SIMROCK, Karl (1802-1876), German poet and student of mediaeval literature, was born on the 28th August 1802 at Bonn, where his father was a musicseller.
He studied law at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, and in 1823 entered the Prussian civil service, from which he was expelled in 1830 for having written a poem in praise of the July revolution. Afterwards he was permitted to lecture at the university of Bonn, and in 1850 he was made a professor of Old German literature. He died on the 18th July 1876....
Simrock established his reputation by his excellent modern rendering of the Nibelungenlied (1827), and of the works of Walther von der Vogelweide (1833). Among other works translated by him into the German of to-day were the Arme Heinrich of Hartmann von Aue (1830), the Parzival and Titurel of Wolfram von Eschenbach (1842), the Tristan of Gottfried of Strasburg (1852), the Edda, Beowulf, and Heliand. In the Heldenbuch (1843-49) he offered a complete representation of the heroic legends of Germany, partly by means of translations, partly by means of independent poems. Before the publication of this work he had given evidence of an original poetical faculty in Wieland der Schmied (1835); and in 1844 he issued a volume of Gedichte in which there are many good lyrics, romances, and ballads. In 1850 appeared Lauda Sion, and in 1857 the Deutsche Sionsharfe, collections of Old German sacred poetry. Of his republications the most popular and the most valuable were the Deutschen Volksbücher, of which fifty-five were printed between 1839 and 1867. His best contribution to antiquarian science was his Handbuch der deutschen Mythologie (1853-55). At an early stage of his career Simrock took a high place among students of Shakespeare by his Quellen des Shakespeare in Novellen, Märchen, und Sagen (1831); and afterwards he translated Shakespeare’s poems and a considerable number of his dramas. Another important book was Novellenschatz der Italiener (1832). Among the rest of his works may be mentioned Die Rheinsagen, Das malerische und romantische Rheinland, and his Deutschen Kriegslieder.
See Hocker, Karl Simrock (1877).
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