Ludwig Tieck Biography

Dromo's Den

TIECK, Ludwig (1773–1853). A German romantic novelist, translator, and critic, brother of the preceding, born in Berlin. After studies at Halle, Göttingen, and Erlangen and four years of literary work in Berlin, Tieck went to Jena in 1799 and joined the Schlegels and Novalis in their romantic agitation. Leaving Jena, he went to Dresden, moved to Ziebingen near Frankfort on the Oder, visited Italy (1805), England and France (1817), and in 1825 became director of the Dresden Court Theatre after having since 1819 been the centre of a literary circle there. Royal favor brought him in 1841 back to Berlin, where his dramatic talents were used in the production of several Greek plays. Tieck’s significant literary career opens with Abdallah (1795), Sternbalds Wanderungen (1798), and William Lovell (1795–96), the last a novel of "storm and stress." His youthful imagination ran riot also in mediæval legends and fairy tales, e.g., the three volumes of Volksmärchen (1797), among which were versions of Puss in Boots and Bluebeard. A comedy, The World Topsy-Turvy (1799), Die verkehrte Welt, proclaimed even more emphatically his period of romantic revolt. To this year belongs also the ultraromantic work written in collaboration with Wackenroder, Phantasien über die Kunst, full of enthusiasm and of a mystic religiosity. His Romantische Dichtungen (2 vols., 1799 and 1800) were the first work to show the direct influence of association with the Schlegels. They were followed by an admirable translation of Don Quixote (1799–1801) and by Kaiser Octavianus (1804), which he published as a Lustspiel. This period of rapid production was succeeded by an attack of the gout. His subsequent work is less mystic, less erratic, more artistic, e.g., Phantasus (1812–17), but Tieck did not reach his mature style till his visit to England, the direct results of which are Shakespeares Vorschule (1823–29), Dramaturgische Blätter (1826), and the noble continuation of Schlegel’s translation of Shakespeare, of which he was the moving spirit, although his daughter, Dorothea, and Count Baudissin did the actual work. Indirectly the same influence is seen in the Novellenkranz (1831–35; 12 vols., 1853). Tieck’s Works are in 28 volumes (1828–54); select works edited by Witkowski (4 vols., Leipzig, 1903) and by Bernd (2 vols., Berlin, 1908). Some tales and novels are translated by Carlyle, by Thirlwall, and others.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 266-267.