Founder of the Swabian School of Romanticism.

Ludwig Uhland was born in Tübingen, Württemberg, in 26 April 1787 and studied jurisprudence at the university there, but also took an interest in medieval literature, especially old German and French poetry. Having graduated as a doctor of laws in 1810, he went to Paris for eight months to continue his studies of poetry.

He began his career as a poet in 1807 and 1808 by contributing ballads and lyrics to Seckendorff's Musenalmanach; and in 1812 and 1813 he wrote poems for Kerner's Poetischer Almanach and Deutscher Dichterwald. In 1815 he collected his poems in a volume entitled Vaterländische Gedichte, which almost immediately secured a wide circle of readers. To almost every new edition he added some fresh poems. His two dramatic works Ernst, Herzog von Schwaben (1818) and Ludwig der Baier (1819) are unimportant in comparison with his Gedichte.

The spirit of German Romanticism and nationalism inspired much of Uhland’s poetry, as did his political career and his researches into the literary heritage of Germany. His poetry utilizes the classical form developed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich von Schiller, but his naive, precise, and graceful style is uniquely his own.