Biography

Peter Rosegger was an Austrian poet from the province of Styria. He was a son of a farmer and grew up in the forests and fields. Rosegger (or Rossegger) went on to become a most productive poet and author as well as an insightful teacher and visionary. In his later years, he was honoured by officials from various Austrian universities and the city of Graz (the capital of Styria). He was nearly awarded the Nobel Prize in 1913 and is (at least among the people of Styria) something like a national hero to this day.

Early life

Rosegger was born as the first of seven children of a peasant couple in the village of Alpl, now part of Krieglach, Styria. Since this little village, consisting only of a handful of farms, had neither a church nor a school, he and the other children would have had to walk to the larger village, St. Kathrein, in order to attend either. The way there takes two hours and as a result, Peter had very limited education, largely provided by a wandering teacher who taught him and other children from the region for a year and a half. His physical constitution was not sufficient for him to become a farmer like his father, as he was often sick and rather frail in general. So, he became understudy of a traveling tailor at the age of seventeen.

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