Grün, Anastasius

(pseudonym of Anton Alexander von Auersperg). Born Apr. 11, 1806, in Laibach; died Sept. 12, 1876, in Graz. Austrian poet.

A representative of Austrian liberalism in the 1840’s and a member of the Frankfurt Parliament, Grün hailed the Hungarian bourgeois revolution of 1848–49. He began his literary career as a short-story writer, but his best work ishis romantic poetry, including the collections Petals of Love (1830) and The Last Knight (1830). The collections Promenades of a Viennese Poet (1831) and Poems (1837) contain protests against the policies of the Hapsburgs and Catholic reactionaries. The comic epos Nibelungs in Tails (1843) is a satire on reactionary Prussianism. Grün translated and published the Slovenian Folk Songs of Corniola (1850), and he reworked the medieval Austrian satirical tale The Priest From Kanlenberg (1850) and the English folk ballad of Robin Hood (1864).