Acknowledgments are here tendered to Herr Wilhelm Raabe, for his kind permission to include the translation from Hunger-Pastor; to Herr Julius Stinde, for his kind permission to translate from the Familie Buchholz; to Herr W. H. Riehl and his publisher, to translate from Jörg Muckenhuber; to Herr Friedrich Theodor v. Vischer, and to the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart, to translate from Herr v. Vischer’s Auch Einer; to Herr Ernst Eckstein, to translate from Besuch im Carcer; to Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & Co., Limited, and to Mr. Leland, for their kind permission to include Mr. Leland’s translations of Scheffel and others (see Gaudeamus, published by Messrs. Kegan Paul). Best thanks are also to be accorded to various German authors and publishers, who have so courteously sanctioned translated extracts.
BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX OF WRITERS.
Hugo von Trimberg is said to have been the rector of a school near Bamberg, 1260-1309. He wrote several books of a didactic and satirical type, including The Runner and The Gatherer, the latter of which he tells us was lost during his lifetime. He severely denounces everything and everybody pertaining to the younger generation, and chants the praises of the “good old times.” His writings are somewhat desultory, and their chief interest lies in the inserted fables which serve him to spin out a moral.
Hans Sachs was born at Nuremberg, on 5th November 1494. In his fifteenth year he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and was instructed in the elements of “master-singing” by the linen-draper Nunnenbeck. As a travelling journeyman in his trade he visited the schools of all the celebrated master-singers of Germany. Returning after five years to his native town, he devoted himself to his calling of shoemaker and to the art of song. His first poetic production was a hymn which he composed in Munich in 1514. The Reformation inspired him to an allegorical ode in honour of Luther, entitled “Die Wittembergisch Nachtigal,” which was followed by a great number of short religious poems. He died at Nuremberg in 1576, his last years having been clouded by insanity. He was an extraordinarily prolific writer of songs, plays, and farces.
Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1620-1676) was born at Gelnhausen. During his youth he served in the army, and his experiences of life as a soldier in the Thirty Years’ War are related in the romance of Simplicius Simplicissimus. During his later years he was mayor of the small town of Renchen, in the Black Forest. In his various writings he made use of a whimsical collection of noms-de-plume, thereby somewhat complicating the task of literary research.
Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) was the son of a rope-maker in Berlin. In his studies at the universities of Halle, Göttingen, and Erlangen, he devoted special attention to the Romanic languages, and later, at Berlin, to the history of art, Old German poetry, and modern literature. He soon found himself in opposition to the views of poetry then popular. After his marriage, he lived for a while in Jena on intimate terms with the two Schlegels, removing with them to Dresden, and later publishing an “Almanac of the Muses” in company with A. W. Schlegel. After 1840 he received a pension from Frederick William IV. of Prussia; he took up his residence at Berlin, where he died. He contributed a great deal to the Shakespeare literature of Germany, with the aid of historical and literary studies on this subject made during a visit to London in 1818, and wrote many dramas, lyrics, and novels, as well as works of severe literary criticism.
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, commonly called Jean Paul, was born in 1763 at Wunsiedel, in the Baireuth district. His writings abound in pleasing recollections of his youthful days, though these were spent in poverty. After passing through the gymnasium at Hof, and pursuing a course of studies at Leipsic, he made some attempts in satire, but without success. He was for some time employed as private tutor in several families, and after the publication of an incomplete romance entitled The Invisible Lodge, gained a reputation as a humorist. His later works include Hesperus, The Life of Quintus Fixlein, Titan, Siebenkäs, Wild Oats, and several other discursive romances. He was induced by his friendship for Herder to revisit Weimar in 1798, remaining there until 1800, when he went to Berlin. A few years afterwards he received a pension, which enabled him to live in modest and comfortable circumstances at Baireuth, where he died in 1825.
August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue (1761-1819) was born at Weimar, where his father held a high position at court. He studied at Jena, and subsequently held several political offices in Russia, as well as Germany. His first writings did much to rob him of public respect. In 1798 he went to Vienna to take charge of the court theatre. Soon after, when on his way to St. Petersburg, he was sent to Siberia. He continued to write during his exile, was recalled, and came to live at Jena, which place he left, however, because of his perpetual animosity for Goethe. He was intensely unpatriotic, and indulged himself repeatedly in his writings in pouring out invectives upon German Liberal politicians on the one hand, and upon the Romantic school and the reform of the drama attempted by Schiller on the other. His motives in literature, as in politics, were purely mercenary. So venomous was he in his attacks upon the ideals of the German “Burschenschaften” that he aroused the fanaticism of a young student, Ludwig Sand, who, moreover, suspecting him of acting as a Russian spy, assassinated him at Mannheim.
Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke (1771-1848), born in Magdeburg, and educated at the gymnasium connected with the monastery at that place. In 1788 he left his native town, and joining a company of actors, he roamed about as a playwright. He then studied philosophy, theology, history, and art at Frankfort-on-Oder, and became a tutor there. He filled several responsible political positions in Switzerland, until he retired in 1841 to his country-house near Aarau, where he died. He wrote a number of dramas, Aballino, the Great Bandit, The Iron Mask, etc., as well es countless romances, novels, and books of travel.