The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales

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Eichendorff, Joseph Freiherr von

Eichendorff, Joseph Freiherr von (1788–1857),
German poet and author who combined romantic nature mysticism with Christian faith. While studying at Heidelberg, he entered into friendship with Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, whose German folk‐song collection decisively influenced his subsequent literary production. In his early novel Ahnung und Gegenwart (Presentiment and Actuality, 1815), the mood and emotion of the characters often find expression in a lyric poetry that appropriates the form and metre of folk song, as is also the case in the story that has become a minor classic of world literature, ‘Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts’ (‘The Memoirs of a Good‐for‐Nothing’, 1826). In Eichendorff's contribution to the genre of the artistic fairy tale (Kunstmärchen), ‘Das Marmorbild’ (‘The Marble Statue’, 1819), Florio no sooner falls...

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