Ernst Schulze: March 31, 1815

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Ernst Schulze was a well-known romantic poet. His text "On March 31, 1815" is obviously about love. If one knows Schulze's tragic life story, an analysis will reveal other interesting findings.

Ernst Schulze and his life

Ernst Schulze was only 28 years old. He was born in Celle in 1789 and had characteristics that today would probably be ascribed to an ADHD child. Schulze was friendly and popular in his early years, but also inattentive and careless. So he later described himself that no one really believed that something would become of him. Schulze discovered his love for literature. He eventually studied and also successfully completed his doctorate. He then lectured in literature himself. At the university, however, Schulze was only half-heartedly involved. What interested him more was his own writing and his love for Cäcilie Tychsen, whom he met at the age of 22. She was 17 at the time. But already the following year, Cecilia died of tuberculosis. From then on, Schulze's whole life revolved around lost love: he wrote about her, looked for her likeness in her sister and even fought for her in the war against the French because their occupation always disturbed her would have. In 1817 Ernst Schulze finally died of tuberculosis himself - but he left behind many texts that were due to his

story appear all the more touching. One of them is "On March 31st, 1815".

Analysis approaches for "On March 31, 1815"

  • The poem "On March 31, 1815" consists of six stanzas and is thematically related to Romanticism. This can be seen, for example, in the exaltation and mystification of nature. The fact that the whole poem is ostensibly about an excursion into nature speaks for it.
  • Read the first lines; you may assume that the text is cheerful. Formulations like "The sky is so clear" suggest this. But in the last line of the first verse a first "minor chord" already follows when Schulze writes that he was once happy. This implies that it is no longer him.
  • In the second stanza you learn that there was once a woman in the life of the lyric self - a first clue as to the cause of the sadness, for now the speaker is alone. At the same time he already elevates the woman here to a supernatural being, because he speaks of the fact that when she was still with him he "saw her in heaven". But this is also to be understood as an indication that her death did not come suddenly for him.
  • The third stanza continues with devotion to the beloved - he prefers to pick from the same branch as her. This shows his need to be close to her and at the same time his helplessness, because a gesture like this would not really bring him closer to her.
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  • This helplessness also breaks down in the 4th Verse Bahn, in which Ernst Schulze describes that nothing has changed in nature since she left - everything is the same, it has left no trace anywhere.
  • In the next stanza, nature doesn't play a big role. Here love is associated with suffering. Happiness fizzles, what remains is sorrow. Here one involuntarily thinks of a man who has been abandoned. If you know that Schulze's lover has died, this passage becomes all the more dramatic.
  • In the last stanza, the lyric self expresses the desire to be a bird perched on a branch. One might think that this is for the idea of ​​a successful escape from grief. In truth, however, such an escape does not seem possible, because the bird would also "sing a sweet song of her" "all summer long".

The following quintessence can be drawn from the analysis of Schulze's poem: Love is ephemeral, just like life, everything flies away, nobody leaves traces. What remains are the mourners who cannot escape their grief - because they can only find solace in the memory of those who have lost them.

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