German poet and dramatist.
Platen made the acquaintance of many of the leading writers of the time, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He became a first-rate scholar and published a little book of poems, Ghaselen (1821; “Ghazals”), in which he imitated the style of his friend Friedrich Rückert. This was soon followed by other volumes.
Though Platen was at first influenced as a dramatist by the Romantics and particularly by Spanish models, the plays that he wrote while he was at Erlangen show a clearness of plot and expression that is foreign to the Romantic style. His antagonism to Romanticism became more pronounced, and he attacked its extravagances, particularly the Schicksaldrama, or fate drama, in his witty comedies in the manner of Aristophanes. Platen, however, possessed many admirers who delighted in the classical purity of his plays and their polished form and diction.
In 1826- 1832 he lived in Italy. His means were slender.
In the summer of 1834 Platen returned to Italy, and, after living in Florence and Naples, proceeded in 1835 to Sicily. Dread of the cholera, which was at that time very prevalent, induced him to move from place to place, and in November of that year he was taken ill at Syracuse, where he died on 5 December 1835.
He gives his name to the Bavarian literary prize August-Graf-von-Platen-Preis.

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