1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Redwitz, Oskar, Freiherr von

REDWITZ, OSKAR, Freiherr von (1823-1891), German poet, was born at Lichtenau, near Ansbach, on the 28th of June 1823. Having studied at the universities of Munich and Erlangen, he was apprenticed to the law in the Bavarian State service (1846-49). He next (1849-50) studied languages and literature at Bonn, and in 1851 was appointed professor of aesthetics and of the history of literature at Vienna. In 1852, however, he gave up this post and retired to his estate of Schellenberg, near Kaiserslautern. The pious sentimentality of his romantic epic Amaranth (1849; 42nd ed., 1898) had already gained him enthusiastic admirers, and this work was followed, in 1850, by Ein Märchen and by Gedichte (1852) and the tragedy Sieglinde (1854). He next settled on his estates near Kronach, and here wrote the tragedy Thomas Morus (1856), the historical dramas Philippine Welser (1859) and Der Zunftmeister von Nürnberg (1860), of which the first two met with great success. Elected member of the Bavarian Second Chamber for the district in which he lived, he removed to Munich in 1862. In 1868 he published the novel Hermann Stark, deutsches Leben, and in 1871 Das Lied vom neuen deutschen Reich (which contains several hundred patriotic sonnets). In 1872 he took up his residence at Meran, but passed the last years of his life at a sanatorium for nervous disorders near Bayreuth, where he died on the 6th of July 1891.

See R. Prutz, Die deutsche Literatur der Gegenwart (1870), i. pp. 148 ff.; H. Keiter, Zeitgenössische katholische Dichter Deutschlands (1884); H. von Völderndorff, Harmlose Plaudereien eines alten Müncheners (1892); M. M. Rabenlechner, O. von Redwitz’ religlöser Entwicklungsgang (1897).