Poets

Johann Ludwig Uhland, was a German poet, philologist and literary historian.

Biography

He was born in Tübingen, then Duchy of 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 had begun 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 romantic school. Like them, he found in the Middle Ages the subjects which 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 romantics. Uhland wrote poems in defense of freedom, and in the states assembly of Württemberg he played a distinguished part..