Droste-Hülshoff, Annette, Baroness von

Droste-Hülshoff, Annette, Baroness von

 orig. Anna Elisabeth Franziska Adolphine Wilhelmine Louise Maria, Freiin von Droste zu Hülshoff

(born Jan. 10, 1797, Schloss Hülshoff, near Münster, Westphalia—died May 24, 1848, Meersburg, Baden) German writer. One of the most important poets of 19th-century Germany, she wrote religious verse, particularly Das geistliche Jahr (1851; “The Spiritual Year”), but she is best known for detailed, evocative poems about her native Westphalia. Her only complete prose work, The Jew's Beech (1842)—a psychological study of a villager who murders a Jew—is considered a forerunner of 19th-century realistic fiction.