Lenau

Lenau, NICOLAUS, the pen-name of NICOLAUS NIEMBSCH VON STREHLENAU, German poet, who was born at Czatad, near Temesvar in Hungary, 13th August 1802, and studied law, then medicine, at Vienna. But his was a 'melancholy nature; the compass of his soul ever trembled back to the pain of life.' Although a man of deep feeling, and with a good deal of the true lyric inspiration, his life was rendered unhappy by his morbid poetic discontent. In 1832 he travelled to the United States, hoping to find there the peace and satisfaction which he could not get in Europe; but he returned in the following year a still further disappointed man. From this time he lived alternately in Vienna and in Stuttgart, in the latter city in close intimacy with the writers of the Swabian school (Schwab, Kerner, Mayer). On the eve of his marriage in 1844, he was suddenly struck down by insanity; he lived in an asylum at Oberdöbling near Vienna until his death, on 22d August 1850. Lenau's poetic power is shown to best advantage in his short lyric effusions, especially those (e.g.—Schilflieder) associated with the land of his birth. His best longer pieces, as Faust (1836), Savonarola (1837), Die Albigenser (1842), cannot claim the merits of artistic completeness and unity, in spite of the rich fancy and feeling, and the fiery temper of the poet, displayed in individual passages. His Sämtliche Werke appeared in 4 vols. in 1855, with a biography by Anastasius Grün. See Lives by Schurz (1855) and Frankl (1885).