Background
He was born in 1778 near Koblenz, Germany. He was the son of Peter Anton Brentano, a native of Italy, and his wife, Maximiliane, who was a daughter of the novelist Sophie von La Roche.
He was born in 1778 near Koblenz, Germany. He was the son of Peter Anton Brentano, a native of Italy, and his wife, Maximiliane, who was a daughter of the novelist Sophie von La Roche.
He attended the universities of Bonn and Jena, and later he resided in Heidelberg, Vienna, and Berlin. He developed an early interest in literature and at the universities of Halle and Jena became acquainted with contemporary writers, especially Friedrich von Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck.
In 1804, he moved to Heidelberg and worked with Arnim on Zeitungen für Einsiedler and Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
In 1818, weary of his somewhat restless and unsettled life, he returned to the practice of the Catholic faith and withdrew to the monastery of Dülmen, where he lived for some years in strict seclusion. He took on there the position of secretary to the Catholic visionary nun, the Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich.
When she died, he prepared an index of the visions and revelations from her journal, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ (published 1833).
In 1824 he lived in Frankfurt and Coblenz and in 1833 settled in Munich, where he associated with a group of Catholic romantic writers, including Görres.
Godwi is an "educational novel" about the passionate adventures of a wealthy young man.
The sensationalism of this first work is continued in the suspense drama Ponce de Leon (1801) and in the novel Chronika eines fahrenden Schülers (Chronicle of a Wandering Scholar), which was begun in 1803 as a medieval tale of romance, mysticism, and black magic.
After the death of his wife in 1806, Brentano traveled about Germany for a few years.
After a brief sojourn in Bohemia and Vienna (where he composed a patriotic drama inspired by the Germans' fight against Napoleon), he returned to Berlin and wrote his most famous story, Die Geschichte vom braven Kasperl und dem schönen Annerl (1817; The Story of Brave Caspar and Beautiful Annie).
In 1817 he also underwent a conversion to devout Catholicism.
Among Brentano's later works was a collection of fairy tales (1838), which shows his imaginative powers to be as lively as ever.
The latter part of his life he spent in Regensburg, Frankfurt and Munich, actively engaged in promoting the Catholic faith.
In 1803 he married the poet Sophie Mereau, to whom he had dedicated his first important novel, Godwi (1801). After his wife Sophie died in 1806 he married a second time in 1807 to Auguste Bussmann.