Leopold Schefer

Leopold Schefer (30 July 1784 in Muskau – 13 February 1862 in Muskau), German poet, novelist, and composer, was born in a small town in Upper Lusatia (then under Saxon rule), the only child of a poor country doctor. Biography Leopold Schefer was educated, privately, by his parents, later on by the principal of the Muskau primary school, Andreas Tamm, afterwards in a small private school of the former hofmeister of the local Earl of Callenberg, Johann Justus Röhde. From 1799 up to 1805 he attended the secondary school (“Gymnasium”) at Bautzen. During this time he started writing diaries, poems, and compositions, the last under the influence of his teacher Johann Samuel Petri. After that he returned to Muskau, helping his widowed mother, while writing and composing. During Napoleon’s failed campaign in Russia in 1812, Schefer was appointed manager of the big estates of his newly-won friend, Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, doing well under hard circumstances until 1816. The prince, recognizing the literary abilities of his friend, encouraged his early poetical efforts. Having visited England together with Pückler for studying landscape gardens (and being deeply impressed by Eliza O