Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/788

730 O E D O E H last abolished by authority, and (Ecolampadius s five years struggle was ended. He lived on, growing in influence in Basel and throughout south Germany, three years longer, and died in November 1531. CEcolampadius was not a great theologian, like Luther, Zwingli, or Calvin, and yet he was a trusted theological leader. "With Zwingli he represented the Swiss views at the unfortunate con ference a-t Marburg, and had proved himself, by his defence of Zwingli s doctrine of the Lord s Supper against both Brenz and Luther, an able controversialist. He was a man of very wide sym pathies. His readiness to sympathize with the early Reformatory movements in France and his eager welcome of the "Waldenses were of great value to the Swiss Church. Compare Herzog, Leben Joh. CEcolampads u. die Reformation tier Kirche zu Basel, 1843 ; Hagenbach, Johann (Ecolampad u. Oswald Myconiiis, dieReformatorcn Basels, 1859. OEDENBURG (Hungarian, Sopron), one of the oldest and most prepossessing towns in Hungary, the chief place of a district of its own name, lies 3 miles to the west of the Lake of Neusiedl and 35 miles to the south-south-east of Vienna. It possesses several churches (one of which was built with the contents of a Turkish military chest found buried here), three convents, a Protestant lyceum with a theological department, a Roman Catholic gymnasium, several other schools and charitable institutions, a museum, and a theatre. The inhabitants, most of whom are of German descent, are mainly engaged in making wine, of which the district yields a quality little inferior to Tokay. The crystallized fruits of Oedenburg form a well-known article of commerce ; and a trade in grain and manufactures of beetroot -sugar, starch, and cloth are also carried on. Large cattle -markets are held here. The population in 1880 was 23,222. Oedenburg, the Roman station Sopronium, was created a royal free town in the llth century in return for help afforded to the king of Hungary against the Bulgarians. In 1619 it was pillaged by Bethlen Gabor. At a diet held here in 1681 the Hungarian Pro testants presented the so-called " Oedenburg Articles," claiming the restitution of their churches and estates. The province of Oedenburg is rich in corn, fruit, cattle, and coal. CEDIPUS, a Theban hero, is placed by genealogists among the descendants of Cadmus. His father Laius ordered him to be exposed as soon as he was born ; he grew up ignorant of his parentage, and meeting his father once in a narrow way he quarrelled with him and slew him. The country was ravaged by a monster, the Sphinx ; (Edipus by his cunning solved the riddle that the Sphinx proposed to its victims, freed the country, and married his own mother, Jocaste, or, as Homer calls her, Epicaste. In the Odyssey it is said that the gods disclosed the impiety. Epicaste hanged herself, and QEdipus lived as king in Thebes tormented by the Erinnyes of his mother. In the tragic poets the tale takes a different form. CEdipus ful fils an ancient prophecy in killing his father ; he is the blind instrument in the hands of fate. The further treat ment of the tale by ^Eschylus is unknown. Sophocles describes in his (Edipus the King how CEdipus was re solved to pursue to the end the mystery of the death of Laius, and thus unravelled the dark tale, and in horror put out his own eyes. The sequel of the tale is told in (Edipus at Colonus. Banished from the land by his sons, he is tended by the loving care of his daughters. He comes to Attica and dies in the grove of the Eumenides at Colonus, in his death welcomed and pardoned by the fate which had pursued him throughout his life. This view of the myth, which reads in it a parable of the mystery of life, of the overwhelming might of fate and the weakness of man, of the final reconciliation of discord in death, is due to^ the tragic poets, is unknown in the epic poets, and is still more foreign to the primitive mythic form, where CEdipus and his father embody the vicissitudes of the annual life of nature : the son, the young year, slays his father, the old year, is wedded to his own mother, but finally loses his eyes, his light, and his life. The winter king is a god who slays his own father ; this is a trait that occurs time after time in mythology. OEHLENSCHLAGER, ADAM GOTTLOB (1779-1850), the greatest of modern Danish poets, was born in Vesterbro, a suburb of Copenhagen, on the 14th of November 1779. His father, a Schleswiger by birth, was at that time organist to, and later on became keeper of, the royal palace of Fred- eriksberg ; he was a very brisk and cheerful man. The poet s mother, on the other hand, who was partly German by extraction, suffered from depressed spirits, which after wards deepened into melancholy madness. Adam and his sister Sofia were allowed their own way throughout their childhood, and were taught nothing, except to read and write, until their twelfth year. At the age of nine Adam began to make fluent verses. Three years later, Avhilc Avalking in Frederiksberg Gardens, he attracted the notice of the poet Edvard Storm, and the result of the conversa tion was that he received a nomination to the college called "Posterity s High School," an important institution of which Storm was the principal. Storm himself taught the class of Scandinavian mythology, and thus Oehlenschlager received his earliest bias towards the poetical religion of his ancestors. Most other branches of study the boy con tinued to neglect, and thought most about the romances and dramas which he proposed to write. He was confirmed in 1795, and was to have been apprenticed to a tradesman in Copenhagen. To his great delight there was a hitch in the preliminaries, and he returned to his father s house. He now, in his eighteenth year, suddenly took up study with great zeal, but soon again abandoned his books for the stage, where a small position was offered him. In 1797 he actually made his appearance on the boards in several successive parts, but soon discovered that he pos sessed no real histrionic talent, even though he was trained by the great actor Michael Rosing. The brothers Oersted, the eminent savants, with whom he had formed an in timacy fruitful of profit to him, persuaded him to quit the stage, and in 1 800 he entered the university of Copenhagen as a student. He was doomed, however, to disturbance in his studies, first from the death of his mother, next from his inveterate tendency towards poetry, and finally from the attack of the English upon Copenhagen in April 1801, which, however, inspired a dramatic sketch which is the first thing of the kind by Oehlenschlager that we possess. His promise was already widely felt, and, even in 1800, Baggesen, in departing for Germany, had publicly invested the youth with the laurel that he himself was resigning. It was in the summer of 1802, when Oehlenschlager had an old Scandinavian romance, as well as a volume of lyrics, in the press, that the young Norse philosopher, Henrik Steffens, came back to .Copenhagen after a long visit to Schelling in Germany full of new romantic ideas. His lectures at the university, in which Goethe and Schiller were for the first time revealed to the Danish public, created a great sensation. Steffens and Oehlenschlager met one day at Dreier s Club, and after a conversation of sixteen hours, which has become famous in the history of anecdote, the latter went home, suppressed his two coming volumes, and wrote at a sitting his splendid poem Guldhornene, in a manner totally new to Danish literature. The result of his new enthusiasm speedily showed itself in a somewhat hasty volume of poems, published in 1803, now chiefly remembered as containing the lovely piece called Sanct-Hansaften-Spil . The next two years saw the production of several exquisite works, in particular Thors Eeise til Jotunkeim, the charming poem in hexameters called Langelandsreisen, and the be witching piece of fantasy Aladdin s Lampe. At the age of twenty-six Oehlenschlager was now universally recognized, even by the opponents of the romantic revival, as the lead ing poet of Denmark. He found no difficulty in obtaining