Leopold Schefer


Leopold Schefer, German poet, novelist, and composer, was born in a small town in Upper Lusatia, the only child of a poor country doctor.

Biography

Leopold Schefer was educated, privately, by his parents, later on by the principal of the Muskau primary school, Andreas Tamm, afterwards in a small private school of the former hofmeister of the local Earl of Callenberg, Johann Justus Röhde. From 1799 up to 1805 he attended the secondary school at Bautzen. During this time he started writing diaries, poems, and compositions, the last under the influence of his teacher Johann Samuel Petri. After that he returned to Muskau, helping his widowed mother, while writing and composing.
During Napoleon's failed campaign in Russia in 1812, Schefer was appointed manager of the big estates of his newly-won friend, Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, doing well under hard circumstances until 1816. The prince, recognizing the literary abilities of his friend, encouraged his early poetical efforts. Having visited England together with Pückler for studying landscape gardens, Schefer studied composition under Antonio Salieri in Vienna from 1816–17, and travelled to Italy, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, and Turkey. Schefer returned in 1819 to Muskau, where he remained for all his life, married, fathering one son and four daughters, due to his literary success in easy - after the lost German revolution 1848/49 in poor - circumstances, following his literary pursuits until his death in 1862.

Works

Schefer wrote a large number of novels, short novels, and narratives which appeared mostly in literary almanacs. Some of his novels have been published in English, as e.g. Künstlerehe.
Schefer was well known for his novels and their observative power, but even more for a single volume of poems, Laienbrevier. These, owing to their warmth of feeling, keen psychology, and descriptions of the beauties of nature, at once established his fame as a poet. This vein he followed in later years with the poems Vigilien, Der Weltpriester, and Hausreden. Encouraged by his friend, the poet Max Waldau, he published Hafis in Hellas and Koran der Liebe containing with their glowing descriptions of the East love poetry of a realistic and high order. But, due to his pantheistic beliefs, his poetry and novels were barred from the curricula of the Prussian elementary and secondary schools, which resulted in his being forgotten after 1910.
On the occasion of Schefer's 222nd birthday on July 30, 2006, a whole day was devoted to several of Bad Muskau's events as part of the Lusatian Music Summer, above all to his compositional oeuvre.

Selected publications

There are no studies about Schefer in English, but consult Bettina Clausen and Lars Clausen, 1985.

Publications during his lifetime