Samuel Friedrich Sauter

Sauter, Samuel Friedrich (Flehingen, Baden, 1766-1846, Flehingen), a village schoolmaster successively in Flehingen and in Zaisenhausen in Baden, who wrote simple and unpretentious verse which was collected as Volkslieder und andere Reime (1811) and Die sämtlichen Gedichte des alten Dorfschulmeisters S. Fr. Sauter (1845). Some of Sauter's more naïve poems were later published in the Munich Fliegende Blätter, as examples of unintentional humour, by L. Eichrodt and A. Kußmaul and attributed to a Gottlieb Biedermaier. Sauter thus posthumously gave rise to the stylistic term Biedermeier. Though Eichrodt's persiflage has attached much ridicule to Sauter's name, the schoolmaster's religiously tinged nature poetry has at times a simple charm, and ‘Der Wachtelschlag’ was set to music by both Beethoven and F. Schubert.