BRENTANO, CLEMENS

born Sept. 9, 1778, Ehrenbreitstein, near Koblenz died July 28, 1842, Aschaffenburg, Bavaria poet, novelist, and dramatist, one of the founders of the Heidelberg Romantic school, the second phase of German Romanticism, which placed its emphasis on German folklore and history. Brentano's mother, Maximiliane Brentano, was J.W. von Goethe's friend in 177274, and his sister, Bettina von Arnim, was a correspondent of Goethe's. As a student in Jena, he became acquainted with Friedrich von Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck, the leaders of the earlier phase of Romanticism. Giving up his studies, he traveled throughout Germany. Settling temporarily in Heidelberg, he met Achim von Arnim, with whom he published the collection of German folk songs Des Knaben Wunderhorn (180508), which became an important inspiration to later German lyric poets. Among Brentano's most successful works are his fairy tales, particularly Gockel, Hinkel and Gackeleia (1838). His well-known Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schnen Annerl (1817; Eng. trans., The Story of the Just Casper and Fair Annie) is a brilliantly executed short story in which themes from German folklore are used to sustain the fantasy atmosphere of the story. His other major works include the dramas Ponce de Leon (1801) and Die Grndung Prags (1815; The Foundation of Prague) and the novel Godwi (1801), which forms an important link between the older and the newer Romanticism. Brentano was known for his great wealth of imagination and the extraordinarily musical quality of his writing. His personal life, too, reflected the atmosphere associated with the German Romantics. Emotionally unstable and given to extremes of character and mood, he led a troubled and unsettled life. In 1817 he suffered a severe depression and turned to Roman Catholic mysticism, spending six years in a monastery.