Wilhelm Waiblinger

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Wilhelm Waiblinger (November 21, 1804 - January 17 or 30, 1830) was a German romantic poet, mostly remembered today in connection with Friedrich Hölderlin. He was a student at the seminary of Tübingen in the 1820s, when Hölderlin, already mentally ill, lived there as a recluse in a carpenter's house. Waiblinger, who used to visit the older poet and take him out for walks, left an account of Hölderlin's life then, Hölderlins Leben, Dichtung und Wahnsinn ("Hölderlin's life, poetry and madness"). In the late 1820s, Waiblinger left Tübingen for Italy, dying in Rome at the age of 25.

In his short story "Im Presselschen Gartenhaus" ("In Pressel’s Garden-house", 1913), Hermann Hesse gives a touching picture of a visit to Hölderlin by Waiblinger and the poet Eduard Mörike, both young theology students in Tübingen, like Hölderlin himself decades before.

[edit] Bibliography

Lee Byron Jennings: An Early German Vampire Tale: Wilhelm Waiblinger's "Olura" (first-published in 1986). In: Suevica. Beiträge zur schwäbischen Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte 9 (2001/2002). Stuttgart 2004 [2005], S. 295-306.