Alfred Meissner (15 October 1821, Teplitz – 29 May 1885, Bregenz) was an poet.
Biography
He is a grandson of the voluminous miscellaneous author August Gottlieb Meissner (1753-1807). He studied
medicine, taking his degree at Prague in 1846. To elude the Austrian censorship, he published in the same year at
Leipzig his epic poem
Ziska (10th ed., 1867). He long resided chiefly in
Paris, and returned to
Prague in 1850, where he and
Moritz Hartmann were the principal representatives of the liberal school of German poetry in
Bohemia, a 10th edition of his
Gedichte appearing in 1867.
Works
Some of his works, especially
Der Sohn des Atta Troll (1850), abound with the peculiar sarcasm and pathos in which
Heinrich Heine excelled, and he published
Erinnerungen an Heine (1854).
[Meisser also published Heinrich Heine. Errinerungen von Alfred Meisser. Hamburg: Hoffman und Campe, 1856 and "The Last Years of Heinrich Heine", Putnam's Monthly, November 1856, pp. 517-526] Among his novels are
Zwischen Fürst und Volk (Between prince and people, 3 vols., 2d ed., 1861), illustrating the revolutions of 1848;
Zur Ehre Gottes (To the honor of God, 2 vols., 1861); and
Schwarzgelb (8 vols., Berlin, 1864; popular edition, 1 vol., 1866). His other writings include
Charaktermasken (3 vols., Leipzig, 1861–63);
Novellen (2 vols., Leipzig, 1864); Die Kinder Rom's (Children of Rome, 4 vols., Berlin, 1870); and
Rococo-Bilder (Gumbinnen, 1871).
Notes
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