Friedrich von Spielhagen

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Friedrich von Spielhagen (February 24, 1829 - February 25, 1911) was a German novelist born in Magdeburg.

[edit] Life

Spielhagen was 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. 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 1860, he moved from Leipzig to Hannover and then, in 1862, to Berlin. He died on 25th 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.

[edit] As a writer

After publishing Clara Bere (1857) and Auf der Düne (1858), neither of which was widely read, he began to write for newspapers and journals including the Zeitung für Norddeutschland (Newspaper for Northern Germany) from 1860 until 1862 and later for Westermanns illustrierte deutsche Monatshefte (Westermann's Illustrated German Monthly). In 1861, he struck gold with Problematische Naturen (1860-1861); it was followed a year later by a sequel, Durch Nacht zum Licht, then by Die von Hohenstein (1863), In Reih' und Glied (1866), Hammer und Amboß (1869), Deutsche Pioniere (1870), Allzeit voran (1872), Sturmflut (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).