Moritz von Strachwitz

Moritz Karl Wilhelm Anton Graf von Strachwitz (13 March 1822 – 11 December 1847) was a German lyric poet.

Although he had thus only reached his twenty-fifth year, he revealed a lyric genius of remarkable force and originality.

These poems are characteristic of the transition through which the German lyric was passing between 1840 and 1848; the old Romantic strain is still dominant, especially in his ballads, which are unquestionably his finest productions; but, side by side with it, there is to be seen the influence of Platen, to whose warmest admirers Strachwitz belonged, as well as echoes of the restless political spirit of those eventful years.

His political lyric was, however, tempered by an aristocratic restraint which was absent from the writings of men like Herwegh and Freiligrath.

Strachwitz's early death in Vienna was a great loss to German letters; for he was by far the most promising of the younger lyric poets of his time.