Friedrich Wilhelm Hackländer
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
author.
Life
Hackländer was born in BurtscheidBurtscheid
Burtscheid is a town in western Germany, near Aachen. It was founded in the year 997 AD and was an independent town till 1897. From 1816 it was administrative capital of the district of Aachen. In 1897 Burtscheid became part of the city of Aachen...
, now part of the city of Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. He was orphaned at the age of 12 and brought up in impoverished circumstances by various relatives. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed in Elberfeld
Elberfeld
Elberfeld is a municipal subdivision of the German city of Wuppertal; it was an independent town until 1929.-History:The first official mentioning of the geographic area on the banks of today's Wupper River as "elverfelde" was in a document of 1161...
(now Wuppertal
Wuppertal
Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in and around the Wupper river valley, and is situated east of the city of Düsseldorf and south of the Ruhr area. With a population of approximately 350,000, it is the largest city in the Bergisches Land...
) to a shopkeeper, which was highly uncongenial to his own aspirations. He was extremely attracted to military service and therefore entered the Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
n artillery at the age of 16, but found himself unable to make much of a career in that milieu either and therefore returned to the commercial world.
In 1840 he moved to Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
in a complete break from his previous life in the hope of establishing a literary career. The beginnings were unpromising, and when his dramas failed to meet with approval, he was obliged to resort to translating the works of Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
. However, success came at once when he began to write of his own experiences: his first major published work was Bilder aus dem Soldatenleben im Frieden, of 1841, which drew on his time in military service, and from then onwards, by dint of writing at length about absolutely everything that happened to him, he maintained a successful and prolific writing career.
After a journey to the Near East in 1840 (written up as "Journey to the Orient", or Reise in den Orient, and published 1842), Hackländer was appointed counsellor (Hofrat), secretary and travelling companion to the Crown Prince of Württemberg
Württemberg
Württemberg , formerly known as Wirtemberg or Wurtemberg, is an area and a former state in southwestern Germany, including parts of the regions Swabia and Franconia....
, which made him familiar with court life. He resigned from court service in 1849 to become a war correspondent
War correspondent
A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. In the 19th century they were also called Special Correspondents.-Methods:...
in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
for the newspapers of the important German publisher Cotta, which also resulted in the book Bilder aus dem Soldatenleben im Kriege (1849-1850).
In 1857 Hackländer founded, together with Edmund von Zoller, the illustrated weekly, Über Land and Meer. In 1859 he re-entered the service of the state of Württemberg as director of royal parks and public gardens at Stuttgart. In the same year he was attached to the headquarters staff of the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n army during the Italian war. In the following year for his services he was raised to the hereditary nobility as Ritter von Hackländer by the Austrian Emperor and retired into private life in 1864.
Hackländer died at his villa in Leoni on the Starnberger See in Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
. He is buried in the Pragfriedhof in Stuttgart.
Works
Hackländer's humorous and realistic style made him very popular and in the mid 19th century he was one of the most widely read writers of Germany. Many of his works centred on important topical issues, such as the working conditions of the poor, and he has sometimes been compared to Charles DickensCharles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
, though this is an evaluation that cannot easily be sustained. His writing is lively, adventurous and even romantic on occasion, but his range is narrow and the character-drawing feeble and superficial. He was a voluminous writer: the most complete edition of his works is the third, published at Stuttgart in 1876, in 60 (sixty) volumes.
Selected publications
- 1841 Bilder aus dem Soldatenleben im Frieden
- 1843 Märchen
- 1845 Wachstubenabenteuer
- 1847 Humoristische Erzählungen
- 1850 Handel und Wandel
- 1851 Namenlose Geschichten
- 1854 Europäisches Sklavenleben
- 1857 Der Augenblick des Glücks
- 1866 Künstlerroman
- 1868 Das Geheimnis der Stadt
- 1870 Der letzte Bombardier
- 1872 Freiwillige vor! Kriegsbilder aus den Feldzügen 1870
- 1874 Nullen