Show all records
Click image for high resolution zoom or multiple image views.

Biographical/Historical Information

German poet and philologist; born at Wevelingen, Prussia, Oct. 24, 1807; died at Brussels Jan. 16, 1882; educated at Krefeld, Cologne, Bonn, and Munich (Ph.D. 1830). In his "Anfänge der Kunst Unter den Griechen in Verbindung mit der Erklärung einer Phönicischen Inschrift," read before a learned society (1831), he advanced the theory that Phoenician was a linguistic derivative of Hebrew, and that Phoenicia had exercised a profound influence on the art of early Greece. Despite the efforts of his patron, the Archbishop of Cologne, and of others, Wihl's hopes for a university career were doomed to failure, because he declined to be baptized. Wihl then entered upon a journalistic career at Frankfurt and Hamburg, and published his first volume of poems at Mayence in 1837. During a trip to England two years later he wrote his "Englischer Novellenkranz"; but his account of Heine, written at Paris for the Hamburg "Telegraph," brought upon him the enmity of the poet. In 1840 he returned to Frankfurt, where, with the help of funds advanced by a Catholic banker named Seufferheld, he established a boarding-school for boys; this school, however, existed for only eighteen months, because the authorities forbade him to admit Catholic pupils. During the next few years Wihl lived at Amsterdam and at Utrecht as a teacher and journalist, until he was called to Paderborn as an editor. A recklessly radical article which he published in a local paper during the Revolution of 1848, however, brought on him a sentence of a year's imprisonment in a fortress, and he fled to France, where he became professor of German at Paris and Grenoble. On the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war he retired, from patriotic motives, to Brussels, where he resided for the remainder of his life on a pension.

Reproductions and Permissions

We welcome fair use of this content. Please credit the Leo Baeck Institute in your citation. For usage policies and to request higher resolution images, see Reproductions and Permissions.

Citation

Unknown Artist: Portrait of Ludwig Wihl, Leo Baeck Institute, 92.20.