts), of which only two parts were published. In 1817, Der Kranz der Zeit (The Wreath of Time), was published.