Gustav Freytag

Gustav Freytag.

Gustav Freytag (13 July 1816 – 30 April 1895) was a German novelist and playwright.

Life

Freytag was born in Kreuzburg (Kluczbork) in Silesia. After attending the gymnasium at Oels (Oleśnica), he studied philology at the universities of Breslau (Wrocław) and Berlin, and in 1838 received his degree with a dissertation titled Über die Anfänge der dramatische Poesie bei den Germanen.^[1] In 1839, he settled at Breslau, as Privatdozent in German language and literature, but organ of German and Austrian liberalism. Freytag helped to conduct it until 1861, and again from 1867 till 1870, when for a short time he edited a new periodical, Im neuen Reich. In 1863 he developed what is known as Freytag's pyramid; see Dramatic structure.

Works

Debit and Credit

Freytag's literary fame was made universal by the publication in 1855 of his novel, Soll und Haben (Debit and Credit), which was translated into almost all European languages. It was translated into English by Georgiana Harcourt in 1857.

It was hailed as one the best German novels and praised for its sturdy but unexaggerated realism. In some passages, it is quite humorous. Its main purpose is the recommendation of the German middle class as the soundest element in the nation, but it also has a more directly patriotic intention in the contrast it draws between the homely virtues of the German, the shiftlessness of the Pole and the rapacity of the Jew. As a Silesian, Freytag had no great love for his Slavic neighbors, authored anti-Polish pamphlets^[2] and being a native of a province which in his mind owed everything to the Kingdom of Prussia, he was naturally an earnest champion of Prussian hegemony over Germany. His powerful advocacy of this idea in his Grenzboten gained him the friendship of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, whose neighbor he had become, on acquiring the estate of Siebleben near Gotha.

Die verlorene Handschrift

At the duke's request, Freytag was attached to the staff of the Crown Prince of Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, and was present at the Battles of Worth and Sedan. Before this, he had published another novel, Die verlorene Handschrift (1864), in which he endeavoured to do for German university life what Soll und Haben had done for commercial life. The hero is a young German professor, who is so wrapped up in his search for a manuscript by Tacitus that he is oblivious to an impending tragedy in his domestic life. The book was, however, less successful than its predecessor.

Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit

Between 1859 and 1867, Freytag published in five volumes Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit, a work on popular lines, illustrating the history and manners of Germany. In 1872, he began a work with a similar patriotic purpose, Die Ahnen, a series of historical romances in which he unfolds the history of a German family from the earliest times to the middle of the 19th century. The series comprises the following novels, none of which, however, reaches the level of Freytag's earlier books:

1. Ingo und Ingraban (1872)^[3]
2. Das Nest der Zaunkönige (1874)
3. Die Brüder vom deutschen Hause (1875)
4. Marcus König (1876)
5. Die Geschwister (1878)
6. Aus einer kleinen Stadt (1880).

Other works

Freytag's other works include:

• Die Technik des Dramas (1863), in which he explained a system for dramatic structure, later named Freytag's Pyramid
• a biography of the Baden statesman Karl Mathy (1869)
• an autobiography (Erinnerungen aus meinen Leben, 1887)
• his Gesammelte Aufsätze, chiefly reprinted from the Grenzboten (1888); Der Kronprinz wed die deutsche Kaiserkrone; and Erinnerungsbidtter (1889)

Complete works

Freytag's Gesammelte Werke were published in 22 volumes, at Leipzig (1886–1888); his Vermischte Aufsatze have been edited by E. Elster, autobiography mentioned above, the lives by C. Alberti (Leipzig, 1890) and F. Seiler (Leipzig, 1898).

See also

• Debit and Credit

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

1. ^ Harald Bachmann: Gustav Freytag (1816–1895). In: Coburger Geschichtsblätter. 3/1995, Historische Gesellschaft Coburg e. V., S. 121–122
2. ^ Literary and cultural images of a nation without a state: the case of nineteenth-century Poland. By Agnieszka Barbara Nance. p. 45.
3. ^ Nitzsch, Friedrich (1875). "Freytags Ingraban und die Kirchengeschichte". Im Neuen Reich 5 (1): 481–95. http://books.google.com/books?id=a-4aAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA481. Retrieved 8 September 2010. 

External links

• Works by Gustav Freytag at Zeno.org (German)
• Freytag's page at Projekt Gutenberg DE
• A free online eBook edition of Freytag's 'Ingo' text

Persondata
Name	Freytag, Gustav
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	13 July 1816
Place of birth
Date of death	1896
Place of death