Background
Mayrhofer was born in Steyr, educated and Novitiate in Saint Florian"s Priory Upper Austria.
Mayrhofer was born in Steyr, educated and Novitiate in Saint Florian"s Priory Upper Austria.
In 1810 he began to study Jurisprudence and Theology at the University of Vienna, both of which courses he finished.
Mayrhofer wrote a lot of lyric poetry and published it in 1824. 47 Schubert songs and two of his operas are based on Mayrhofer’s lyric poems. As a young man Mayrhofer had been hopelessly in love with Mina (Wilhelmina Watteroth), the daughter of Heinrich Watteroth, who was one of Mayrhofer"s professors and for a short time also his landlord.
In his late years Mayrhofer (like Schubert) fell in love with a young 15-year-old girl, the daughter of his landlord Doctor Strauss.
Mayrhofer, who had been a hypochondriac all his life, committed suicide by jumping from the window of his office in Vienna. Die Freunde von Salamanca (1815)
Adrast (1819).