Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Ehud" to "Electroscope" / Volume 9, Slice 2

Articles in This Slice

EIBENSTOCK , a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Saxony, near the Mulde, on the borders of Bohemia, 17 m. by rail S.S.E. of Zwickau. Pop. (1905) 7460. It is a principal seat of the tambour embroidery which was introduced in 1775 by Clara Angermann. It possesses chemical and tobacco manufactories, and tin and iron works. It has also a large cattle market. Eibenstock, together with Schwarzenberg, was acquired by purchase in 1533 by Saxony and was granted municipal rights in the following year.
EICHBERG, JULIUS (1824-1893), German musical composer, was born at Düsseldorf on the 13th of June 1824. When he was nineteen he entered the Brussels Conservatoire, where he took first prizes for violin-playing and composition. For eleven years he occupied the post of professor in the Conservatoire of Geneva. In 1857 he went to the United States, staying two years in New York and then proceeding to Boston, where he became director of the orchestra at the Boston Museum. In 1867 he founded the Boston Conservatory of Music. Eichberg published several educational works on music; and his four operettas, The Doctor of Alcantara , The Rose of Tyrol , The Two Cadis and A Night in Rome , were highly popular. He died in Boston on the 18th of January 1893.
EICHENDORFF, JOSEPH, FREIHERR VON (1788-1857), German poet and romance-writer, was born at Lubowitz, near Ratibor, in Silesia, on the 10th of March 1788. He studied law at Halle and Heidelberg from 1805 to 1808. After a visit to Paris he went to Vienna, where he resided until 1813, when he joined the Prussian army as a volunteer in the famous Lützow corps. When peace was concluded in 1815, he left the army, and in the following year he was appointed to a judicial office at Breslau. He subsequently held similar offices at Danzig, Königsberg and Berlin. Retiring from public service in 1844, he lived successively in Danzig, Vienna, Dresden and Berlin. He died at Neisse on the 26th of November 1857. Eichendorff was one of the most distinguished of the later members of the German romantic school. His genius was essentially lyrical. Thus he is most successful in his shorter romances and dramas, where constructive power is least called for. His first work, written in 1811, was a romance, Ahnung und Gegenwart (1815). This was followed at short intervals by several others, among which the foremost place is by general consent assigned to Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (1826), which has often been reprinted. Of his dramas may be mentioned Ezzelin von Romano (1828); and Der letzte Held von Marienburg (1830), both tragedies; and a comedy, Die Freier (1833). He also translated several of Calderon’s religious dramas ( Geistliche Schauspiele , 1846). It is, however, through his lyrics ( Gedichte , first collected 1837) that Eichendorff is best known; he is the greatest lyric poet of the romantic movement. No one has given more beautiful expression than he to the poetry of a wandering life; often, again, his lyrics are exquisite word pictures interpreting the mystic meaning of the moods of nature, as in Nachts , or the old-time mystery which yet haunts the twilight forests and feudal castles of Germany, as in the dramatic lyric Waldesgespräch or Auf einer Burg . Their language is simple and musical, which makes them very suitable for singing, and they have been often set, notably by Schubert and Schumann.