Annette von Droste Hülshoff was interested in music and poetry from an early age, which were also talents she was born with. Her independent thinking was already nipped in the bud by the family; she was considered an outsider. A relationship with a middle-class student in 1819 and 1820 broke up at family instigation. This meant that the future poet's thinking and ideas were also directed towards the conservative, which she also expressed in her works. She joined the family by accompanying her mother on trips or by tolerating censorship interference in her works by her brother. There was hardly any opportunity for everyday outbursts. In the years 1825 and 1826 as well as 1828 she traveled to Cologne and Bonn. During this time she met Sibylle Mertens. Due to her unstable health, Annette Droste-Hülshoff was always sickly.

Their natural habitat was the Münsterland, the Paderborner Land, the Rhineland and the area around Lake Constance. Her sister was married to the German scholar Joseph von Lassberg and lived first in Eppishausen, Switzerland, and then in Meersburg. In the years 1835 and 1836 as well as in the 1940s she spent long periods visiting her sister in Eppishausen and Meersburg. Annette von Droste-Hülshoff's complete works include, among other things, narrative prose, drama fragments, verse epics and novels. Sacred and secular poetry form the center of her work. The novel "Ledwina" about a young woman was written around 1821, but it remained a fragment. The drama entitled "Berta or the Alps" also remained unfinished around 1814.

In 1838 the title "Poems" was created, in which the verse epics make up a large part. In it the poet proved her way to her own poetic expression. In her later poems such as "The Battle of the Loener Bruch" she expressed her Westphalian motif. The volume of poetry "The Spiritual Year" was written between 1820 and 1839, in which the poet continued the religious baroque tradition and dealt with her own problems in life and faith. Nature poetry and symbolic cognitive poetry were the content of her later poetic work, which gained importance in this creative phase. In addition to the insights into landscape areas of the heath and moor, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff succeeds in creating a new way of representation by confronting the perceivable aesthetics of nature with the uncanny side of nature.

In 1842 the novella with the title "Die Judenbuche" was written, which was first printed in the "Morgenblatt for educated readers" in April and May of the same year. In this narrative work she successfully combined elements of the horror novel and the crime story.

Annette von Droste-Hülshoff died on May 24, 1848 in Meersburg.

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Annette von Droste-Huelshoff

Writer