Friedrich Holderlin, Friedrich Holderlin poetry, Secular or Eclectic, Secular or Eclectic poetry, Romantic poetry, poetry, Christian poetry Friedrich Holderlin
Germany (1770 - 1843) Timeline
Secular or Eclectic : Romantic
Christian : Protestant

Poems by Friedrich Holderlin
Books - Links

Friedrich Holderlin is considered to be one of the great lyric poets of the German Romantic period. Though he is not always grouped with the Romantic poets, elements of Romantic sensibility -- a yearning for simplicity, the confrontation of death and shadow, a mystical love of the natural world -- appear in his poems.

He was born in the region of Swabia in southwestern Germany. His father died when he was still a small boy, but his mother soon remarried.

As a young man, Holderlin attended the Theological Seminary in Tubingen, where he became friends with the philosopher Hegel and the poet/dramatist Friedrich von Schiller.

For a while Holderlin worked as a private tutor in wealthy homes in Germany, Switzerland, and France. During the 1790s he went through a period of inspired creativity, crafting many great poems and his novel Hyperion.

In the early 1800s, he suffered a nervous collapse, triggered in part by the death of a married woman with whom he had fallen in love. He returned to his childhood home of Swabia to recuperate. During his recovery, he came to live with the family of a local carpenter -- and he chose to live with them for the rest of his life, more than 35 additional years.

Poems by Friedrich Holderlin


Recommended Books: Friedrich Holderlin

News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness Music of the Sky: An Anthology of Spiritual Poetry Poems of Friedrich Holderlin Holderlin: Selected Poems and Fragments Hymns and Fragments
Elucidations of Holderlin's Poetry: (Contemporary Studies in Philosophy and the Human Sciences) Hyperion and Selected Poems: (German Library)



Related Links

Friedrich Holderlin - Selected Poems
http://home.att.net/~holderlin/
A good site with many poems by Holderlin online, a biographical sketch, portraits.

Friedrich Holderlin
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/holderli.htm
A good online biography of Holderlin.
Friedrich Holderlin