Moritz Hartmann


Moritz Hartmann was a German poet, politician and author.

Biography

Hartmann was born of Jewish parentage at Duschnik in Bohemia. As a young man, Hartmann abandoned Judaism although he never formally converted to Christianity.
Having studied philosophy at Prague and Vienna, he travelled in south Germany, Switzerland and Italy, and became tutor in a family at Vienna.
In 1845, he proceeded to Leipzig and there published a volume of patriotic poems, Kelch und Schwert.
Fearing in consequence prosecution at the hands of the authorities, he abided events in France and Belgium, and after issuing in Leipzig Neuere Gedichte returned home, where he suffered a short term of imprisonment.
In 1848, he was elected member for Leitmeritz district in the short-lived German parliament at Frankfurt-am-Main, in which he sided with the extreme radical party.
He took part with Robert Blum in the revolution of that year in Vienna.
On its collapse, he joined the “rump parliament” in Stuttgart, and finally escaped to London and Paris.
In 1849, he published Reimchronik des Pfaffen Mauritius, a satirical political poem in the style of Heine. During the Crimean War Hartmann was correspondent of the Kölnische Zeitung. In 1860, he settled in Geneva as a teacher of German literature and history, became in 1865 editor of the Freya in Stuttgart and in 1868 a member of the staff of the Neue Freie Presse in Vienna.
He died at Oberdöbling, near Vienna, in 1872.

Works

Among Hartmann's numerous works may be especially mentioned Der Krieg um den Wald, a novel, the scene of which is laid in Bohemia; Tagebuch aus Languedoc und Provence ; Erzählungen eines Unsteten ; and Die letzten Tage eines Konigs. He also produced an idyll, Adam and Eva, and a collection of poetical tales, Schatten.
His Gesammelte Werke were published in 10 vols. in 1873–1874, and a selection of his Gedichte in the latter year. The first two volumes of a new edition of his works contain a biography of Hartmann by O. Wittner. See also E. Ziel, "Moritz Hartmann" ; A. Marchand, Les poètes lyriques de l'Autriche ; Brandes, Das junge Deutschland.

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