Wuppertal poets' circle

The core of the loosely-knit group consisted of seven poets born in or around Wuppertal, Germany: the merchants Reinhart Neuhaus [de], Emil Rittershaus, Friedrich Roeber, Adolf Schults, Wilhelm Wens, Carl Siebel, Karl Stelter,[1] and the bookseller Hugo Oelbermann.

The forerunners to the circle included Biedermeier reading clubs, theatres and other societies in the 1830s and 1840s—directly, however, the association had its origins in an earlier reading circle and amateur theatre existing in the late 1840s, composed of Hugo Oelbermann, Emil Ritterhaus, Wilhelm Wens and later Carl Siebel.

Aiming to give the circle credibility, they recruited figures already known in Wuppertal such as Adolf Schults and Friedrich Roeber, as well as lawyers, conductors and organists.

[5][6] Jost Hermand in 1998 summarised the circle:[7] In their works is manifested the ideological dilemma of young merchants and factory owners' sons, who, despite their relentless desire for competition and their ruthless exploitation of the workers who laboured for them, continued to try to surround themselves with the early bourgeois-liberal appearance of education, even of poetic genius.The term Wuppertaler Dichterkreis used to describe the group was coined by poet Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter in 1863.

[8] Friedrich Engels knew multiple members of the circle, keeping in contact with them during his residence in Bremen in 1838–1841, as some were fellow pupils of his at the Elberfeld high school.