The German poet Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) sought to express a religious vision in which man would be reconciled to the world of nature and to all the forms through which God had revealed Himself.

Friedrich Hölderlin was born in Lauffen am Neckar on March 20, 1770. After his father's death the family moved to Nürtingen in Württemberg, where Hölderlin spent his childhood. In 1784 he went away to school at Denkendorf and later at Maulbronn. In 1788 he entered the Lutheran Seminary at Tübingen to prepare for the ministry. However, his attention soon turned to philosophy and poetry, and he became friends with the future philosophers G. W. F. Hegel and F. W. J. von Schelling. He at first wrote verses in the style of local Swabian poets and the older poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. He later began...