Theodor Storm
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Hans Theodor Woldsen Storm (September 14, 1817 in Husum, Schleswig-Holstein, then Danish, today in Germany - July 4, 1888 in Hademarschen, Germany) studied and practiced law in Schleswig-Holstein and - emigrated under Danish rule - to Thuringia. He also wrote a number of stories, poems and novellas. His two most well-known works are the novellas Immensee (1849) and The Dykemaster (Der Schimmelreiter), first published in April 1888 in the Deutsche Rundschau. Other published works include a volume of his poems (1852), the novella Pole Poppenspäler (1874) and the novella Aquis submersus (1877).
Analysis
Theodor Storm, like Friedrich Hebbel, is a child of the North Sea Plain, but while in Hebbel's verse there is hardly any direct reference to his native landscape, Storm again and again sings its chaste beauty - and while Hebbel could find a home away from his native heath, Storm clung to it with a jealous love.
He was born in Husum (‘die graue Stadt am grauen Meer’: ‘the grey town by the grey sea’) on the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein of well-to-do parents. While still a student of law, he published a first volume of verse together with the brothers Tycho and Theodor Mommsen.
His favorite poets were Joseph von Eichendorff and Eduard Mörike, and the influence of the former is plainly discernible even in Storm's later verse. Storm left his mother in 1851 and did not return until 1864, after Schleswig-Holstein had become German. During a summer visit to Baden-Baden in 1864, where he had been invited by his friend, the author and painter Ludwig Pietsch, he made the acquaintance of the great Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. They exchanged letters and sent each other copies of their works over a number of years.
