1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hartmann, Moritz

HARTMANN, MORITZ (1821–1872), German poet and author, was born of Jewish parentage at Duschnik in Bohemia on the 15th of October 1821. Having studied philosophy at Prague and Vienna, he travelled in south Germany, Switzerland and Italy, and became tutor in a family at Vienna. In 1845 he proceeded to Leipzig and there published a volume of patriotic poems, Kelch und Schwert (1845). Fearing in consequence prosecution at the hands of the authorities, he abided events in France and Belgium, and after issuing in Leipzig Neuere Gedichte (1846) returned home, suffered a short term of imprisonment, and in 1848 was elected member for Leitmeritz in the short-lived German parliament at Frankfort-on-Main, in which he sided with the extreme Radical party. He took part with Robert Blum (1807–1848) in the revolution of that year in Vienna, but contrived to escape to London and Paris. In 1849 he published Reimchronik des Pfaffen Mauritius, a satirical political poem in the style of Heine. During the Crimean War (1854–56) Hartmann was correspondent of the Kölnische Zeitung, settled in 1860 in Geneva as a teacher of German literature and history, became in 1865 editor of the Freya in Stuttgart and in 1868 a member of the staff of the Neue Freie Presse in Vienna. He died at Oberdöbling near Vienna on the 13th of May 1872.

Among Hartmann’s numerous works may be especially mentioned Der Krieg um den Wald (1850), a novel, the scene of which is laid in Bohemia; Tagebuch aus Languedoc und Provence (1852); Erzählungen eines Unsteten (1858); and Die letzten Tage eines Königs (1867). His idyll, Adam und Eva (1851), and his collection of poetical tales, Schatten (1851), show that the author possessed but little talent for epic narrative. Hartmann’s poems are often lacking in genuine poetical feeling, but the love of liberty which inspired them, and the fervour, ease and clearness of their style compensated for these shortcomings and gained for him a wide circle of admirers.

His Gesammelte Werke were published in 10 vols, in 1873–1874, and a selection of his Gedichte in the latter year. The first two volumes of a new edition of his works contain a biography of Hartmann by O. Wittner. See also E. Ziel, “Moritz Hartmann” (in Unsere Zeit, 1872); A. Marchand, Les Poètes lyriques de l’Autriche (1892); Brandes, Das junge Deutschland (Charlottenburg, 1899).