Arnim, Achim von
Arnim, Achim or Joachim von
(äkh`ĭm, yōäkh`ĭm, fən är`nĭm), 1781–1831, German writer of the romantic school. He is best remembered for his work with his brother-in-law, Clemens BrentanoBrentano, Clemens, 1778–1842, German poet of the romantic school; brother of Bettina von Arnim (see under Arnim, Achim von). While studying at Halle and Jena he met Wieland, Herder, and Goethe, but his sympathies were with the younger German romantics.
..... Click the link for more information. , on the folk-song collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn [the boy's magic horn] (1806–8). Arnim's novels include Gräfin Dolores (1810) and the unfinished Die Kronenwächter [the guardians of the crown] (1817). He was at his best in his historical novels, notably in Isabella of Egypt (1812, tr. 1927) and Owen Tudor (1809). Arnim had a predilection for the fantastic and the supernatural. Like Herder, he helped to create a popular German literary tradition. His wife, Bettina von Arnim, 1785–1859, whose maiden name was Elisabeth Brentano, was also a writer. She corresponded with Beethoven and Goethe and published the letters, not as historical documents but in the light of her own highly poetic imagination, as in Goethe's Correspondence with a Child (1835, tr. 1837). She was an ardent literary supporter of liberal Young Germany.