Gottfried Keller

Gottfried Keller (1819 - 1890) was a Swiss poet.

Kellier is best known as the master of the Novelle style. He was born in Zürich, July 19, 1819, as the son of a master turner.

A love for the concrete world of reality induced him to take up painting. Keller was not without talent in this line, but achieving no signal success, he gave up painting for letters. To secure for himself a stable footing in the civic world, Keller, after a number of years spent in Germany, in 1861 assumed the office of a municipal secretary of his native city, where he died July 15, 1890.

Early in life, Keller threw aside all conventional beliefs, and his religion henceforth was a deep love of and a joyous faith in all life. Although Keller was in many respects decidedly matter-of-fact, a calm objective observer with a strong leaning toward utilitarian ideals—he had all the homely virtues of his ancestry—he nevertheless delighted in a myth-creating fancy.

Thus Keller is very much akin to his countryman Arnold Böcklin, whom the German world honors as its greatest modern painter.

Modified after a 1920s' PD Book that is currently being proofread for Project Gutenberg: A Book of German Lyrics, ed. Friedrich Bruns