Max Ehrmann

Max Ehrmann (born 26 September 1872 in Terre Haute, Indiana; died 9 September 1945 in the same city) became famous thanks to his poem Desiderata, written in 1927. The son of German immigrants from Bavaria, Ehrmann studied English at DePauw University (Indiana, USA), then law and philosophy at Harvard University. He published his first work at Harvard, * A Farrago * (1898). Back in his hometown, he practised law for two years. He then worked for several years as an accountant and lawyer in his brother's meat packing business in Terre Haute.

At 41, Ehrmann devoted himself fully to writing. He wrote more than twenty books and press articles, and in 1927 published Desiderata, which 35 years later would become a fundamental text of the hippie movement. Desiderata (from Latin desiderata "of desired things" plural of desideratum) is a poem in English dedicated to the search for happiness in life. His copyright belongs to Max Ehrmann who wrote it in 1927. It was published posthumously by Ehrmann's wife in 1948, in a collection entitled Desiderata of Happiness.

During the 1960s it was widely distributed without being attributed to Ehrmann, sometimes with the assertion that it had been found in the Church of Saint Paul of Baltimore in Maryland and written in 1692 (the year the church was founded). Ehrmann's heirs, however, continued to include him among his works. Desiderata, whose many translations have been circulating since 1960, was reissued in French by Hubert Claes in September 1996 under the title Injunctions for a serene life.