Adelbert von Chamisso Biography

Dromo's Den

CHAMISSO, Adelbert von (1781-1838). An eminent German poet and naturalist. Although born in Champagne, France, he in childhood shared the exile of his parents, fleeing from the terrors of the French Revolution. In 1796 he became a page of the Queen of Prussia, and though his parents afterward returned to France, education had made Germany more congenial to his poetic nature and he identified himself wholly with his adopted country. In 1798 he entered the army as ensign and in 1801 became lieutenant. He showed his interest in the military calling by two technical treatises published in 1798 and 1799. Already he had joined a romantic brotherhood, which included several young men destined to fame, Varnhagen, Hitzig, De la Motte-Fouqué, and others. He studied Homer diligently, translated much into German, and in 1803 essayed a Faust, the only one of his early poems preserved in his Works. He also eoöperated as editor of the Musenalmanach (1804-07). In 1806 he resigned from the army and went to France, hoping to secure a position as teacher in the gymnasium at Napoléonville; disappointed in this, he spent several years in futile and discontented Bohemian wanderings. He was in France again in 1810, when he undertook to turn into French Schlegel's noted Lectures on Art and Literature, staying with him and Madame de Staël at Chaumont, and later following her to Coppet, where her relations with Jean de Rocca brought him to his senses. Here he began to study botany under Aug. de Staël, and in 1812 he matriculated as a student of medicine in Berlin. In the next year, during the War of Liberation, he retired to Kunersdorf, and while there wrote his most noteworthy prose work, Peter Schlemihl, a wonderful tale of the loss of a shadow by compact with the devil-an idea familiar to folklore and already developed by Goethe in his Märchen, and by Körner in his Teufel von Salamanca, but here given its enduring and classic form. He took part in Captain Kotzebue's Russian polar expedition (1815-18), and in 1835 published in a Journal an account of it which in style and power of description is among the classics of travel. He returned to Berlin in 1819, and was appointed assistant custodian of the botanical garden. While here he married Antoine Piaste. Having recovered an indemnity of 100,000 francs for his French estates, he visited Paris in 1825. His greatest literary activity dates from his return, when he settled down to domestic life and peaceful production stimulated by the genial companionship of his wife, to whose inspiration we owe especially the charming poetic cycles Frauen-Liebe and -Leben, and Lebens-Lieder und -Bilder. He also made an admirable translation of the Song of Thrym, from the Edda, and many versions of poems in other languages. From 1832 till his death he was editor of the Musenalmanach, which he made an annual of much literary importance. His poetry is rather small in amount, but widely popular in Germany. Some of his lyrics, ballads, and romances rank among the finest in German literature, especially Das Schloss Boncourt, Die alte Wasehfrau, and Die Kreuzschau. His international reputation rests on the many translations of his Peter Schlemihl. His collected Works fill 6 vols. (Leipzig, 1836-39; 6th ed., Berlin, 1874), containing also his Biography by Hitzig and his Letters. Consult also: Fulda, Chamisso and seine Zeit (Leipzig, 1881); Du Bois-Reymond, Chamisso als Naturforscher (Leipzig, 1889); Kossmann, Der deutsche Musenalmamach, 1833-1839 (The Hague, 1909); and Geiger, Aus Chamissos Frühlingzeit (Berlin, 1905).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. V (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 23.