Early life Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was born on 20 March 1770 in
Lauffen am Neckar, then a part of the
Duchy of Württemberg. He was the first child of Johanna Christiana Heyn (1748—1828) and Heinrich Friedrich Hölderlin (1736—1772). His father, the manager of a church estate, died when he was two years old, and Friedrich and his sister, Heinrike, were brought up by their mother. In 1774, his mother moved the family to
Nürtingen when she married Johann Christoph Gok. Two years later, Johann Gok became the
burgomaster of Nürtingen, and Hölderlin's half-brother, Karl Christoph Friedrich Gok, was born. In 1779, Johann Gok died at the age of 30. Hölderlin later expressed how his childhood was scarred by grief and sorrow, writing in a 1799 correspondence with his mother:
Education Hölderlin began his education in 1776, and his mother planned for him to join the Lutheran church. In preparation for entrance exams into a monastery, he received additional instruction in
Greek,
Hebrew,
Latin and
rhetoric, starting in 1782. During this time, he struck a friendship with
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, who was five years Hölderlin's junior. On account of the age difference, Schelling was "subjected to universal teasing" and Hölderlin protected him from abuse by older students. Also during this time, Hölderlin began playing the piano and developed an interest in
travel literature through exposure to
Georg Forster's
A Voyage Round the World. In 1784, Hölderlin entered the Lower Monastery in
Denkendorf and started his formal training for entry into the Lutheran ministry. At Denkendorf, he discovered the poetry of
Friedrich Schiller and
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, and took tentative steps in composing his own verses. The earliest known letter of Hölderlin's is dated 1784 and addressed to his former tutor Nathanael Köstlin. In the letter, Hölderlin hinted at his wavering faith in Christianity and anxiety about his mental state. Hölderlin progressed to the
Higher Monastery at
Maulbronn in 1786. There he fell in love with Luise Nast, the daughter of the monastery's administrator, and began to doubt his desire to join the ministry; he composed
Mein Vorsatz in 1787, in which he states his intention to attain "
Pindar's light" and reach "Klopstock-heights". In 1788, he read Schiller's
Don Carlos on Luise Nast's recommendation. Hölderlin later wrote a letter to Schiller regarding
Don Carlos, stating: "It won't be easy to study
Carlos in a rational way, since he was for so many years the magic cloud in which the good god of my youth enveloped me so that I would not see too soon the pettiness and barbarity of the world." (pictured) from 1788 to 1793. In October 1788, Hölderlin began his
theological studies at the
Tübinger Stift, where his fellow students included
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
Isaac von Sinclair and Schelling. It has been speculated that it was Hölderlin who, during their time in Tübingen, brought to Hegel's attention the ideas of
Heraclitus regarding the
unity of opposites, which Hegel would later develop into his concept of
dialectics. In 1789, Hölderlin broke off his engagement with Luise Nast, writing to her: "I wish you happiness if you choose one more worthy than me, and then surely you will understand that you could never have been happy with your morose, ill-humoured, and sickly friend," and expressed his desire to transfer out and study law but succumbed to pressure from his mother to remain in the Stift. Along with Hegel and Schelling and his other peers during his time in the Stift, Hölderlin was an enthusiastic supporter of the
French Revolution. Although he rejected the violence of the
Reign of Terror, his commitment to the principles of 1789 remained intense. Hölderlin's republican sympathies influenced many of his most famous works such as
Hyperion and
The Death of Empedocles.
Career After he obtained his magister degree in 1793, his mother expected him to enter the ministry. However, Hölderlin found no satisfaction in the prevailing Protestant theology, and worked instead as a private tutor. In 1794, he met
Friedrich Schiller and
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and began writing his
epistolary novel Hyperion. In 1795 he enrolled for a while at the
University of Jena where he attended
Johann Gottlieb Fichte's classes and met
Novalis. There is a seminal manuscript, dated 1797, now known as the
Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus ("
The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism"). Although the document is in Hegel's handwriting, it is thought to have been written by Hegel, Schelling, Hölderlin, or an unknown fourth person. As a tutor in
Frankfurt am Main from 1796 to 1798, he fell in love with
Susette Gontard, the wife of his employer, the banker Jakob Gontard. The feeling was mutual, and this relationship became the most important in Hölderlin's life. After a while, their affair was discovered, and Hölderlin was harshly dismissed. He then lived in
Homburg from 1798 to 1800, meeting Susette in secret once a month and attempting to establish himself as a poet, but his life was plagued by financial worries and he had to accept a small allowance from his mother. His mandated separation from Susette Gontard also worsened Hölderlin's doubts about himself and his value as a poet; he wished to transform German culture but did not have the influence he needed. From 1797 to 1800, he produced three versions—all unfinished—of a tragedy in the Greek manner,
The Death of Empedocles, and composed odes in the vein of the Ancient Greeks
Alcaeus and
Asclepiades of Samos.
Mental breakdown In the late 1790s, Hölderlin was diagnosed with
schizophrenia, then referred to as "
hypochondrias", a condition that would worsen after his last meeting with Susette Gontard in 1800. After a sojourn in
Stuttgart at the end of 1800, likely to work on his translations of
Pindar, he found further employment as a tutor in
Hauptwyl, Switzerland, and then at the household of the
Hamburg consul in
Bordeaux, in 1802. His stay in the French city is celebrated in
Andenken ("Remembrance"), one of his greatest poems. In a few months, however, he returned home on foot via
Paris (where he saw authentic Greek sculptures, as opposed to Roman or modern copies, for the only time in his life). He arrived at his home in Nürtingen both physically and mentally exhausted in late 1802, and learned that Gontard had died from
influenza in Frankfurt at around the same time. At his home in Nürtingen with his mother, a devout Christian, Hölderlin melded his Hellenism with Christianity and sought to unite ancient values with modern life; in his elegy
Brod und Wein ("Bread and Wine"), Christ is seen as sequential to the Greek gods, bringing bread from the earth and wine from
Dionysus. After two years in Nürtingen, Hölderlin was taken to the court of Homburg by Isaac von Sinclair, who found a sinecure for him as court librarian, but in 1805 von Sinclair was denounced as a conspirator and tried for treason. Hölderlin was in danger of being tried too but was declared mentally unfit to stand trial. On 11 September 1806, he was delivered into the clinic at
Tübingen run by Dr.
Johann Heinrich Ferdinand von Autenrieth, the inventor of a mask for the prevention of screaming in the mentally ill. ) was Hölderlin's place of residence from 1807 until his death in 1843. The clinic was attached to the
University of Tübingen and the poet
Justinus Kerner, then a student of medicine, was assigned to look after Hölderlin. The following year Hölderlin was discharged as incurable and given three years to live, but was taken in by the carpenter Ernst Zimmer (a cultured man, who had read
Hyperion) and given a room in his house in Tübingen, which had been a tower in the old city wall with a view across the
Neckar river. The tower would later be named the
Hölderlinturm, after the poet's 36-year-long stay in the room. His residence in the building made up the second half of his life and is also referred to as the
Turmzeit (or "Tower period").
Later life and death In the tower, Hölderlin continued to write poetry of a simplicity and formality quite unlike what he had been writing up to 1805. As time went on he became a minor tourist attraction and was visited by curious travelers and autograph-hunters. Often he would play the piano or spontaneously write short verses for such visitors, pure in versification but almost empty of affect—although a few of these (such as the famous
Die Linien des Lebens ["The Lines of Life"], which he wrote out for his carer Zimmer on a piece of wood) have been set to music by many composers. Hölderlin's own family did not financially support him but petitioned successfully for his upkeep to be paid by the state. His mother and sister never visited him, and his stepbrother did so only once. His mother died in 1828: his sister and stepbrother quarreled over the inheritance, arguing that too large a share had been allotted to Hölderlin, and unsuccessfully tried to have the will overturned in court. Neither of them attended his funeral in 1843 nor did his childhood friends, Hegel (as he had died roughly a decade prior) and Schelling, who had long since ignored him; the Zimmer family were his only mourners. His inheritance, including the patrimony left to him by his father when he was two, had been kept from him by his mother and was untouched and continually accruing interest. He died a rich man, but did not know it. ==Works==