Max Ehrmann (1872 – 1945), a poet and lawyer from Terre Haute, Indiana, is its author. It has been reported[by whom?] that Desiderata was inspired by an urge that Ehrmann wrote about in his diary: "I should like, if I could, to leave a humble gift -- a bit of chaste prose that had caught up some noble moods."

Around 1959, the Rev. Frederick Kates, rector of Saint Paul's Church in Baltimore, Maryland, used the poem in a collection of devotional materials he compiled for his congregation. At the top of the handout was the notation: "Old Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore A.D. 1692." In the 1960s, it was widely circulated without attribution to Ehrmann, sometimes with the claim that it was found in Saint Paul's Church, Baltimore, Maryland, and that it had been written in 1692 (the year of the founding of Saint Paul's).

When Adlai Stevenson died in 1965, a guest in his home found a copy of Desiderata near his bedside and discovered that Stevenson had planned to use it in his Christmas cards. The publicity that followed gave widespread fame to the poem, as well as the mistaken relationship to Saint Paul's Church.

Max Ehrmann
(1872-1945)
Indiana

Max Ehrmann, the Wife of Marobius and Other Plays
(Boston: Bruce Humphries, Inc., 1949)

Susan Dehler, archivist at the Vigo County Public Library (Indiana) has provided the following biographical sketch of Max Ehrmann:

Max Ehrmann was born in Terre Haute, Indiana on September 26, 1872. He was the fifth and last child of Maximilian Ehrmann, Sr. and Margaret Barbara Lutz Ehrmann, both of whom emigrated to the United States in the late 1840s from Bavaria, Germany.

Ehrmann received his early education from the Terre Haute Fourth District School and the German Methodist Church. Between 1890-94 he attended De Pauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. While at De Pauw, Ehrmann became editor of the school newspaper, Depauw Weekly.

Upon graduation, Ehrmann studied law and philosophy at Harvard and edited The Rainbow, a national college fraternity magazine. While at Harvard, he also published his first book, A Farrago, in 1898.

Returning to Terre Haute in 1898, Ehrmann practiced law as Deputy States Attorney for two years. He then worked for a number of years as credit manager and attorney for his brother's manufacturing business.

At the age of 40, Ehrmann left the family business and returned to writing full-time. Throughout his career, he wrote more than 20 books and pamphlets and many essays and poems that were published separately in newspapers and magazines. His most acclaimed work was "Desiderata" originally published in 1927. This prose-poem brought Ehrmann national attention because of its identification with Adelai Stevenson and because of the confusion regarding its copyright and authorship. "Desiderata" has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers, and anthologies and was produced as a single record by Warner Brothers in 1971.

Max Ehrmann died September 9, 1945