ALLEN WILSON PORTERFIELD
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK CITY
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Ferdinand August Otto Heinrich Graf von Loeben, the scion of an old, aristocratic, Protestant family, was born at Dresden, August 18, 1786. He received his first instruction from private tutors. For three years from 1804 on, he unsuccessfully, because unwillingly, studied law at the University of Wittenberg. In 1807 he entered, to his profound delight, the University of Heidelberg, where, in association with Arnim, Brentano, and Görres, he satisfied his longing for literature and art. Beginning with 1808 he lived alternately at Wien, Dresden, and Berlin and with Fouqué at Nennhausen. He took an active part in the campaign of 1813-14, marched to Paris, and returned after his company had been disbanded, to Dresden, where, in 1817, he married Johanna Victoria Gottliebe geb. von Bressler and established there his permanent abode. In 1822 he suffered a stroke of apoplexy from which he never recovered: even the magnetic treatment given him by Justinus Kerner proved of no avail. He died at Dresden, April 3, 1825. See Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, XIX, 40-45. The article is by Professor Muncker. Wilhelm Müller also wrote an article full of lavish praise of Loeben in Neuer Nekrolog der Deutschen, III, Jahrg. 1824, Ilmenau, 1827.
[2] Meyer (6th ed.) does not mention Loeben even in the articles on Fouqué and Malsburg, two of Loeben's best friends; Brockhaus (Jubilee ed.) mentions him as one of Eichendorff's friends in the article on Eichendorff, but neither has an independent note on Loeben. Nor is he mentioned in such compendious works on the nineteenth century as those by Gottschall, R.M. Meyer (Grundriss and Geschichte), and Fr. Kummer. Biese says (Deutsche Literaturgeschichte, II. 436) of him: "Auch ein so ausgesprochenes Talent, wie es Graf von Loeben war, entging nicht der Gefahr, die Romantik in ihre Karikatur zu verzerren."
[3] Cf. Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, XIX, 42.
[4] Partial lists of his works are given in: Goedeke, Grundriss, VI, 108-10 (2nd ed.): Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, XIX. 40-45; the sole monograph on Loeben by Raimund Pissin. Otto Heinrich Graf von Loeben, sein Leben und seine Werke, Berlin, 1905, 326 pages. By piecing these lists together—for they vary—it seems that Loeben wrote, aside from the works mentioned above, the following: 1 conventional drama, 1 musical-romantic drama, 2 narrative poems, one of which is on Ferdusi, 3 collections of poems, between 30 and 40 novelettes, fairy tales and so on. and_ "einige tausend" aphorisms and detached thoughts. It is in Pissin's monograph that Loeben's position in the Heidelberg circle of 1807-8 is worked out. as follows: Loeben and Eichendorff constituted one branch, Arnim and Brentano the other, Görres stood loosely between the two, and the others sided now with one group, now with the other.
[5] The verses are from Geständnisse, No. 125 in Pissin's collection of Loeben's poems.
[6] Geständnisse. No. 125.