August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue (IPA: [ˈaʊgʊst fɔn ˈkɔtsəbu]; May 3, 1761 in
Weimar - March 23, 1819 in
Mannheim) was a German dramatist.
One of Kotzebue's books was burned during the Wartburg festival in 1817. August von Kotzebue was murdered in 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand, a
militant member of the Burschenschaften. The murder of Kotzebue gave
Metternich the pretext to issue the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819, which dissolved the Burschenschaften, cracked down against the liberal
press, and seriously restricted academic freedom in the states of the German Confederation.
Biography
After attending school there, he went in his sixteenth year to the University of Jena, and afterwards studied for a year in Duisburg. In 1780 he completed his legal course and became an advocate. Through
the influence of Graf Gortz, Prussian ambassador at the Russian court, he became secretary of the governor-general of St
Petersburg, In 1783 he received the appointment of assessor to the high court of appeal in
Reval, where he married the daughter of a Russian lieutenant-general. He was ennobled in
1785, and became president of the magistracy of the province of Estonia. In Reval he acquired considerable reputation by his novels, Die Leiden der Ortenbergischen
Familie (1785) and Geschichte meines Vaters (1788), and still more by the plays Adelheid von Wulfingen (1789),
Menschenhass und Reue (1790) and Die Indianer in England (1790). The good impression produced by these works was,
however, almost effaced by a cynical dramatic satire, Doktor Bahrdt mit der eisernen Stirn, which appeared in 1790 with
the name of Knigge on the title page. After the death of his first wife, Kotzebue retired from the Russian service, and lived for
a time in Paris and Mainz; he then settled in
1795 on an estate which he had acquired near Reval and devoted himself to writing.
Within a few years he published six volumes of miscellaneous sketches and stories (Die jüngsten Kinder meiner Laune,
1793-1796) and more than twenty plays, the majority of which were translated into several European languages. In 1798 he accepted
the office of dramatist to the court theatre in Vienna, but owing to differences with the actors
he was soon obliged to resign. He now returned to his native town, but as he was not on good terms with Goethe, and had openly attacked Romanticism, his
position in Weimar was not comfortable. He thought of returning to St Petersburg, but
on his journey there he was, for some unknown reason, arrested at the frontier and transported to Siberia. Fortunately he had written a comedy which flattered the vanity of the emperor Paul of Russia; he was quickly brought back, presented with an estate from the crown lands of
Livonia, and made director of the German theatre in St Petersburg.
He returned to Germany when the emperor Paul died, and again settled in Weimar; he found it as impossible as ever to gain a
footing in literary society, and turned to Berlin, where in association with Garlieb Merkel (1769-1850) he edited Der Freimutige (1803-1807) and began his Almanach
dramatischer Spiele (1803-1820). Towards the end of 1806 he was once more in Russia, and in the
security of his estate in Estonia wrote many satirical articles against Napoleon
Bonaparte in his journals Die Biene and Die Grille. As councillor of state he was attached in
1816 to the department for foreign affairs in St Petersburg, and in 1817 went to Germany as a kind
of spy in the service of Russia, with a salary of 15,000 roubles. In a weekly journal (Literarisches Wochenblatt) which he
published in Weimar he scoffed at the pretensions of those Germans who demanded free institutions, and became an object of such
general dislike that he was obliged to move to Mannheim. He was especially detested by the young enthusiasts for liberty, and one
of them, Karl Ludwig Sand, a theology student,
stabbed him, in Mannheim. Sand was executed, and the government made his crime an excuse for
placing the universities under strict supervision.
Besides his plays, Kotzebue wrote several historical works, which, however, are too one-sided and prejudiced to have much
value. Of more interest are his autobiographical writings, Meine Flucht nach Paris im Winter 1790 (1791), Über meinen
Aufenthalt in Wien (1799), Das merkwürdigste Jahr meines Lebens (1801), Erinnerungen aus Paris (1804), and
Erinnerungen von meiner Reise aus Liefland nach Rom und Neapel (1805). As a dramatist he was extraordinarily prolific, his
plays numbering over 200; his popularity, not merely on the German, but on the European stage,
was unprecedented. His success, however, was due less to any conspicuous literary or poetic ability than to an extraordinary
facility in the invention of effective situations; he possessed, as few German playwrights before or since, the unerring instinct
for the theatre; and his influence on the technique of the modern drama from Scribe to
Sardou and from Bauernfeld to
Sudermann is unmistakable. Kotzebue is to be seen to best advantage in his comedies,
such as Der Wildfang, Die beiden Klingsberg and Die deutschen Kleinstädter, which contain admirable genre
pictures of German life. These plays held the stage in Germany long after the once famous Menschenhass und Reue (known in
England as The Stranger), Graf Benjowsky, or ambitious exotic tragedies like Die Sonnenjungfrau and Die
Spanier in Peru (which Sheridan[disambiguation needed] adapted as Pizarro) were forgotten.
Two collections of Kotzebue's dramas were published during his lifetime: Schauspiele (5 vols., 1797); Neue
Schauspiele (23 vols., 1798-1820). His Sämtliche dramatische Werke appeared in 44 vols., in 1827-1829, and again,
under the title Theater, in 40 vols., in 1840-1841. A selection of his plays in 10 vols. appeared in Leipzig in 1867-1868.
See Heinrich Doring, A. von Kotzebues Leben (1830); W. von Kotzebue, A. von
Kotzebue (1881); Ch. Rabany, Kotzebue, sa vie et son temps (1893); W. Sellier, Kotzebue in England (1901).
References
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
External links
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