Christian Heinrich Spiess
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Christian Heinrich Spiess (April 4, 1755 – August 17, 1799), German writer of romances, was born at Freiberg in Saxony.
For a time an actor, he was appointed in 1788 controller on the estate of a certain Count Königl at Betzdikau in Bohemia, where he died, almost insane, the result of his weird fancies, on August 17, 1799.
Spiess, in his Ritter-, Räuber- and Geister-Romane, as they are called--stories of knights, robbers and ghosts of the "dark" ages--the idea of which he borrowed from Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen and Schiller's Räuber and Geisterseher, was the founder of the German Schauerroman (shocker), a style of writing continued, though in a finer vein, by Karl Gottlob Cramer (1758–1817) and by Goethe's brother-in-law, Christian August Vulpius.
These stories, though appealing largely to the vulgar taste, made Spiess one of the most widely read authors of his day. The most popular was a ghost story of the 13th century, Das Petermännchen (1793) among others were Der alte Uberall and Nirgends (1792); Die Lowenritter (1794), and Hans Heiling, vierter and letzter Regent der Erd- Luft- Feuer- und Wasser-Geister (1798).
Beside numerous comedies, Spiess wrote, anticipating Schiller, a tragedy Maria Stuart (1784), which was in the same year performed at the court theatre in Vienna. See Karl Gödeke, Grundrisz zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, v. 506 sqq.; Müller-Fraureuth, Die Ritter- and Räuberromane (Halle, 1894).
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
