Hermann Löns

Hermann Löns (29 August 1866 – 26 September 1914) was a German journalist and writer. He is most famous as "The Poet of the Heath" for his novels and poems celebrating the people and landscape of the North German moors, particularly the Lüneburg Heath in Lower Saxony. Löns is well known in Germany for his famous folksongs. He was also a hunter, natural historian and conservationist. Löns was killed in World War I and his purported remains were later used by the Nazi government for propaganda purposes.

Hermann Löns was born on 29 August 1866 in Kulm (now Chełmno, Poland) in West Prussia. He was one of twelve siblings, of whom five died early. His parents were Friedrich Wilhelm Löns (1832–1908) from Bochum, a teacher, and Klara (née Cramer, 1844–96) from Paderborn. Hermann Löns grew up in Deutsch-Krone (West Prussia). In 1884, the family relocated back to Westfalen as his father found a position in Münster. A sickly child who survived typhus, Löns graduated from school on his second try with the Abitur in 1886. Urged by his father, he began to attend courses at Münster university in preparation for studying medicine. In 1887, he started his studies at the university of Greifswald. There he joined a dueling fraternity (Turnerschaft Cimbria), but was dismissed cum infamia (with infamy). In November 1888, Löns relocated to the university of Göttingen, but returned to Münster without having attained a degree. In fact, he never even enrolled at Göttingen but joined a drinking society called the Club der Bewusstlosen. At Münster he studied natural sciences emphasizing zoology at the Theologische und Philosophische Akademie from the spring of 1889 to autumn 1890. While there, he developed interests in environmental issues – protecting nature from damage by industrial activity – and in literature. However, he was also arrested in 1889 for disorderly conduct and sentenced to five days in jail for extinguishing gas lights and resisting arrest while drunk.

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