Karl Eggers


Karl Friedrich Peter Eggers was a German lyric poet. His older brother was the art historian, Friedrich Eggers.

Biography

He was the fifth of eight children born to Christian Friedrich Eggers, a building materials dealer. After completing his primary education, he studied jurisprudence, beginning in 1846 at the University of Leipzig then, in 1847, in Berlin. He passed the bar exam in 1850 and returned to Rostock. He was, however, denied habilitation by the Mecklenburg Ministry of Education.
After receiving his Doctorate in law, he worked as a lawyer and Gerichtspräsident. In 1854, he was elected to the Rostock Stadtrat. Two years later, he became seriously ill and resigned all of his positions for a curative stay in Italy. While there, he studied art and published essays on the subject in an art journal edited by his brother Friedrich; the .
In 1861, he moved to Berlin, where he cultivated connections with writers and artists, such as Emanuel Geibel, Paul Heyse, Adolf Wilbrandt, Otto Roquette, and Theodor Fontane. Perhaps his most important connection was with Heinrich Seidel, who introduced him to the editors at Verlag Cotta, a publishing house in Stuttgart. For many years, Seidel and Eggers shared a combination home and office in Berlin. During those years, he became a strong supporter of the Gabelsberger shorthand method.
He was a member of the Low German Society and, together with his brother, Friedrich, he published collections of poetry in Low German which, although critically praised, were not financially successful. A third edition was published and distributed by Verlag F. Fontane & Co. in 1890. After his brother's death, he completed a five volume biography of the sculptor Christian Daniel Rauch that Friedrich had been working on for several years.
From 1895, he lived with his family in Rostock. Although technically retired, he was active in the Rostock Kunstverein, the Altertumsverein and the local Low German Society. The sculptor, Ludwig Brunow, created a bust of him, but it has since been lost.