Gottfried Keller Biography and List of WorksBooks by Gottfried Keller | Shop used books at Biblio.com The greatest German-Swiss writer of the late 19th century realist school. However, Keller wanted to become a painter. Of his works, Green Henry, a story of a failing artist, has been called by some critics the greatest Swiss novel. Keller was involved in the Swiss civil disputes of the time. He opposed the idea of a Swiss national literature, insisting that every writer should remain within his own language community, and regarded his own works as German literature.  Einer wilden Meeresbrandung hat das scöne Spiel geglichen;
Alles Laub war weisslich schimmernd nach Norosten hingestrichen.
Also streicht die alte Geige Pan der Alte laut und leise,
Unterrichtend seine Wälder in der alten Weltenweise. In den sieben Tönen schweift er unerschöpflich auf und nieder,
In den lieben alten Tönen, die umfassen alle Lieder. Und es lauchen still die jungen Dichter und die jungen Finken,
Kauernd in den dunklen Büschen sie die Melodien trinken.
(from 'Waldlied') Gottfried Keller was born in Zürich. His father was a lathe-worker who died when Keller was five years old. Keller attended Armenschule zum Brunnenturm Landknabeinstitut until he was 13, and then Industrieschule (1832-33). At the age of 15 he was expelled from the school, and forced to find an occupation. In 1834 he apprenticed himself to the landscape painters Peter Steiger and Rudolf Meyer (1837), and went to Munich to study painting at the Academy. After two years he returned to Zürich, abandoning art for writing in 1842. Keller published his first poems in 1846. A number of his early works were written in the manner of such liberal political poets as Herwegh and Freiligrath (1810-1876), who later became a strong admirer of Bismarck. Sponsored by the Zürich government from 1848 to 1850, he studied at Heidelberg where he became under the influence of the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, whose influence is seen in SIEBEN LEGENDEN (1872), treating the early period of the Christian era. Keller combines both Christian and pagan elements, giving his own more or less secularized view of religion. Between the years 1850 and 1855 Keller studied at the University of Berlin. Keller's first major work, the long autobiographical DER GRÜNE HEINRICH (Green Henry), appeared in 1854-55, and the revised edition in 1880. Green Henry is customarily identified as a Bildungsroman, in succession to the seminal work, Johan Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-1821, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship). Keller was strongly influenced by Goethe, but Green Henry has been placed rather in the company of Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (1895). Green Henry is partly autobiographical story of the frustration and defeat of an artist. The protagonist, Heinrich Lee, is called green because all of his boyish clothes were made from his father's green uniforms. Heinrich loses his father at an early age, he is fired from the school, and he studies painting in Munich. He finally discovers that he can never achieve more than a moderate competence as an artist. After his mother's death, Heinrich dies of shame for having impoverished her. In the revised version he lives on in dispiriting bureaucratic service. Keller himself hated the early version, written in a third-person narration, and burned it. He improved the later by using the first-person form, and tried to avoid excessively melodramatic scene in the end. "Je weniger aber ein seldwyler zu Hause was taugt, um so besser hält er sich sonderbarerweise, wenn er ausrückt, und ob sie einzeln oder in Kompanie ausziehen, wie z.B. in früheren Kriegen, so haben sie sich doch immer gut gehalten. Auch als Spekulant und Geschäftsmann hat schon manchen sich rüstig umgetan, wenn er nur erst aus dem warmen, sonnigen Tale herauskam, wo er nich gedieh."
(from Die Leute von Seldwyla, 1856-74) In 1855 Keller returned to Zürich and became a church secretary (1861-76). During his 15 years of service, Keller came to recognize the deepening antagonism between soulless capitalism and artistic individualism. Keller attacked the often-brutal capitalist development that transformed Swiss society, and supported the forces of liberalism. Keller's last novel, MARTIN SALANDER (1886), reflected this fear of an ever-growing gap between the spirit of business and the spirit of art. His other works include DIE LEUTE VON SELDWYLA (1856), a collection of humorous novellas, all set in the fictional town of Seldwyla, ZÜRICHER NOVELLEN (1878), and DAS SINNGEDICHT (1882). - Keller died in Zürich on July 15, 1890. For further reading: Gottfried Keller by Jeffrey L. Sammons (1998, in Encyclopedia of The Novel, vol. 1, ed. by Paul Schellinger); Gottfried Keller and His Critics by Richard R. Ruppel (1998); The Poetics of Scepticism by Erika Swales (1996); Nature, Science, Realism by Thomas L. Buckley (1995); Readers and Their Fiction in the Novels and Novellas of Gottfried Keller by Gail K. Hart (1989); Gottfried Keller by Richard R. Ruppel (1988); Artistische Schrift: Studien zur Kompositionskunst Gottfried Kellers by Winfried Menninghaus (1982); Gottfried Keller: Das gedichtete Leben by Gerhard Kaiser (1981); Gottfried Keller by Adolf Muschg (1977); Wirklichkeit und Kunst in Gottfried Kellers Roman 'Der Grüne Heinrich' by Hartmut Laufhütte (1969); Gottfried Keller by James Lindsay (1968) Free shipping on select books. No minimum purchase
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