Karl August George Max, Graf von Platen-Hallermünde
(1796 - 1835) Germany
Poet, playwright
Born at Ansbach, Franconia, of a noble family that came originally from Rügen Island. From 10 to 14 he was sent to the Cadet School at Munich. In this period he was a page in at the court of the king. As a cadet he took part in the 1815 campaign against Napoleon. In 1818 he entered the University of Würzburg, whence he went on to Erlangen. Then he moved to Italy; he died at Syracuse.
 Von Platen was a scholarly poet, well-read in many languages, including Persian. He was in respect of style one of the most finished and perfect of German poets. His nature (which was refined and self-controlled) led him from the first to form the most romantic attachments with men.
Platen, a feminine nature, responded to masculine types. His diaries (which filled 2,000 pages when published in 1900) detail his infatuation with numerous men, most often heterosexual, and his affairs with some of them.
"Cardenio" was an Erlangen student called Hofman: a tall handsome fellow, slim, a fine brown, dark eyes, large nose. Platen wrote seven sonnets recording their relationship. There are twenty-six sonnets to another Erlangen student, Karl Teodor German. He also had a two yars relationship with the painter Ruhl. In Naples, summer 1827, he met the young poet August Kopisch, good looking and gay, who made an unespected impression.
Platen found that in Italy young men were much handsomer than in Germany... and more willing. In the privacy of his diary he noted:
"Here in Naples love between men is so frequent that one needs to expect no curb upon the boldest demands. ... Perhaps it is on account of this that love has never a melancholy appearance. ... So a providential friendship can hardly come twice in life."
from: A.L. Rowse, Homosexual in History, Barnes & Noble, 1977 - et alii
 Von Platen freely and openly expressed his feelings in his verses; of which a great number are practically love-poems addressed to his friends. They include a series of twenty-six sonnets to one of his friends, Karl Theodor German. Of these Raffalovich says:
"These sonnets to Karl Theodor German are among the most beautiful in German literature. Platen in the sonnet surpasses all the German poets, including even Goethe. In them perfection of form, and poignancy or wealth of emotion are illustrated to perfection. The sentiment is similar to that of the sonnets of Shakespeare (with their personal note), and the form that of the Italian or French sonnet."
from: Uranisme, Lyon, 1896, p. 35
Platen, however, was unfortunate in his affairs of the heart, and there is a refrain of suffering in his poems which comes out characteristically in the following sonnet:
"Since pain is life and life is only pain,
Why he can feel what I have felt before,
Who seeing joy sees it again no more
The instant he attempts his joy to gain;
Who, caught as in a labyrinth unaware,
The outlet from it never more can find;
Whom love seems only for this end to bind-
In order to hand over to Despair;
Who prays each dizzy lightning-flash to end him,
Each star to reel his thread of life away
With all the torments which his heart are rending;
And envies even the dead their pillow of clay,
Where Love no more their foolish brains can steal.
He who knows this, knows me, and what I feel."
One of Platen's sonnets deals with an incident, the death of the poet Pindar in the theatre, in the arms of his young friend Theoxenos:
"Oh ! when I die, would I might fade away
Like the pale stars, swiftly and silently,
Would that death's messenger might come to
As once it came to Pindar-so they say
Not that I would in Life, or in my Verse
With him, the great Incomparable, compare;
Only his Death, my friend, I ask to share:
But let me now the gracious tale rehearse.
Long at the play, hearing sweet Harmony,
He sat; and wearied out at last, had lain
His cheek upon his dear one's comely knee;
Then when it died away-the choral strain-
He who thus cushioned him said: Wake and come
But to the Gods above he had gone home."
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