(b Ehrenbreitstein, 9 Sept 1778; d Aschaffenburg, 28 July 1842). German poet. He was a leading lyric poet of the younger Romantic generation whose primary importance to music lies in his co-editorship, with Achim von Arnim, of the folk poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (i,1805). Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wolf and Strauss wrote songs to Wunderhorn texts and Mahler based orchestral settings on them.

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Although the German poet and author Clemens Brentano (1778-1842) was one of the most versatile writers of the later romantic period, he is best remembered for his lyric poetry.

Clemens Brentano was born on Sept. 8, 1778, in Ehrenbreitstein, the son of an Italian businessman. He developed an early interest in literature and at the universities of Halle and Jena became acquainted with contemporary writers, especially Friedrich von Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck. In 1803 he married the poet Sophie Mereau, to whom he had dedicated his first important novel, Godwi (1801).

Godwi is an "educational novel" about the passionate adventures of a wealthy young man. It is experimental in form, and the novelist himself enters the plot as one of the characters. The sensationalism of this first work is continued in the suspense drama Ponce de Leon (1801) and in the novel Chronika eines fahrenden Schülers (Chronicle of a Wandering Scholar), which was begun in 1803 as a medieval tale of romance, mysticism, and black magic. The exotic religiosity of this novel is also to be found in the series of verse narratives Romanzen vom Rosenkranz (Romances of the Rosary), which Brentano began about this time.

In 1804 he settled in Heidelberg, where, with fellow romantics Achim von Arnim and Johann Josef von Görres, he edited the literary journal Zeitung für Einsiedler (Newspaper for Hermits). With Arnim he also compiled the most famous collection of German folk songs, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn), in three volumes between 1805 and 1808.

After the death of his wife in 1806, Brentano traveled about Germany for a few years. He met the Grimm brothers in Kassel in 1807 and in 1809 joined a literary group in Berlin. After a brief sojourn in Bohemia and Vienna (where he composed a patriotic drama inspired by the Germans' fight against Napoleon), he returned to Berlin and wrote his most famous story, Die Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl (1817; The Story of Brave Caspar and Beautiful Annie). In 1817 he also underwent a conversion to devout Catholicism.

Brentano devoted the next several years to recording the utterances of the stigmatized nun Katharina Emmerich. After her death in 1824 he lived in Frankfurt and Coblenz and in 1833 settled in Munich, where he associated with a group of Catholic romantic writers, including Görres. Among Brentano's later works was a collection of fairy tales (1838), which shows his imaginative powers to be as lively as ever. Brentano died in Aschaffenburg on July 28, 1842.

Further Reading

The best general discussion in English of Brentano's life and works is in Ralph Tymms, German Romantic Literature (1955). Another book with a good general treatment of the poet is L. A. Willoughby, The Romantic Movement in Germany (1930). There is a helpful discussion of Brentano's lyric poetry in August Closs, The Genius of the German Lyric: An Historical Survey of Its Formal and Metaphysical Values (1962).

For more information on Clemens Brentano, visit Britannica.com.

Brentano, Clemens (1778–1842), German author of poems, novellas, and literary fairy tales. Brentano was the son of a Frankfurt merchant of Italian descent and the grandson of the German novelist Sophie von La Roche. With Achim von Arnim, his brother‐in‐law through marriage to his sister Bettina, he published the first collection of German folk song, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn, first volume in 1805, second and third in 1808). Before his public conversion to Catholicism in 1817 and subsequent dedication to predominantly religious topics, Brentano had been part of the Heidelberg circle of romantic writers, which included Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm as well as E. T. A. Hoffmann and Joseph von Eichendorff, authors of romantic novellas and literary fairy tales. In contrast to the Grimms, who supplied him with some of his source material, Brentano's interest in oral tradition was fuelled largely by the desire to reproduce the style of folk songs and folk tales in his own writing. Contained in Des Knaben Wunderhorn are many of Brentano's own poems, which are of such simple musical quality that they are not easily distinguished from the traditional folk song. Best known is ‘The Lore‐Lay’, his ballad of a young woman whose beauty seduced men and who threw herself from a cliff along the Rhine river.

The Rhine was also the setting for many of Brentano's fairy tales. Fairy Tales of the Rhine was written between 1809 and 1813, but published posthumously with other tales in 1846–7 by Guido Görres under the title Die Märchen des Clemens Brentanos (The Fairy Tales of Clemens Brentano). In the frame story of the Rhine fairy tales, Brentano combines motifs from the legends of the Pied Piper of Hamelin and the Lore‐Lay, to name a few of the more recognizable sources, with stylistic artistry and yet with little regard for the integrity of individual legend traditions. Brentano's Italian heritage and familiarity with Basile's Pentamerone were reflected in his collection of Italian fairy tales, which included shorter tales, such as Das Myrthenfräulein (The Tale of the Myrtle Girl) and Witzenspitzel (Smart Alec) as well as the more elaborate Gockel and Hinkel (Rooster and Hen), revised and expanded years later under the title Gockel, Hinkel and Gackeleia (Rooster, Hen and Little Cluck). His fairy tales are generally characterized by the combination and elaboration of motifs from traditional literature, intricate and complex plots, and a poetic, often ornate, style of language.

Brentano's greatest contribution to fairy‐tale scholarship is arguably the preservation in his literary estate of a manuscript of early folk‐tale versions and notes sent to him by Jacob Grimm in 1810 and discovered in Alsace during the 1920s. The discovery of the Ölenberg manuscript, published first in 1927 and revised in 1975, which consists of some of the earliest extant versions of tales contained in the Grimms' Kinder‐ und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales), has offered subsequent generations of scholars invaluable insights into the editorial practices of the Brothers Grimm.

Bibliography

• Fetzer, John F., Clemens Brentano (1981).
• Frye, Lawrence, ‘The Art of Narrating a Rooster Hero in Brentano's Das Märchen von Gockel und Hinkel’, Euphorion, 72 (1978).
• Riley, Helene M. K., Clemens Brentano (1985).
• Seidlin, Oskar, “‘Wirklich nur eine schöne Kunstfigur? Zu Brentanos Gockel‐Märchen’”, in Texte und Kontexte: Studien zur deutschen und vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft (1973).

— Mary Beth Stein

Brentano, Clemens (Ehrenbreitstein, 1778-1842, Aschaffenburg), son of Maximiliane Brentano (née La Roche) and grandson of the novelist Sophie von La Roche, was sent in his childhood from pension to pension, on a curious educational principle, which probably increased his natural tendency to fight shy of systematic work. His mother's death in 1793 was a great blow. His father endeavoured to launch him in the prosperous family business, but abandoned the attempt in 1797, after the young Brentano had decorated business letters with caricatures. He was allowed to begin studies at Halle University and then switched to Jena (1798-1800), where he made contact with the older school of Romantics, including the Schlegel brothers, Fichte, and L. Tieck. He also made the acquaintance of Sophie Mereau, whom he married in 1803.

His first publication was Satiren und poetische Spiele von Maria. Erstes Bändchen. Gustav Wasa (1800), a satire on the play Gustav Wasa by A. von Kotzebue. This was followed in 1801-2 by Godwi, which by its playfulness introduced a new structural variation to the Romantic novel and which includes much of his lyric poetry. Brentano stayed at Göttingen in 1801 and there met Achim von Arnim (see Arnim, L. J. von) with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. After his marriage he lived in Heidelberg in close contact with Arnim and J. J. von Görres, and the three friends formed the nucleus of the Heidelberg group of Romantics (see Romantik). Arnim and Brentano collected the folk-songs which they were to publish in Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1805-8). Brentano also wrote a comedy, Ponce de Leon (1804), and collaborated with Görres in Wunderbare Geschichte von BOGS dem Uhrmacher (1807). The curious appellation of the chief character is made up of the first and last letters of the authors' surnames. From 1804 to 1812 he worked fitfully at the collection of religious poems which was to appear after his death, still in uncompleted form, as Romanzen vom Rosenkranz (1852). Sophie Mereau died in childbirth in October 1806, and Brentano made a rash second marriage with the 17-year-old Auguste Bußmann, in August 1807; this was dissolved in 1810. His comic pseudo-treatise Der Philister vor, in und nach der Geschichte was published in 1811. He was in Berlin with Arnim in 1810, visited a family estate (Bukovan) in Bohemia in that year and lived there from 1811 to 1813, a period which ended with a stay in Prague. At this time he wrote his diffuse drama Die Gründung Prags (1814). He spent 1813-14 in Vienna in contact with Adam Müller, J. von Eichendorff, whom he had known in Heidelberg, and the brothers A. W. and F. Schlegel. During another spell in Berlin he fell in love with Luise Hensel, then employed as a governess, but was unsuccessful in persuading her to marry him. He returned at this time to the Catholic faith and, in his new-won piety, abandoned creative writing.

The stories, which appeared mostly in Brentano's middle life, date from his early years: Aus der Chronika eines fahrenden Schülers (1818) dates from 1802-4, Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl (1817) was probably written not long before publication, and Die mehreren Wehmüller und die ungarischen Nationalgesichter (1817) was most likely a product of the years 1811-14. The Märchen, chiefly written 1805-11, were published posthumously 1846-7, except for Das Märchen von Gockel und Hinkel, which appeared in 1838. In 1819 Brentano appointed himself companion and amanuensis to the former nun Katharina Emmerich, who lay ill in Dülmen, Westphalia, exhibiting from time to time the stigmata of the Crucifixion. Her account of her visions is contained in Brentano's publication Das bittere Leiden unseres Herrn Jesu Christi. Nach den Betrachtungen der gottseligen Anna Katharina Emmerich (1833). Two other books dealing with Katharina were taken from his posthumous papers (Leben der heiligen Jungfrau Maria, nach den Betrachtungen der gottseligen Anna Katharina Emmerich, 1852, and Leben unseres Herrn und Heilandes Jesu Christi, nach den Geschichten der gottseligen Anna Katharina Emmerich, 1856). After the death of Katharina in 1824, he lived with friends for varying periods in Koblenz, Paris, Frankfurt, Regensburg, and finally in Munich, but produced nothing more. All who knew Brentano spoke of him as a man of prodigious poetic fantasy, which he was unable and unwilling to control.

Sämtliche Werke, historisch-kritische Ausgabe, including correspondence (planned in 42 vols.), ed. J. Behrens, W. Frühwald, D. Lüders, appeared 1976 ff.; Werke, ed. W. Frühwald, B. Gajek, and F. Kemp (4 vols.), 1978 (2nd edn.); and Briefe (2 vols.), ed. F. Seebaß, 1951.

(brĕntä'nō) , 1778–1842, German poet of the romantic school; brother of Bettina von Arnim (see under Arnim, Achim von). While studying at Halle and Jena he met Wieland, Herder, and Goethe, but his sympathies were with the younger German romantics. With Achim von Arnim he collaborated on Des Knaben Wunderhorn [the boy's magic horn] (1806–8), a folk-song collection that influenced Eichendorff, Heine, the brothers Grimm and several composers, notably Mahler. Brentano wrote plays, lyric poems, fairy tales, and such novellas as Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl (1817, tr. The Story of the Just Casper and Fair Annie, 1927).

Bibliography

See study by J. F. Fetzer (1974).

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