1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mörike, Eduard Friedrich

MÖRIKE, EDUARD FRIEDRICH (1804–1875), German poet, was born at Ludwigsburg on the 8th of September 1804. In 1834 he was appointed pastor of Kleversulzbach near Weinsberg, and in 1851 became professor of literature at the Katharinenstift in Stuttgart. This office he held until his retirement in 1866; but he continued to live at Stuttgart until his death on the 4th of June 1875. Mörike is the most lyrically gifted of all the poets belonging to the so-called Swabian school which gathered round Uhland. His poems, Gedichte (1838; 22nd ed., 1905), are mostly lyrics, graceful in style, original in conception, often humorous, but expressed in simple and natural language. He also wrote a somewhat fantastic Idylle vom Bodensee, oder Fischer Martin und die Glockendiebe (1846; 2nd ed., 1856), and published a collection of hymns, odes, elegies and idylls of the Greeks and Romans, entitled Klassische Blumenlese (1840), and several novels and narratives, among the former Maler Nolten (1832; 6th ed., 1901), which enjoyed great popularity.

Mörike’s Gesammelte Schriften were first published in 4 vols. (in 1878); the most recent editions are those edited by R. Krauss (6 vols., 1905), and the Volksausgabe, published by Göschen (4 vols., 1905). Selections from his literary remains were published by R. Krauss in Eduard Mörike als Gelegenheitsdichter (1895), and his correspondence with Hermann Kurz, Moritz von Schwind, and Theodor Storm, by J. Bachtold (1885–1891); an edition of Mörike’s Ausgewählte Briefe, in 2 vols., appeared 1903–1904. See F. Notter, Eduard Mörike (1875); and H. Fischer, Eduard Mörike (1881); K. Fischer, E. Mörike (1901); H. Maync, E. Mörike (1902); K. Fischer, Mörikes künstlerisches Schaffen und dichterische Schöpfungen (1903).