Johann Christian Friedrich Holderlin (German: ['jo:han 'kRIsti.a:n 'fRi:

After obtaining his magister degree in 1793, his mother expected him to enter the ministry. However, Holderlin found no satisfaction in the prevailing Protestant theology, and worked instead as a private tutor. In 1794, he met Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang Goethe and began writing his epistolary novel Hyperion. In 1795 he enrolled for a while at the University of Jena where he attended Johann Gottlieb Fichte's classes and met Novalis.  There is a seminal manuscript, dated 1797, now known as the Das alteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus ("The Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism"). Although the document is in Hegel's handwriting, it is thought to have been written by either Hegel, Schelling, Holderlin, or an unknown fourth person.  As a tutor in Frankfurt am Main from 1796 to 1798 he fell in love with Susette Gontard, the wife of his employer, the banker Jakob Gontard. The feeling was mutual, and this relationship became the most important in Holderlin's life. After a while, their affair was discovered, and Holderlin was harshly dismissed. He then lived in Homburg from 1798 to 1800, meeting Susette in secret once a month and attempting to establish himself as a poet, but his life was plagued by financed worries and had to accept a small allowance from his mother. His mandated separation from Susette Gontard also worsened Holderlin's doubts about himself and his value as a poet; he wished to transform German culture but did not have the influence he needed. From 1797 to 1800, he produced three versions--all unfinished--of a tragedy in the Greek manner, The Death of Empedocles, and composed odes in the vein of the Ancient Greeks Alcaeus and Asclepiades of Samos.

Did he switch careers?
attempting to establish himself as a poet,