Otto Roquette (April 19, 1824 – March 18, 1896) was a German author.

Life and work

Roquette was born in

Krotoschin Krotoszyn (german: Krotoschin, yi, קראטאשין ''Krotoshin'') is a town in west-central Poland with 30,010 inhabitants . It has been part of the Greater Poland Voivodeship since 1999; it was within Kalisz Voivodeship (1975–1998), Kali ...

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...

Province of Posen The Province of Posen (german: Provinz Posen, pl, Prowincja Poznańska) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1848 to 1920. Posen was established in 1848 following the Greater Poland Uprising as a successor to the Grand Duchy of Posen, w ...

. The son of a district court councillor, he first went to Bromberg (modern

Bydgoszcz Bydgoszcz ( , , ; german: Bromberg) is a city in northern Poland, straddling the meeting of the River Vistula with its left-bank tributary, the Brda. With a city population of 339,053 as of December 2021 and an urban agglomeration with more ...

) in 1834, and from 1846 to 1850 studied

Philology Philology () is the study of language in oral and writing, written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defin ...

and History in Heidelberg, Berlin, and Halle. After tours in Switzerland and Italy, he moved to in Berlin in 1852. He became a teacher in Dresden in 1853. He returned to Berlin in 1857 and in 1862 became a professor of literary history at the War Academy until he changed to the Vocational Academy (now the

Berlin Institute of Technology The Technical University of Berlin (official name both in English and german: link=no, Technische Universität Berlin, also known as TU Berlin and Berlin Institute of Technology) is a public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was ...

) in 1867. In 1868 he joined the Vandalia-Teutonia Berlin. From 1869 he taught at the Polytechnic in Darmstadt (now TU Darmstadt). In 1893 he was named to the

Geheimrat ''Geheimrat'' was the title of the highest advising officials at the Imperial, royal or princely courts of the Holy Roman Empire, who jointly formed the ''Geheimer Rat'' reporting to the ruler. The term remained in use during subsequent monarchic r ...

. Roquette befriended the German author

Paul Heyse Paul Johann Ludwig von Heyse (; 15 March 1830 – 2 April 1914) was a distinguished German writer and translator. A member of two important literary societies, the ''Tunnel über der Spree'' in Berlin and ''Die Krokodile'' in Munich, he wrote no ...

and, like Heyse, was a member of the literary group "Rütli". Roquette's pseudo-romantic and epigonic lyric poetry and his fairy tale-laden epic verse is representative of ''Butzenscheibenlyric''. From 1850 on, his works were extremely popular and especially beloved in conservative circles. His fashionable post-revolution poetry was a deliberate departure from the politically tinged verse of the pre-March era. His celebrated verse-epic on themes of love, wine, and youth, ''Waldmeisters Brautfahrt,'' first appeared in 1851 and enjoyed sensational success for a book at that time – appearing in more than 50 editions over thirty years. Roquette's work was popular with some

Lieder In Western classical music tradition, (, plural ; , plural , ) is a term for setting poetry to classical music to create a piece of polyphonic music. The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German, but among English and French sp ...

composers. His 1851 poem ''Noch ist die blühende, goldene Zeit'' was fit to a well-known folk tune in 1863 by the musician

Wilhelm Baumgartner Wilhelm may refer to: People and fictional characters * William Charles John Pitcher, costume designer known professionally as "Wilhelm" * Wilhelm (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname Other uses * Mount ...

. Roquette was also a novelist, playwright, literary historian and autobiographer Roquette died in

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...

. Later generations found Roquette's work to be predominantly shallow and of little artistic value, and it is virtually forgotten today.

Works

* 1850: Walpurgis * 1851: Orion * 1851: Waldmeisters Brautfahrt (Verse-Epic) * 1852: Liederbuch (under the title "Poems" 1859) * 1852: Der Tag von St. Jakob * 1853: Das Reich der Träume * 1854: Herr Heinrich * 1855: Haus Haidekuckuck (Verse-Epic) * 1855: Das Hünengrab * 1858: Heinrich Falk (Novel) * 1959: Erzählungen * 1860: Leben und Dichten Johann Christian Günther's (Scholarly work, biography) * 1862: Neue Erzählungen * 1864: Susanne * 1866: Die Legende von der heiligen Elisabeth (Libretto to an Oratorio by

Franz Liszt Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...

) * 1867: Luginsland * 1867: Pierrot * 1867–76: Dramatische Dichtungen * 1868: Krachmost * 1869: Das Paradies * 1870: Novellen * 1871–75: Welt und Haus (Novella) * 1873: Gevatter Tod * 1873: Rhampsinit * 1873: Die Schlangenkönigin * 1877: Euphrosyne (Novel) * 1878: Das Buchstabirbuch der Leidenschaft (Novel) * 1878: Im Hause der Väter (Novel) * 1879: Geschichte der Deutschen Dichtung von den ältesten Denkmälern bis auf die Neuzeit (Scholarly work, literary History) * 1879: Die Prophetenschule (Novel) * 1883: Friedrich Preller * 1884: Neues Novellenbuch * 1884: Das Haus Eberhard * 1884: Unterwegs * 1884: Tage des Waldlebens * 1884: Baum im Odenwald * 1887: Große und kleine Leute in Alt-Weimar * 1890: Frühlingsstimmen * 1890: Des Lebens Mummenschanz * 1892: Ul von Haslach * 1894: Siebzig Jahre (Autobiography) * 1895: Sonderlinge * 1896: Krethi und Plethi * 1896: Von Tag zu Tage (posthumous)

References

*Ludwig Julius Fränkel: Roquette, Otto. In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 53, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1907, pp. 469–478. *Ursula Perkow: ''Wie Otto Roquette zum Dichter wurde. Mit Waldmeister aus Handschuhsheim auf dem Weg zum Ruhm''. In: Jahrbuch des Stadtteilvereins Handschuhsheim, Heidelberg 1997, pp. 88–95
Internet-Ausgabe

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Roquette, Otto 1824 births 1896 deaths People from Krotoszyn People from the Province of Posen German male writers