Christian Dietrich Grabbe (11 December 1801 – 12 September 1836) was a German

dramatist A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

of the ''

Vormärz ' (; English: ''pre-March'') was a period in the history of Germany preceding the 1848 March Revolution in the states of the German Confederation. The beginning of the period is less well-defined. Some place the starting point directly after the ...

'' era. He wrote many historical plays conceiving a disillusioned and pessimistic world view, with some shrill scenes. Heinrich Heine saw him as one of Germany's foremost dramatists, calling him "a drunken

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

" and

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...

described Grabbe as "an original and rather peculiar poet."

Life

Born in

Detmold Detmold () is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, with a population of . It was the capital of the small Principality of Lippe from 1468 until 1918 and then of the Free State of Lippe until 1947. Today it is the administrative center of t ...

, the son of a prison officer, he began to write plays in the age of sixteen, while attending the '' Gymnasium''. A scholarship awarded by Princess Pauline enabled him to study law at the universities of

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

and

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

, where he became acquainted with Heinrich Heine. After graduating in 1823, he unsuccessfully applied as a theatre director. Grabbe returned to Detmold, he passed the final ''

Staatsexamen The ("state examination" or "exam by state"; pl.: ''Staatsexamina'') is a German government licensing examination that future physicians, dentists, teachers, pharmacists, food chemists, psychotherapists and jurists (i.e., lawyers, judges, publi ...

'' and tried to find an employment as a legal officer, though also to no avail. Finally in 1826 he was appointed to act as a military legal advisor, initially without remuneration. From 1831 he increasingly suffered from alcoholism. After his fiancée turned away from him, he married his beloved Louise Christina Clostermeier in 1833, but the marriage quickly turned out to be unhappy. The next year Grabbe quit and left Detmold for

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

, where he also fell out with his publisher. He proceeded to

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...

, where he temporarily worked at the Altes Theater with

Karl Leberecht Immermann Karl Leberecht Immermann (24 April 1796 – 25 August 1840) was a German dramatist, novelist and a poet. Biography He was born at Magdeburg, the son of a government official. In 1813 he went to study law at Halle, where he remained, after t ...

. Grabbe returned to Detmold in 1836 as a broken man, his wife filed for divorce. He died from

general paresis General paresis, also known as general paralysis of the insane (GPI), paralytic dementia, or syphilitic paresis is a severe neuropsychiatric disorder, classified as an organic mental disorder and is caused by late-stage syphilis and the chro ...

in the same year.

Legacy

With

Georg Büchner Karl Georg Büchner (17 October 1813 – 19 February 1837) was a German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose, considered part of the Young Germany movement. He was also a revolutionary and the brother of physician and philosopher Ludwig Büch ...

, Grabbe was one of the principal German dramatists of his time. His debut ''Herzog Theodor von Gothland'' overtaxed contemporary critics by its all-pervasive nihilism. Influenced by Shakespeare and the ''

Sturm und Drang ''Sturm und Drang'' (, ; usually translated as "storm and stress") was a proto- Romantic movement in German literature and music that occurred between the late 1760s and early 1780s. Within the movement, individual subjectivity and, in particul ...

'' movement, his plays were very ambitious, with crowd scenes and rapid scene changes that challenged the technical capacity of the theaters of the time. He resolved the strict forms of the classical drama in a loose series of scenes that were a precursor of the realist drama. His plays ''Napoleon oder Die hundert Tage'' or ''Hannibal'' reveal a realistic, heterogeneous concept of history. After his death, he was at first forgotten, but his work was rediscovered by the Naturalist and

Expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

dramatists. He was honored by the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

as a great national poet, based on occasional antisemitic statements (particularly in ''

Aschenbrödel ''Aschenbrödel'' (''Cinderella'') is a ballet written by Johann Strauss II. He had written all the principal parts of the ballet, and was intending to fill in the orchestration as time permitted. However, Strauss died in 1899, and it was finish ...

''), and on his nationalistic portrayal of German history, like ''Die Hermannsschlacht'' on the

Battle of the Teutoburg Forest The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, described as the Varian Disaster () by Roman historians, took place at modern Kalkriese in AD 9, when an alliance of Germanic peoples ambushed Roman legions and their auxiliaries, led by Publius Quinctilius ...

. In the 1930s, numerous streets were named after him. The city of Detmold awards the Christian-Dietrich-Grabbe Prize for new dramatic literature since 1994 in association with the ''Grabbe-Gesellschaft''

literary society A literary society is a group of people interested in literature. In the modern sense, this refers to a society that wants to promote one genre of writing or a specific author. Modern literary societies typically promote research, publish newsle ...

and the ''Landesverband Lippe'' municipal association.

Works

* ''Herzog Theodor von Gothland'', tragedy (1822); first performance 1892, Vienna * ''Scherz, Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung'', comedy, (1822/27); first performance 1907, Munich * ''Nannette und Maria'', melodrama (1823); first performance 1914, Kettwig (Essen) * ''Marius und Sulla'', fragment (1823–27); first performance 1936, Detmold * ''Über die Shakspearo-Manie'', theatre mémoire (1827) * ''Don Juan und Faust'', tragedy (1828), first performance 1829, Detmold * ''Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa'', drama (1829), part I of the

Hohenstaufen The Hohenstaufen dynasty (, , ), also known as the Staufer, was a noble family of unclear origin that rose to rule the Duchy of Swabia from 1079, and to royal rule in the Holy Roman Empire during the Middle Ages from 1138 until 1254. The dynast ...

cycle; first performance 1875, Schwerin * ''Kaiser Heinrich VI.'', drama (1829), part II of the Hohenstaufen cycle; first performance 1875, Schwerin * ''Etwas über den Briefwechsel zwischen Schiller und Goethe'', literary mémoire (1830); partly published in 1835 * ''Napoleon oder Die hundert Tage'', drama (1831); first performance 1895, Frankfurt * ''Kosciuzko'', drama fragment (1835); first performance 1941, Gelsenkirchen * ''Aschenbrödel'', comedy (1829/35); first performance 1937, Detmold * ''Hannibal'', tragedy (1835); first performance 1918, Munich * ''Der Cid'', libretto of a planned opera by

Norbert Burgmüller August Joseph Norbert Burgmüller (8 February 1810 – 7 May 1836) was a German composer. Life Burgmüller was born in Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic ...

(1835); first performance 2002, Isen * ''Die Hermannsschlacht'', drama (1835–36); first performance 1936, Detmold

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Grabbe, Christian Dietrich 1801 births 1836 deaths People from Detmold People from the Principality of Lippe Writers from North Rhine-Westphalia German male dramatists and playwrights 19th-century German dramatists and playwrights 19th-century German male writers