The family of the poet and doctor Justinus Kerner had long been civil servants in Württemberg. Kerner became ill with a serious nerve disease when he was young; only a magnetiser was able to heal him. Later, he traced his interest in parapsychology and occultism back to this experience. When his father died, he was forced to leave school and work as a merchant in a linen factory. He wrote his first verses at this time, to help with the boredom he felt during his work. In 1804, he managed to go back to school and moved to Tübingen, where he began his medical education and became friends with Ludwig Uhland. Together, they founded a group of Romantic Swabian poets; they also published a Sunday paper criticising the classicism of the Morgenblatt (Morning paper). In 1808 and 1809, he travelled in Europe and met Friedrich Schlegel and Ludwig van Beethoven in Vienna. He published the travelog Reiseschatten (Travelling shadows, 1811) after this. His correspondence testifies to his interest in folk arts (“Volkspoesie und Volksschriften”), which was encouraged by his friendship with Ludwig Uhland. In 1844 and 1845, the latter would publish the collection Alte hoch- und niederdeutsche Volkslieder (Folk songs in High and Low German). Kerner mentioned a puppet theatre in Hamburg several times, and included puppet and shadow puppetry plays in Reiseschatten.

When he came back, he began to work as a doctor, and then became a prefect. In 1819, he moved to Weinsberg. He stayed there until his death and made his home a place of hospitality, where poets (Ludwig Tieck, Achim von Arnim, Gustav Schwab, Eduard Mörike), nobles, patients, refugees, etc, could meet in a romantic and idyllic setting: the “Kerner House” became a cornerstone for the Swabian poets. For the last years of his life, starting from the death of his wife in 1854, Kerner suffered from depression. His work includes lyrical poetry, medical studies and writings on spiritism and occult sciences.