Ludwig Uhland

Johann Ludwig Uhland (26 April 1787 – 13 November 1862) was a German poet, philologist, literary historian, lawyer and politician.

Biography

He was born in Tübingen, Württemberg, and studied jurisprudence at the university there, but also took an interest in medieval literature, especially old German and French poetry. Having graduated as a doctor of laws in 1810, he went to Paris for eight months to continue his studies of poetry; and from 1812 to 1814 he worked as a lawyer in Stuttgart, in the bureau of the minister of justice.

Poetry

He began his career as a poet in 1807 and 1808 by contributing ballads and lyrics to Seckendorff's Musenalmanach; and in 1812 and 1813 he wrote poems for Kerner's Poetischer Almanach and Deutscher Dichterwald. In 1815 he collected his poems in a volume entitled Vaterländische Gedichte, which almost immediately secured a wide circle of readers. To almost every new edition he added some fresh poems. His two dramatic works Ernst, Herzog von Schwaben (1818) and Ludwig der Baier (1819) are unimportant in comparison with his Gedichte.

As a lyric poet, Uhland must be classed with the writers of the German romantic movement. Like them, he found the Middle Ages appealed most strongly to his imagination. Yet his style has a precision, suppleness and grace which distinguish his most characteristic writings from those of the other German romantics. Like them, Uhland wrote poems in defense of human liberty, and in the states assembly of the Kingdom of Württemberg, he played a distinguished part as one of the most vigorous and consistent of the Old Liberals among its members.