The New International Encyclopædia/Mörike, Eduard

MÖRIKE, mẽ'rĭ-ke, Eduard (1804-75). A German poet. He was born at Ludwigsburg, and studied theology at Tübingen, where from 1826 to 1843 he served as a clergyman. From 1851 to 1866 he was professor of German literature in a seminary at Stuttgart. One of the most prominent members of the Swabian school, he first appeared in 1832 with the fantastic tale Maler Nolten (revised in 1872, third edition 1890), which revealed his imaginative power. His collected Gedichte (1838, eleventh edition 1894) are marked not only by the idyllic cast common to the Swabian group, but by a delicate humor and a classical severity of form peculiarly their own. The exquisitely wrought novelette Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag (1850) has frequently been accounted his finest achievement. His further work includes the Idylle vom Bodensee (1846) and the caprice Das Stuttgarter Hutzelmännlein (1855). Many of the poems are today established folksongs. Consult the biographies by Notter (Stuttgart, 1875), Klaiber (ib., 1876), Maync (ib., 1901), and Fischer (Berlin, 1901).