GORRES, JOSEPH VON

born Jan. 25, 1776, Koblenz, archbishopric of Trier died Jan. 29, 1848, Munich, Bavaria in full Johann Joseph Von Grres German Romantic writer who was also one of the leading figures of Roman Catholic political journalism. Grres was sympathetic to the ideals of the French Revolution and published a republican journal, Das rote Blatt ("The Red Page"; renamed Rbezahl), in 1799. After an unsuccessful visit to Paris in 1799 as a political negotiator for the Rhenish provinces, he became disillusioned and withdrew from active politics. He taught natural science in Koblenz and then lectured at Heidelberg (1806-07), where he became acquainted with the leaders of German Romanticism, particularly Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. With them he edited the Zeitung fr Einsiedler ("Journal for Hermits," renamed Trst Einsamkeit; "Consolation Solitude"), which became the organ for the Heidelberg Romantics. His interest in German folk literature awakened by this contact with the Romantic movement, he rediscovered and popularized old German literature in his Die teutschen Volksbcher (1807; "The German Folkbooks"), a collection of late medieval narrative prose. He also expressed the characteristically Romantic fascination with the Orient in his Mythengeschichte der asiatischen Welt (1810; "Mythical Stories of the Asiatic World"). In 1808 Grres returned to Koblenz, where he lived quietly until the national struggle against Napoleon led him to found the newspaper Rheinische Merkur (1814). Considered to be the most influential journal of the time, it turned first against Napoleon and, after his fall, against the reactionary politics of the German states, which led to its suppression in 1816. With the publication of his pamphlet "Teutschland und die Revolution" (1819; "Germany and the Revolution"), he was forced to flee to Strasbourg and to Switzerland, where he lived in poverty for several years. In 1824 he formally returned to the Roman Catholic church and in 1827 became professor of history at the University of Munich, where he formed a circle of liberal Roman Catholic scholars. A vigorous Catholic spokesman in several controversies, he wrote the monumental Christliche Mystik, 4 vol. (1836-42; "Christian Mysticism"). In 1876 the Grres Society was founded in his honour to advance Roman Catholic studies.