Stifter, Adalbert (Oberplan, Bohemia, now Horní Planá, Czech Republic, 1805-68, Linz, Austria), by birth an Austrian citizen, was the son of a flax merchant, who died when the boy was 11. His childhood was spent in the Bohemian Forest, the landscape of which repeatedly enters into his novels and stories. In 1818 he was sent to school at the Benedictine monastery of Kremsmünster in Upper Austria, where his outstanding intelligence was recognized. He then studied at Vienna University, turning his attention especially to science. After a passionate attachment to Franziska Greipl (Fanni, also Fanny) in 1828-9, Stifter married in 1837 Amalia Mohaupt. He had hoped for an academic career as a scientist in Vienna, but was disappointed and for some years earned a meagre living by giving private lessons, in which he was extremely successful, gaining a well-disposed clientele in the upper strata of Viennese society.
Stifter's artistic interests were at first centred on landscape painting, but in 1840 he published, with some reluctance, his first story, Der Condor, which has as its central episode a balloon flight in which a young woman participates. This story was later included in the first volume of Studien. Other stories followed and were eventually incorporated in the six volumes of Studien (1844-50): Feldblumen (1840), Das Haidedorf (1840), Der Hochwald (1842), which was Stifter's first masterpiece, Die Narrenburg (1843), Die Mappe meines Urgroßvaters (1841), Abdias (1843), Das alte Siegel (1844), Brigitta (1844), Der Hagestolz (1844), Der Waldsteig (1845), Schwestern (1846, original version of 1845, Zwei Schwestern), and Der beschriebene Tännling (1845). The revolution of 1848 (see Revolutionen 1848-9) proved, in its later manifestations, a shock to Stifter, who withdrew to Linz, where for a short time he edited a newspaper. In 1850 he was appointed to a senior post in educational administration at Linz under the new dispensation which followed the revolution. For fifteen years he was inspector of schools in Upper Austria, but he found it difficult to realize the educational objectives he set himself and hard to reconcile his duties with his compulsion to write. The two volumes of Bunte Steine, the preface to which contains the enunciation of Stifter's well-known ‘Sanftes Gesetz’, appeared in 1853; his novel Der Nachsommer followed in 1857.
In 1865 Stifter retired and devoted himself to completing his historical novel Witiko, publication of which began in 1865 and was completed in 1867. Stifter's later years were darkened by the childlessness of his marriage and the suicide in 1859 of an adopted daughter. In 1867 he was seriously ill, suffering, it is thought, from cancer. During the night of 28 January 1868, while beset with agonizing pain he ended his life by cutting his throat with his razor. The nature of his end was concealed at the time, but the facts were revealed some thirty-five years later. A number of stories left in MS. were published posthumously in 1869 under the title Erzählungen: Prokopus (1848), Die drei Schmiede ihres Schicksals (1844), Der Waldbrunnen (1866), Nachkommenschaften (1864), Der Waldgänger (1847), Der fromme Spruch (1866), Der Kuß von Sentze (1866), Zuversicht (1846), Zwei Witwen (1860), Die Barmherzigkeit (1843), Der späte Pfennig (1843), and Der Tod einer Jungfrau (1847).
Stifter's novels enjoyed only a moderate popularity in his lifetime and after his death he was quickly forgotten. A revival of interest began in the 20th c., but his full stature was not recognized till after the 1914-18 War. The integrity of his vision, the recognition and simultaneous rejection of violence, the emphasis on the natural processes of growth and the sensitive perception of nature, especially in the form of landscape, are the essential features of his œuvre. He is by nature an educator, whose instrument is his art. His remarkably transparent, gentle, and deliberate style is a natural and apt expression of his outlook and aims.
Sämtliche Werke. Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe (24 vols.), ed. A. Sauer, F. Hüller, and G. Wilhelm, appeared 1904-60, Gesammelte Werke (14 vols.), ed. K. Steffen, 1962-72, and Werke und Briefe. Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. A. Doppler and W. Frühwald, from 1978.
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