HÖLDERLIN, Johann Christian Friedrich (1770- 1843), German poet, was born March 29, 1770, at Lauffen on the Neckar. His mother removing, after a second marriage, to Nürtingen, he began his education at the classical school there, where Schelling was his schoolfellow and playmate. He was destined by his relations for the church, and with this view was later admitted to the free schools of Denkendorf and Maulbronn. At the age of eighteen, already an excellent classical scholar, he was sent to the university of Tübingen, where, however, he showed no inclination to the study of theology. He was already the writer of occasional verses, and had begun to sketch his first version of Hyperion, when he was introduced in 1793 to Schiller, and obtained through him the post of tutor to the young son of Frau von Kalb. A year later he left this situation to attend Fichte’s lectures, and to become a disciple of Schiller in Jena. Schiller recognized in the young poet something of his own style of genius, and encouraged his early literary attempts by sending some of them to Goethe, and by superintending the publication of others in the Thalia and Horen. In 1796 Hölderlin obtained the post of tutor to the three young children of a banker named Gontard in Frankfort. Gontard’s beautiful and gifted wife is the Diotima of Hölderlin’s Hyperion. For this lady he conceived a foolish and hopeless passion; and she became at once his inspiration and his ruin. At the end of two years, during which time the first volume of Hyperion was published (1797), some kind of crisis appears to have occurred in their friendship, for the unhappy young poet suddenly left Frankfort and the Gontard family; but whether he was dismissed by the indignant husband of Diotima, or was impelled by his own better ...