This inquiry into Hölderlin's 'home' is divided into two parts. In the first, the study examines the biography of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), with special reference to his relations with his family, drawing on letters and other testimonies read against the social and legal background of the age. In the second, the author turns to Hölderlin's efforts to achieve a poetic reconciliation between his biography and his philosophical convictions. The problematic nature of this attempt is illustrated with reference to central poems like the elegy "Heimkunft" and other documents such as the programmatic epistles addressed to Casimir Ullrich von Hoehlendorff.