Hesperus

JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER Hesperus Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, who was born at Wunsiedel, in Bavaria, on March 21, 1763, and died on November 14, 1825, was the son of a poor but highly accomplished schoolmaster, who early in his career became a Lutheran pastor at Schwarzenbach, on the Saale. Young Richter entered Leipzig University in 1780, specially to study theology, but became one of the most eccentric and erratic of students, a veritable literary gypsy, roaming over vast fields of literature, collating and noting immense stores of scientific, artistic, historic, and philosophic facts. Driven to writing for subsistence, he only won a reputation by slow degrees, but so great at last was the esteem in which his countrymen held him that he is typically styled "Der Einzige" ("The Unique").