Ludwig August Frankl von Hochwart
Ludwig August Frankl Ritter von Hochwart was a Jewish Bohemian-Austrian writer and poet.
Biography
Frankl was born on 3 February 1810, in Chrast, Bohemia. His brothers were David Bernhard Frankl, merchant and founder of the Commercial Academy in Prague, and Wilhelm Frankl, imperial and municipal councilor who established the Vienna trade schools and the Vienna Central Cemetery.In 1828, aged eighteen, Frankl began to study medicine at Vienna. In 1837, he graduated as a doctor of medicine from the University of Padua, but he soon gave up his medical career. In September 1838, he was employed as secretary of the Jewish Community in Vienna, and in March 1840 he was appointed as editor of the Oesterreichisches Morgenblatt, a daily newspaper. The same year, he published a collection of poems, and in 1842 the biblical-romantic poem "Rachel". He next founded the weekly magazine Sonntagsblätter, which made a decisive contribution to the development of intellectual life in Austria.
Frankl was a friend of Nikolaus Lenau. He also corresponded with Petar II Petrović Njegoš of Montenegro before Njegoš died in 1851.
Frankl's Gusle, Serbische Nationallieder was dedicated to Vuk Karadžić's daughter Mina in 1852. The goal was to present some of the Serbian folk songs, which Vuk collected, in German language for the first time. Mina Karadžić did some translation herself, but left the final portion of the work to Frankl, as he took the greatest pains to reproduce in German the metrical effect of the Serbian original.
On 10 November 1876, Frankl was raised to the hereditary Austrian nobility with the title "Ritter von Hochwart", in recognition of his founding an institution for the blind in Vienna. In 1880, he was made an honorary citizen of Vienna. He was also made an honorary citizen of Chrast and Genoa, and of Jerusalem and Tiberias in Palestine.
Frankl died on 12 March 1894, in Vienna.