Nikolaus Lenau Commemorative Plaque

Nikolaus Lenau Commemorative Plaque

Auböckplatz 11


Place

Life and Work

Nikolaus Lenau (1802 - 1850)

Nikolaus Franz Niembsch, Noble of Strehlenau, who later called himself Lenau, was born in Csatád in the Hungarian Banat (now Romania). He grew up with his grandparents in Stockerau, and was financially independent due to his family's inheritance. He studied medicine, law, philosophy and other subjects, but never graduated. He wrote over 500 poems, including the Reed Songs (Schilflieder), Forest Songs (Waldlieder), The Three Gypsies (Die drei Zigeuner), Heath Pictures  (Heidebilder), and Heaven’s Grief (Himmelstrauer). They are an expressions of the melancholy and the so-called Weltschmerz, or mood of world weariness of the times.

In 1832, Lenau traveled to America, but returned to Europe a year later disappointed, and wrote critical poems about the removal of the Native Americans (The Native American Train (Der Indianerzug)) and the American capitalism (Farewell (Abschied)). His epic poems are still part of world literature today: Faust (1836/40), Savonarola (1837), and the heretical drama The Albigensians (Die Albigenser,1842). After a stroke 1844, he suffered from mental blackouts and died in 1850 in Oberdöbling, then a suburb of Vienna.

Peter Härtling wrotes about Lenau’s life in his novel Niembsch or The Stagnation (Niembsch oder Der Stillstand,1964).

Reference to Ischl

Between 1830 and 1840, Nikolaus Lenau spent many summers in Gmunden and Ischl. Here he was also able to be closer to his unhappy love Sophie von Löwenthal, wife of the writer Max von Löwenthal. The correspondence with her is not only a testimony to an unrequited, tragic love, but also an expression of the world weariness that was typical of the time.

An den Ischler Himmel im Sommer 1838 - ein Scherz

Himmel! Seit vierzehn Tagen unablässig

Bist du so gehässig und regennässig,

Bald ein Schütten in Strömen, bald Geträufel;

Himmel, oh Himmel es hole dich der Teufel!

[...]

– Nikolaus Lenau –