author
Nicolaus Lenau
1802–1850
A major voice of Austrian Romantic poetry, he is remembered for deeply musical, melancholy verse shaped by longing, restlessness, and personal despair. His poems and longer works helped make him one of the most distinctive German-language poets of the 19th century.
1 Audiobook
Mishka
by Nicolaus Lenau
About the author
Born in 1802 at Csatád in the Kingdom of Hungary, in the Habsburg monarchy, Nicolaus Lenau wrote in German and became an important Austrian poet of the Romantic era. He studied in Vienna and also tried law and medicine, but literature pulled him more strongly than any profession.
Lenau is especially known for lyrical poems filled with sadness, nature, and inner conflict. Reference works describe his writing as deeply melancholy and pessimistic, and they often single out works such as Faust and Don Juan alongside his lyric poetry.
His life was marked by instability and periods of emotional suffering, and he died in 1850 near Vienna. That troubled inner life left a strong mark on his work, which is one reason his poetry still feels intimate and haunting today.