Graf von Loeben was a very prolific writer of the Dresden school, and he influenced Eichendorff and Ludwig Tieck among others, but quickly fell out of favour, most later critics viewing his work as bordering on parody. His most important novel is Guido, written under the pen-name "Isidorus Orientalis". Under a second pseudonym, Heinrich Goeble (sometimes just H. Goeble), he authored the poem Abendlied unterm gestirten Himmel, set to music by Ludwig van Beethoven as WoO 150.[1]
An article about him can be found in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, and a monograph by Raimund Pissin was published in Berlin in 1905. On the basis of these two sources, Porterfield enumerates his known works as "one conventional drama, one musical-romantic drama, two narrative poems, one of which is on Ferdusi, three collections of poems, between 30 and 40 novelettes, fairy tales and [several thousand] aphorisms and detached thoughts." He is discussed by his friend Eichendorff in Ahnung und Gegenwart (ch. 12) and Erlebtes (ch. 10).
Selected works
Guido, novel
Das weisse Ross, eine altdeutsche Familienchronik in 36 Bildern, a novelette (1817)
Porterfield, Allen Wilson. "Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei." Modern Philology, Vol. 13, No. 6 (Oct., 1915), pp. 305–332. [1] A highly critical account of some of Loeben's works, dismissing the theory that one of his poems of 1821 provided the inspiration for Heinrich Heine's Die Lorelei.
Ignaz Hub, ed. Deutschlands Balladen- und Romanzen-Dichter. Karlsruhe, 1845. Contains five poems, some with alterations.
References
^See Theodore Albrecht, "Otto Heinrich Graf von Loeben (1786–1825) and the Poetic Source of Beethoven's Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel, WoO 150," in Bonner Beethoven-Studien, Band 10 (Bonn: Verlag Beethoven-Haus, 2012), pp. 7–32.
