Achim von Arnim

Bettina von Arnim was his wife, Gisela their daughter. Brentano — Bettina’s brother — was his great collaborator, generally considered the more gifted writer. Arnim met Tieck, a significant friend, when he was 19, and then Brentano and Goethe as a student in Göttingen (Goethe was a long-term friend and influence, though he regretted Arnim’s taste for medievalism). Brentano and Arnim gathered together a group of like-minded younger Romanticist writers in Heidelberg, including the Grimms, Eichendorff and Görres. Arnim worked on Kleist’s newspaper and mixed with his circle in Berlin (including Müller and Fouqué), before retiring to the country.