JOHANN

MICHAEL

See also:

• FRIEDRICH, JOHANN (1836— )

FRIEDRICH

See also:

• JOHANN MICHAEL FRIEDRICH RUCKERT (1788-1866)

RUCKERT (1788-1866)  , German poet, was born at Schweinfurt on the 16th of May 1788, the eldest son of a lawyer . He was educated at the gymnasium of his native place and at the universities of Wiirzburg and Heidelberg . For some time (1816-17) he worked on the editorial staff of the Morgenblatt at Stuttgart . Nearly the whole of the year 1818 he spent in Rome, and afterwards he lived for several years at Coburg . He was appointed a professor of Oriental languages at the university of Erlangen in 1826, and in 1841 he was called to a similar position in Berlin, where he was also made a privy councillor . In 1849 he resigned his professorship at Berlin, and went to live on his estate Neuses near Coburg . He died on the 31st of January 1866 . When Ruckert began his literary career, Germany was engaged in her life-and-death struggle with Napoleon; and in his first volume, Deutsche Gedichte, published in 1814 under the pseudonym " Freimund Raimar," he gave, particularly in the powerful "Geharnischte Sonette," vigorous expression to the prevailing sentiment of his countrymen . In 1815-18 appeared Napoleon, eine politische Komodie in drei Stiicken (only two parts were published), and in 1817 Der Kranz der Zeit . He issued a collection of poems, Ostliche Rosen, in 1822; and in 1834-38 his Gesammelte Gedichte were published in six volumes, a selection from which has passed through many editions . Ruckert, who was master of thirty languages, made his mark chiefly as a translator of Oriental poetry and as a writer of poems conceived in the spirit of Oriental masters . Much attention was attracted by a translation of Hariri's Makamen (1826), Nal and Damajanti, an Indian tale (1828), Rostem and Suhrab, eine Heldengeschichte (1838), and Hamasa, oder die dltesten erabischen Volkslieder (1846) .

Among his

original writings dealing with Oriental subjects are Morgenlandische Sagen and Geschichten (1837), Erbauliches and Beschauliches aus dem Morgenland (1836-38), and Brahmanische Erzdhlungen (1839) . The most elaborate of his works is Die Weisheit des Brahmanen, published in six volumes in 1836-39 . This last and the Liebesfruhling (1844), a cycle of love-songs, are the best known of all Riickert,'s productions . In 1843-45 he issued the dramas Saul and Davit (1843) . Herodes der Grosse (1844), Kaiser Heinrich IV . (1845) and Christofero Colombo (1845), all of which are greatly inferior to the work to which he owes his place in German literature . At the time of the Danish war in 1864 he wrote Ein Dutzend Kampflieder fur Schleswig-Holstein, which,. although published anonymously, produced a considerable impression . After his death many poetical translations and original poems were found among his papers, and several collections of them were published . Ruckert had a splendour of imagination which made Oriental poetry congenial to him, and he has seldom been surpassed in rhythmic skill and metrical ingenuity . There are hardly any lyrical forms which are not represented among his works, and in all of them he wrote with equal ease and grace . A complete edition of Ruckert's poetical works appeared in 12 vols. in 1868—69 . Subsequent editions have been edited by L .

Laistner (1896), C . Beyer (1896), G . Ellinger (1897) . See B .

Fortlage, F . Ruckert and seine Werke (1867) ; C . Beyer, Friedrich Ruckert, ein biographisches Den/anal (1868), Neue Mitteilungen fiber Ruckert (1873), and Nachgelassene Gedichte Riickerts and neue Beitrage zu dessen Leben and Schriften (1877); R . Boxberger, Ruckert-Studien (1878); P. de Lagarde, Erinnerungen an F . Ruckert (1886); F . Muncker, Friedrich Ruckert (189o); G . Voigt, Riickerts Gedankenlyrik (1891) .