Kerner, Justinus (Ludwigsburg, 1786-1862, Weinsberg), in full Justinus Andreas Christian, was the son of a Württemberg official, who died when the boy was 13. The ensuing financial difficulties led to Justinus being apprenticed in 1801 to a cabinet-maker. Professor K. P. Conz, a minor poet himself, became acquainted with Kerner's early poetic efforts, and enabled him to abandon craftsmanship for university study. In 1804 Kerner matriculated at Tübingen, deciding to study medicine. Throughout his life he was a rich and eccentric personality and became the centre of a group of friends, including Ludwig Uhland (a distant kinsman), Karl Mayer, Gustav Schwab, and Varnhagen von Ense. During his years of medical study he was instructed to observe Hölderlin, then living mentally deranged in Tübingen. After qualifying in 1808, he made a German tour with the object of visiting his elder brother, a physician in Hamburg. In Berlin he met, among the prominent names of Romanticism, F. de la Motte Fouqué and A. von Chamisso, and in Vienna he became acquainted with F. Schlegel and his wife Dorothea. On his return to Württemberg in 1810 he began to practise in Wildbad, moving in 1812 to Welzheim. In 1813 he married Friederike Ehmann. The beginning of their courtship in 1807 makes a romantic anecdote. Observing, on an excursion, the sad demeanour of a young woman, Kerner is said to have addressed to her Goethe's stanza from ‘Trost in Tränen’: ‘Wie kommt's, daß du so traurig bist, /Da alles froh erscheint?/Man sieht dir's an den Augen an, /Gewiß du hast geweint?’; she rejoined with the second stanza: ‘Und hab ich einsam auch geweint, /So ist's mein eigner Schmerz, /Und Tränen fließen gar so süß, /Erleichtern mir das Herz.’ Their engagement, it is said, was the consequence of this poetic dialogue.
Various poems by Kerner were published in magazines, but his first book was Reiseschatten (1811), one of the more eccentric and subjective Romantic novels, which includes not only a number of incidental poems but also a play entitled Nachspiel der zweiten Schattenreihe oder Der Totengräber von Feldberg. In 1819 Kerner settled in Weinsberg as district physician, and he remained there for the rest of his life, pursuing occult as well as medical interests, devoting himself to spiritualism and studying closely the psychic case of one Friederike Hauffe, about whom he wrote a book, Die Seherin von Prevorst (1829). His original and expansive personality attracted many visitors from all ranks of society, and he repeatedly enlarged the house he had built in 1822 (Kernerhaus) to accommodate them. D. F. Strauß and Mörike were frequent callers. He published his recollections in Bilderbuch aus meiner Knabenzeit (1849). His poetry, which is of a predominantly sombre tone, shows the influence of folk-song. Most of it belongs to his early years, and was collected in Gedichte (1826). Later collections were Letzter Blumenstrauß (1852) and Winterblüte (1859). A curious posthumous publication was Kleksographien (1890), a collection of grotesque drawings based on the folding of paper containing blots of ink. Among his best-known poems are ‘Poesie ist tiefes Schmerzen’, ‘Der Wanderer in der Sägemühle’, ‘Wer machte dich so krank?’, and ‘Wanderlied’, opening with the line ‘Wohlauf! noch getrunken’. Sämtliche poetische Werke in vier Bänden, ed. J. Gaismaier, appeared in 1905, Ausgewählte Werke, ed. G. Grimm, in 1981.
