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Moritz Karl Wilhelm Anton, Graf Strachwitz

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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VON (1822-1847), German poet, was born on the 13th of March 1822 at Peterwitz near Frankenstein in Silesia. After studying in Breslau and Berlin he settled on his estate in Moravia, where he devoted himself to literary pursuits. When travelling in Italy in 1847 he was taken ill at Venice, and died on the 14th of December at Vienna. Although he had thus only reached his twenty-fifth year, he revealed a lyric genius of remarkable force and originality. His first collection of poems, Lieder eines Erwachenden, appeared in 1842 and went through several editions. Neue Gedichte were published after his death in 1848. These poems are characteristic of the transition through which the German lyric was passing between 1840 and 1848; the old Romantic strain is still dominant, especially in his ballads, which are unquestionably his finest productions; but, side by side with it, there is to be seen the influence of Platen, to whose warmest admirers Strachwitz belonged, as well as echoes of the restless political spirit of those eventful years. His political lyric was, however, tempered by an aristocratic restraint which was absent from the writings of men like Herwegh and Freiligrath. Strachwitz's early death was a great loss to German letters; for he was by far the most promising of the younger lyric poets of his time.

Strachwitz's collected Gedichte appeared first in 1850 (8th ed., 1891); a convenient reprint will be found in Reclam's Universalbibliothek. See A. K. T. Tielo, Die Dichtung des Grafen Moritz von Strachwitz (1902).