Annette von Droste-Hülshoff was born at Schloss Hülshoff near Münster, the daughter of an aristocratic Catholic family. She never married. Annette is often called Germany's greatest 19th-century female poet. She was said to have a powerful mind in a delicate, sickly frame. Her maternal uncles August and Werner von Haxthausen brought her into contact with the Romantic movement via their intellectual circle, which included Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm. Annette and her sister contributed Westphalian folk tales to the Grimms' famous collection of fairy stories.
However she's best remembered for her lyric poems, pastorales, ballads, and the novella "The Jew's Beech" (1842), a crime thriller in Gothic fiction style. Colllected editions of her works have been published for many years.
(3.01)
6