Klaus Groth

Groth subsequently became a teacher at the girls’ school in his native village[1] and devoted his spare time to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and the natural sciences.

A friend and follow teacher, Leonhard Selle, invited Groth to spend time with him on the island of Fehmarn, in the Baltic Sea.

The publication of Quickborn in 1852 brought Groth fame across the German-speaking states, and he quickly moved to Kiel and began writing more poems, as well as his first attempts at prose, all in Low German.

[4] Back in Kiel after two years of travelling, he courted Doris Finke, the daughter of a wealthy wine merchant from Bremen, and married her in 1859.

[10] In his Low German lyric and epic poems, heavily influenced by the works of Johann Peter Hebel, Groth writes of the country life of his home region.

Although his descriptions may not always reflect the peculiar characteristics of the peasantry of Holstein as faithfully as those of his rival Fritz Reuter, Groth is a lyric poet of genuine inspiration.

[11] Groth strove to show the Low German language, as well as the people who spoke it, as something noble and worthy of high poetry.