Rollett, Hermann, Austrian poet and archivist (1819-1904). "Naturkalender". Autograph manuscript.

[Vienna, 1835?].

8vo. 13 pp. (including title-page) on 4 leaves. Ink on paper. Contemporary wrappers.

 650.00

Anthology of calendar mottoes (natural and weather phenomena, tasks, etc.) for every day of the year, all written in the style of "Jurende's vaterländischer Pilger": in its calendar section, this popular journal, published until 1852, included a separate column for a "nature calendar" which provided a brief such note for every day. The present manuscript appears to be a rough draft for the year 1836, but if that is so, the published calendar would have undergone extensive editorial revisions. Not signed, but attributed on the inside lower cover by a later collector. That the young Rollett composed calendar mottoes is a previously unknown detail of the writer's biography. He had met Beethoven several times as a six-year-old and later wrote about these encounters; in 1835/36 the son of a physician from Baden was still a pupil at Vienna's Piarist gymnasium.

In the age of Metternich, the poet Rollett was persecuted for his revolutionary sentiments; he flew to Germany in 1845, and then to Switzerland. He briefly returned to Austria in 1854, then took a doctorate of philosophy from the German university of Gießen and subsequently studied pharmacy in Vienna. Together with Moritz Hartmann and Hermann Jellinek, Rollett, who identified as a German Catholic, is considered one of the more prominent members of the "Young Austria" movement.

Wrappers a little dusty and with edge flaws.

Stock Code: BN#50810 Tags: ,