Poet. He was a 19th-century German poet who wrote romantic poems as well as novellas and novels. He was an ordained Lutheran pastor. Born Eduard Friedrich Mörike, the seventh of thirteen children, his parents were physician Carl Friedrich Moerike and his wife Charlotte Dorothea. In 1822 he began his studies in theology in Tuebingen, passing his exams in 1826. During his eight-year ecclesiastical career, he served in various towns: Oberboihingen, Moehringen, Koengen, Pflummern, Plattenhardt, Owen, Eltingen, Ochsenwang and Oethlingen. In 1832 his first novel "Maler Nolten" or "Painter Nolten" was published. In 1834 he finally got the much-yearned-for post as a priest in Cleversulzbach, which is near Heilbronn. The remote Württemberg village near Cleversulzbach was immortalized in his masterpiece, "Der alte Turmhahn." Together with his mother and his sister Clara, he probably experienced in this post the happiest years of his life until 1843. All his life, Mörike suffered from psychosomatic illnesses and retired early from the church in 1843 with a pension. Together with his sister he moved in 1844 to Bad Mergentheim where he met the 26-year-old Margarete von Speeth, who he married in 1851. After his marriage, he moved to Stuttgart and became professor of German literature at the Katharinenstift, a girls' school to increase his small pension. He retired from this post in 1866. With his wife and sister both living in his household, there was much jealousy. He and his wife had two daughters but did not have a happy marriage with them separating in 1873, shortly before his death. He wrote his last prose works in Stuttgart: "Das Stuttgarter Hutzelmaennlein" in 1852, in "Die Hand der Jezerte" in 1853 and "Mozarts Reise nach Prag" or "Mozart's journey to Prague" in 1855. He was made an honorary doctor of the University of Tuebingen in 1852. He lived his last years with his sister and a daughter. Although he relocated several times during his career, he returned to Stuttgart finally in 1871.