Friedrich von Spielhagen
Encyclopedia
Friedrich Spielhagen was a German
novelist, literary theorist and translator. He tried a number of careers in his early 20s, but at 25 began writing and translating. His best known novel is Sturmflut and his novel In Reih' und Glied was quite successful in Russia.
and brought up in Stralsund
, where his father was appointed a government architect
in 1835. He attended the gymnasium
(roughly equivalent to an American high school) in Stralsund, studied law
, and subsequently literature
and philosophy
at the universities of Berlin
, Bonn
and Greifswald.
At Bonn, he was a member of the Burschenschaft
Franconia, which at that time also included Carl Schurz
, Johannes Overbeck
, Julius Schmidt
, Carl Otto Weber, Ludwig Meyer
and Adolf Strodtmann
. In his Reminiscences, Schurz recalls Spielhagen as a person “in whom, in spite of his somewhat distant and reserved character, we all recognized a man of rare intellectuality and moral elevation, and who later became a star of the first magnitude among the novelists of the century.”
After leaving university, he tried his hand at being a private tutor, an actor, a soldier and a teacher in a school in Leipzig
, but upon his father's death in 1854 he devoted himself entirely to writing. In 1859, he became editor of the Zeitung für Norddeutschland (Newspaper for Northern Germany) in Hannover, and then, in 1862, moved to Berlin
where he later edited Westermanns illustrirte deutsche Monatshefte (Westermann's Illustrated German Monthly) 1878-84.
As a translator, Spielhagen rendered into German
George William Curtis
's Howadji, Ralph Waldo Emerson
's English Traits, a selection of American poems (1859; 2d ed. 1865), and William Roscoe
's Lorenzo de' Medici. He also translated from the French minor works of Jules Michelet
: L'amour, La femme, La mer.
He married Therese Boutin (1835–1900) with whom he had a daughter, Elsa Spielhagen (1866–1942). He died on 25 February 1911. Streets are named after him in his hometown of Magdeburg, as well as the three cities in which he lived: Stralsund, Hannover, and Berlin.
After publishing Clara Vere (1857) and Auf der Düne (1858), neither of which was widely read, he began to write for newspapers and journals. In 1861, he struck gold with Problematische Naturen
(1860-1861; English translation “Problematic Characters,” by Prof. Schele de Vere, New York, 1869); it was followed a year later by a sequel, Durch Nacht zum Licht (English translation, “Through Night to Light,” by Prof. Schele de Vere, New York, 1869), then by Die von Hohenstein (1863; English translation, “The Hohensteins,” by Prof. Schele de Vere, 1870), In Reih' und Glied (1866), Hammer und Amboß (1869; English translation, “Hammer and Anvil,” by William Hand Browne, 1873), Deutsche Pioniere (1870), Allzeit voran (1872), Was die Schwalbe sang (1873; English translation, “What the Swallow Sang,” 1873), Ultimo (1874), Liebe für Liebe (a drama, which has was produced in Leipzig; 1875), Sturmflut (based on the financial crises in Berlin
following the Franco-Prussian War
; 1876), Plattland (1878), Quisisana (1880), Angela (1881), Uhlenhans (1884), Ein neuer Pharao (1889), Faustulus (1897) and Freigeboren (1900) among many others. These days, Sturmflut is his best known work though it is currently only available in an abridged form. Spielhagen's later works were almost entirely on literary theory.
Spielhagen's Sämtliche Werke (Complete Works) were published in 1871 in sixteen volumes, in 1878 in fourteen volumes. His Sämtliche Romane (Complete Novels) followed in 1898 (22 vols), and these were followed by a new series in 1902. In 1890, he published his autobiography, Finder und Erfinder (2 vols, 1890).
His novel In Reih' und Glied, translated into Russian as Один в поле не воин [Odin v pole ne voin, "One man in the field is not a warrior" or "One man alone can't win a war"] (1867–1868), with its revolutionary protagonist Leo (based on Ferdinand Lassalle
), was extraordinarily popular in Russia, and virtually all his novels were subsequently translated there at least once, collected editions being brought out in 1895 (8 vols.) and 1898 (30 vols.).
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...
novelist, literary theorist and translator. He tried a number of careers in his early 20s, but at 25 began writing and translating. His best known novel is Sturmflut and his novel In Reih' und Glied was quite successful in Russia.
Life
Spielhagen was born in MagdeburgMagdeburg
Magdeburg , is the largest city and the capital city of the Bundesland of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Magdeburg is situated on the Elbe River and was one of the most important medieval cities of Europe....
and brought up in Stralsund
Stralsund
- Main sights :* The Brick Gothic historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.* The heart of the old town is the Old Market Square , with the Gothic Town Hall . Behind the town hall stands the imposing Nikolaikirche , built in 1270-1360...
, where his father was appointed a government architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
in 1835. He attended the gymnasium
Gymnasium (school)
A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...
(roughly equivalent to an American high school) in Stralsund, studied law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
, and subsequently literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
and philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
at the universities of Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
, Bonn
University of Bonn
The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...
and Greifswald.
At Bonn, he was a member of the Burschenschaft
Burschenschaft
German Burschenschaften are a special type of Studentenverbindungen . Burschenschaften were founded in the 19th century as associations of university students inspired by liberal and nationalistic ideas.-History:-Beginnings 1815–c...
Franconia, which at that time also included Carl Schurz
Carl Schurz
Carl Christian Schurz was a German revolutionary, American statesman and reformer, and Union Army General in the American Civil War. He was also an accomplished journalist, newspaper editor and orator, who in 1869 became the first German-born American elected to the United States Senate.His wife,...
, Johannes Overbeck
Johannes Overbeck
Johannes Adolph Overbeck was a German archaeologist and art historian.-Biography:Overbeck was born in Antwerp. He was son-in-law to zoologist Georg August Goldfuss , and was father-in-law to anthropologist Emil Ludwig Schmidt . His uncle was famed painter Friedrich Overbeck .In 1848 Overbeck...
, Julius Schmidt
Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt
Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt was a German astronomer and geophysicist.-Biography:...
, Carl Otto Weber, Ludwig Meyer
Ludwig Meyer
Ludwig Meyer was a German psychiatrist born in Bielefeld.In 1852 he obtained his medical doctorate from the University of Berlin, afterwards working as an assistant at Charité Hospital. Later he worked as a doctor at the insane asylum in Schwetz, and in 1856 was appointed chief physician at the...
and Adolf Strodtmann
Adolf Strodtmann
Adolf Heinrich Strodtmann was a German poet, journalist, translator and literary historian. He wrote an early biography of Heinrich Heine and emigrated to the United States for a time.-Biography:...
. In his Reminiscences, Schurz recalls Spielhagen as a person “in whom, in spite of his somewhat distant and reserved character, we all recognized a man of rare intellectuality and moral elevation, and who later became a star of the first magnitude among the novelists of the century.”
After leaving university, he tried his hand at being a private tutor, an actor, a soldier and a teacher in a school in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, but upon his father's death in 1854 he devoted himself entirely to writing. In 1859, he became editor of the Zeitung für Norddeutschland (Newspaper for Northern Germany) in Hannover, and then, in 1862, moved to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
where he later edited Westermanns illustrirte deutsche Monatshefte (Westermann's Illustrated German Monthly) 1878-84.
As a translator, Spielhagen rendered into German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
George William Curtis
George William Curtis
George William Curtis was an American writer and public speaker, born in Providence, Rhode Island, of old New England stock.-Biography:...
's Howadji, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
's English Traits, a selection of American poems (1859; 2d ed. 1865), and William Roscoe
William Roscoe
William Roscoe , was an English historian and miscellaneous writer.-Life:He was born in Liverpool, where his father, a market gardener, kept a public house called the Bowling Green at Mount Pleasant. Roscoe left school at the age of twelve, having learned all that his schoolmaster could teach...
's Lorenzo de' Medici. He also translated from the French minor works of Jules Michelet
Jules Michelet
Jules Michelet was a French historian. He was born in Paris to a family with Huguenot traditions.-Early life:His father was a master printer, not very prosperous, and Jules assisted him in the actual work of the press...
: L'amour, La femme, La mer.
He married Therese Boutin (1835–1900) with whom he had a daughter, Elsa Spielhagen (1866–1942). He died on 25 February 1911. Streets are named after him in his hometown of Magdeburg, as well as the three cities in which he lived: Stralsund, Hannover, and Berlin.
Novels and a play
Problematische Naturen
Problematische Naturen was a popular novel written by German novelist Friedrich Spielhagen exploring German personalities from around the time of the Revolutions of 1848.-Motivations:Like Freytag and Paul Heyse, Friedrich Spielhagen was chiefly concerned, in...
(1860-1861; English translation “Problematic Characters,” by Prof. Schele de Vere, New York, 1869); it was followed a year later by a sequel, Durch Nacht zum Licht (English translation, “Through Night to Light,” by Prof. Schele de Vere, New York, 1869), then by Die von Hohenstein (1863; English translation, “The Hohensteins,” by Prof. Schele de Vere, 1870), In Reih' und Glied (1866), Hammer und Amboß (1869; English translation, “Hammer and Anvil,” by William Hand Browne, 1873), Deutsche Pioniere (1870), Allzeit voran (1872), Was die Schwalbe sang (1873; English translation, “What the Swallow Sang,” 1873), Ultimo (1874), Liebe für Liebe (a drama, which has was produced in Leipzig; 1875), Sturmflut (based on the financial crises in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
following the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
; 1876), Plattland (1878), Quisisana (1880), Angela (1881), Uhlenhans (1884), Ein neuer Pharao (1889), Faustulus (1897) and Freigeboren (1900) among many others. These days, Sturmflut is his best known work though it is currently only available in an abridged form. Spielhagen's later works were almost entirely on literary theory.
Spielhagen's Sämtliche Werke (Complete Works) were published in 1871 in sixteen volumes, in 1878 in fourteen volumes. His Sämtliche Romane (Complete Novels) followed in 1898 (22 vols), and these were followed by a new series in 1902. In 1890, he published his autobiography, Finder und Erfinder (2 vols, 1890).
His novel In Reih' und Glied, translated into Russian as Один в поле не воин [Odin v pole ne voin, "One man in the field is not a warrior" or "One man alone can't win a war"] (1867–1868), with its revolutionary protagonist Leo (based on Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle was a German-Jewish jurist and socialist political activist.-Early life:Ferdinand Lassalle was born on 11 April 1825 in Breslau , Silesia to a prosperous Jewish family descending from Upper Silesian Loslau...
), was extraordinarily popular in Russia, and virtually all his novels were subsequently translated there at least once, collected editions being brought out in 1895 (8 vols.) and 1898 (30 vols.).