Author: KOERNER, Theodore
Biography:
KOERNER, Theodor (1791-1813: NBG)
Karl Theodor Körner was born in Dresden, Saxony, Germany, on 23 Sept. 1791. His father Christian Gottfried Körner was a lifelong friend of Schiller (q.v.) and wrote the first biography of him (1812-15). In 1811 Theodor rejected his father’s plans for his higher education in favour of life as a dramatist and poet in Vienna, where on the strength of his tragedy Zriny he was made the resident dramatist of the Burgtheater in 1813. Shortly afterwards, however, in Mar. 1813 he joined Lutzow’s corps and went to fight the French. As a soldier he wrote what became his most popular poems, patriotic songs and celebrations of military glory. On the eve of the battle of Rosenberg he composed his “Song of the Sword,” and a few hours later fell in battle on 26 Aug. 1813. He was buried at the nearby village of Wehlen, where his monument became a place of pilgrimage. His father had a volume of his battlefield poems published in 1814 under the title “Lyre and Sword.” The anonymous translation of his tragedy Rosamunde (1812) in 1830 appears to have been the first book-length translation of any of his works into English. (NBG 28, cols. 23-5; Oxford Companion to German Literature [1976]) HJ