HOLDERLIN, JOHANN CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH German poet and neo-Hellenist, was born on March 20, 1770, at Lauffen on the Neckar. He was destined for the church and studied theology at Tubingen. He was already the writer of occasional verses, and had begun to sketch his novel when he was introduced to Schiller, and obtained through him the post of tutor to the young son of Charlotte von Kalb. A year later he went to Jena to attend Fichte's lectures, and to be near Schiller, who published some of his early writings in his periodicals Die neue Thalia and Die Horen. In 1796 Holder lin became tutor in the family of the banker J. F. Gontard in Frankfort-on-Main. For Gontard's beautiful and gifted wife, Susette, the "Diotima" of his Hyperion, he conceived a violent passion; and she became at once his inspiration and his ruin. At the end of two years, during . which time the first volume of Hyperion was published (1797), the crisis came, and the young poet suddenly left Frankfort. In spite of ill-health, he now com pleted Hyperion, the second volume of which appeared in and began a tragedy, Der Tod des Empedokles, a fragment of which is published among his works. His friends became alarmed by his nervous irritability, and he was induced to go to Switzer land, as tutor in a family at Hauptwill. There his health improved ; and several of his poems, among which are Der blinde Sanger, An die Hoffnung and Dichtermut, were written at this time. In 1801 he returned home to arrange for the publication of a volume of his poems; but, on the failure of this enterprise, he was obliged to accept a tutorship at Bordeaux. "Diotima" died a year later, in June 1802, and the news is supposed to have reached Holderlin shortly afterwards, for in the following month he sud denly left Bordeaux, and travelled homewards on foot through France, arriving at Niirtingen destitute and insane. Kind treat ment gradually alleviated his condition, and in lucid intervals he occupied himself by writing verses and translating Greek plays. Two of these translations—the Antigone and Oedipus rex of Sophocles—appeared in 1804, and several of his short poems were published by Franz K. L. von Seckendorff in his Musenalmanach, 1807 and 1808. In 1804 Holderlin obtained the sinecure post of librarian to the landgrave Frederick V. of Hesse-Homburg, and went to live in Homburg under the supervision of friends ; but two years later becoming irremediably but harmlessly insane, he was taken in the.summer of 1807 to Tubingen, where he remained till his death on June 7, 1843.
Holderlin's writings are the production of a beautiful and sensi tive mind; they are intensely, almost morbidly, subjective. His passion for Greek literature led him entirely to discard rhyme in favour of the ancient verse measures. He desired to see the Greek spirit embodied in German literature. His poems are all short pieces; of his tragedy only a fragment was written. Hyperion, oder der Eremit in Griechenland (1797-1799), is a romance in letters, in which the stormy fervour of the "Sturm and Drang" is combined with a romantic enthusiasm for Greek antiquity. The interest centres not in the story, for the novel has little or none— Hyperion is a young Greek who takes part in the rising of his people against the Turks in 1770—but in its lyric subjectivity and the dithyrambic beauty of its language.
Holderlin's lyrics, Lyrische Gedichte, were edited by L. Uhland and G. Schwab in 182o; and his Samtliche Werke, with a biography, by C. T. Schwab (2 vols. 1846) ; also Dichtungen by K. Kostlin (Tubin gen, 1884), and (the best edition) Gesammelte Dichtu egen by B. Litz mann (2 vols. Stuttgart, 1897) . See also C. C. T. Litzmann, F. Hol derlins Leben (189o) ; A. Wilbrandt, Holderlin (2nd ed. 1891) ; C. Muller, Friedrich Holderlin, sein Leben and sein Dichten (Bremen, 1894) ; J. Claverio, La Jeunesse d'Holderlin jusqu'au roman d'Hy perion (1922) ; E. Lehmann, Holderlins Lyrik (Stuttgart, 1922) ; F. Sebass, Holderlin-Bibliographie (Munich, 1922) ; M. Montgomery, F. Holderlin and the German Neo-Hellenic Movement (Oxford, 1923, etc.) ; S. Zweig, Der Kampf mit dem Damon (1925).