Eduard Friedrich Morike
born Sept. 8, 1804, Ludwigsburg,
Württemberg [Germany]
died June 4, 1875, Stuttgart
one of Germany’s greatest lyric poets.
After studying theology at Tübingen
(1822–26), Mörike held several curacies
before becoming, in 1834, pastor of
Cleversulzbach, the remote Württemberg
village immortalized in Der alte
Turmhahn, where inhabitants and pastor
are seen through the whimsical but
percipient eyes of an old weathercock.
All his life Mörike suffered from
psychosomatic illnesses, which were
possibly intensified by an unconscious
conflict between his humanist
aspirations and his church dogmas. When
only 39, Mörike retired on a pension,
but after his marriage to Margarete von
Speeth in 1851, he supplemented his
pension by lecturing on German
literature at a girls’ school in
Stuttgart. After many years of rich
literary achievement, the tensions
caused by Margarete’s jealousy of Clara,
Mörike’s sister who lived with them,
almost killed his creative urge. Mörike
spent most of his last two years with
Clara and his younger daughter and was
separated from Margarete until shortly
before his death.
Mörike’s small output is
characterized by its variety. Everything
he wrote has its own distinctive
flavour, but in his early days romantic
influences preponderate. His novel,
Maler Nolten (1832), in addition to its
stylistic perfection and psychological
insight into mental unbalance, explores
the realm of the subconscious and the
mysterious forces linking the main
character and his early love even beyond
the grave. Mörike’s poems in folk-song
style and his fairy tales also show the
influence of German romanticism, though
his best folk tale, Das Stuttgarter
Hutzelmännlein (1853), is peculiarly his
own, with its Swabian background and
humour. In his Mozart auf der Reise nach
Prag (1856), Mörike penetrates deeper
into Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s
personality than do many longer studies.
It is, however, as a lyric poet that
Mörike is at the height of his powers.
Mörike worked with free rhythms,
sonnets, regular stanza forms, and, more
particularly in his later poems,
classical metres with equal virtuosity.
The “Peregrina” poems, immortalizing a
youthful love of his Tübingen days, and
the sonnets to Luise Rau, his one-time
betrothed, are among the most exquisite
German love lyrics.
