The Swabian German Romantic poet, medical doctor, scientist, and investigator of parapsychological phenomena Justinus Kerner (1786–1862) has long been celebrated as one of the leading intellectuals of his time. His renowned study of a local clairvoyant, Die Seherin von Prevorst [The Seeress of Prevorst] (1829), was translated into English as early as 1845 by the English writer, Catherine Crowe. Encouraged by the Romantic interest in childhood, Kerner in later life wrote a book of youthful reminiscences under the title Bilderbuch aus meiner Knabenzeit [Sketches from My Boyhood] (1849). Inspired by such well-known memoirs of youth as Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit [Poetry and Truth] and Jung-Stilling’s Heinrich Stillings Leben [The Life of Heinrich Stilling], Kerner’s Sketches is a much shorter, more modest account of his boyhood years in the Duchy (then Kingdom) of Württemberg. Consisting of eighty-six loosely related sketches, or vignettes, Sketches from My Boyhood is a vivid, charming, often entertaining, sometimes serious, narrative of growing up in, above all, Ludwigsburg, the site of the magnificent Ludwigsburg Palace. Although emphasizing primarily the personal facets of his early life, Kerner does not ignore the ever-present reality of the French Revolution and its impact on such German states as Württemberg. Sketches from My Boyhood merits its recognition as a gem of nineteenth-century German autobiographical writing.
