Nikolaus Lenau was thepen name ofNikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau (13 August 1802 – 22 August 1850), a German-languageAustrian poet.
He was born at Csatád (Schadat), Kingdom of Hungary, nowLenauheim,Banat, then part of theHabsburg monarchy, now inRomania. His father, a Habsburg government official, died in 1807 inBudapest, leaving his children in the care of their mother, who remarried in 1811. In 1819 Nikolaus went to theUniversity of Vienna; he subsequently studied Hungarian law at Pozsony (Bratislava) and then spent the next four years qualifying himself in medicine. Unable to settle down to any profession, he began writing verse. The disposition to sentimental melancholy inherited from his mother, stimulated by disappointments in love and by the prevailing fashion of theromantic school of poetry, descended into gloom after his mother's death in 1829.[1]
Soon afterwards, however, a legacy from his grandmother enabled him to devote himself wholly to poetry. His first published poems appeared in 1827, inJohann Gabriel Seidl'sAurora. In 1831 he moved toStuttgart, where he published a volume ofGedichte (1832) dedicated to the Swabian poet,Gustav Schwab. He also made the acquaintance ofLudwig Uhland,Justinus Kerner,Karl Mayer and others. His restless spirit longed for change, and he determined to seek peace and freedom in America.[1]
In October 1832 he landed atBaltimore and settled on a homestead inOhio. He also lived six months inNew Harmony, Indiana, with a group called theHarmony Society. Life in the primeval forest fell lamentably short of the ideal he had pictured. He disliked Americans with their eternal English lisping of dollars (englisches Talergelispel), and in 1833 returned to Germany. The appreciation of his first volume of poems revived his spirits.[1]
From then on he lived partly in Stuttgart and partly inVienna. In 1836 hisFaust appeared, in which he laid bare his own soul to the world;[2][1] in 1837,Savonarola, an epic in which freedom from political and intellectual tyranny as an essential component of Christianity was stated. In 1838 hisNeuere Gedichte proved thatSavonarola had been the result of a passing exaltation. Of these new poems, some of the finest were inspired by his hopeless passion for Sophie von Löwenthal, the wife of a friend. In 1842 appearedDie Albigenser, and in 1844 he began writing hisDon Juan, a fragment of which was published after his death.[1]
Soon afterwards he developed signs of mental ill-health. In October 1844, he jumped from a window one morning and ran down a street shouting "Revolt! Freedom! Help! Fire!".[3] He was placed in an asylum, under restraint, for the remainder of his life. He died in the asylum at Oberdöbling near Vienna[1] and was buried in the cemetery of Weidling, nearKlosterneuburg. On his grave is the replica of an open book with an extract from one of his poems (An Frau Kleyle) inscribed on the left-hand page, while on the right-hand page there is the final stanza from his poemVergangenheit. The city ofStockerau in Lower Austria has proclaimed itself "Lenau City", because Nikolaus Lenau went on extensive walks in the alluvial forests next to Stockerau and theDanube and was inspired to write one of his most famous lyric poems, "Schilflieder", during this time. He has various streets and squares in Vienna and the surrounding area named after him.
His political poems, such as "By the Grave of a Minister," reveal Lenau's liberal sympathies with their attacks on the despotism of Metternich's reactionary system and the alleged corruption of the Catholic Church.[4] Lenau's fame rests mainly upon his shorter poems; even hisepics are essentially lyric in quality. His excellent poem, "Herbst", expresses the sadness and melancholy he felt after his sojourn in the United States and his strenuous travels across the Atlantic to return to Europe. In it, he mourns the loss of youth, the passing of time and his own sense of futility. The poem is archetypal of Lenau's style and culminates with the speaker dreaming of death as a final escape from emptiness. He is the greatest modern lyric poet of Austria, and the typical representative in German literature of that pessimisticWeltschmerz which, beginning withLord Byron, reached its culmination in the poetry ofGiacomo Leopardi.[1]
Lenau'sSämtliche Werke were first published in 4 vols. byAnastasius Grün in 1855, but there are several more modern editions, as those byMax Koch inJoseph Kürschner'sDeutsche Nationalliteratur of 1888 (vols. 154 and 155), and E. Castle (2 vols., 1900).[1]
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Lenau, Nikolaus".Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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