Clemens Brentano

BRENTANO, Clemens. b. Ehrenbreitstein, 9 September 1778; d. Aschaffenburg, 28 July 1842. He was brought up in Frankfurt (Main), where his father was a merchant, Koblenz and Mannheim. Among his brothers and sisters Bettine (who married the poet Achim von Arnim) is known as a writer. He studied finance in Halle, medicine in Jena and philosophy in Göttingen, but never took an examination. 1803 he married the writer Sophie Mereau and lived with her in Marburg. Later they moved to Heidelberg, where Sophie died in 1806. A year later Brentano married Auguste Bußmann (divorced in 1812). After 1809 Brentano lived in Berlin, and from 1818 in Dülmen (Westphalia). In the 1820s he changed his residence...