Julius Mosen

Julius Mosen (8 July 1803 – 10 October 1867) was a German poet and author of Jewish descent, associated with the Young Germany movement, and now remembered principally for his patriotic poem the Andreas-Hofer-Lied.

During a two-year-long visit to Italy, he received the inspiration that resulted several years later in his major works (Ritter Wahn, Cola Rienzi, Der Kongreß von Verona).

He also wrote the historical plays Heinrich der Fünfte (Leipzig, 1836), Cola Rienzi, Die Bräute von Florenz, Wendelin und Helene and Kaiser Otto III (the four last being published in his Theater 1842).

German composer Georgina Schubert used his text for her lieder “Der traumende See.”[1] There are three principal themes in Mosen's life and work: love of the home country, the battle for freedom, and the now-destroyed German-Jewish symbiosis.

In Erinnerungen ("Memories"), he writes of the "dependency on the soil of home, the Vogtland" that draws and holds the gaze "as though yonder, far back in the distance beneath the sap-dripping pines, there where the mountains rise up like terraces in dark blue, some secret were hidden that lures us to it and that would gladly reveal itself to us".