Conrad Ferdinand Meyer

Gunter H. Hertling (University of Washington)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.2: German-language Writing and Culture: Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, 800-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Dates

Born 11 Oct 1825
Died 28 Nov 1898
Activity 1871-1891

Places

Born in Switzerland
Active in Switzerland; Germany

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Poet

Resources

Critics agree that Conrad Ferdinand Meyer was the most ambivalent, complex, and yet one of the most fascinating realists in late nineteenth-century literature. His major breakthrough as a writer of poetry, ballads and historical narratives came late in life with Huttens letzte Tage [Hutten's Last Days], an epic of 71 poems in iambic verse, and coincided with the founding of the second German Reich in 1871. Whereas Meyer was almost exclusively schooled in French and in French literature until 1870, for which he was ever grateful, soon after Hutten he stated: “Jetzt bin ich sehr deutsch, pur ne plus changer” [“Now I am very German, forever more”]. From the 1870s to the early 1890s Meyer “shaped” his poetry …

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1767 words

Citation: Hertling, Gunter H.. "Conrad Ferdinand Meyer". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 November 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5454, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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