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August Follen

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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AUGUST FOLLEN (or, as he afterwards called himself, [[Adolf) Ludwig]] (1794-1855), German poet, was born at Giessen on the 21st of January 1794, the son of a district judge. He studied theology at Giessen and law at Heidelberg, and after leaving the university edited the Elberfeld Allgemeine Zeitung. Suspected of being connected with some radical plots, he was imprisoned for two years in Berlin. When released in 1821 he went to Switzerland, where he taught in the canton school at Aarau, farmed from 1847-1854 the estate of Liebenfels in Thurgau, and then retired to Bern, where he lived till his death on the 26th of December 1855. Besides a number of minor poems he wrote Harfengriisse aus Deutschland and der Schweiz (1823) and Malegys and Vivian (1829), a knightly romance after the fashion of the romantic school. Of his many translations, mention may be made of the Homeric Hymns in collaboration with R. Schwenck (1814), Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1818) and Siegfrieds Tod from the Nibelungenlied (1842); he also collected and translated Latin hymns and sacred poetry (1819). In 1846 he published a brief collection of sonnets entitled An die gottlosen Nichtswiiteriche. This was aimed at the liberal philosopher Arnold Ruge, and was the occasion of a literary duel between the two authors. Follen's posthumous poem Tristans Eltern (1857) may also be mentioned, but his best-known work is a collection of German poetry entitled Bildersaal deutscher Dichtung (1827).