Gustav Freytag
born July 13, 1816, Kreuzburg,
Silesia, Prussia
died April 30, 1895, Wiesbaden, Ger.
German writer of realistic novels
celebrating the merits of the middle
classes.
After studying philology at Breslau
and Berlin, Freytag became Privatdozent
(lecturer) in German literature at the
University of Breslau (1839), but he
resigned after eight years to devote
himself to writing. He was much excited
by the revolutions of 1848 and became,
with Julian Schmidt, joint editor of the
Leipzig weekly Die Grenzboten, which he
made into the leading organ of the
middle-class liberals. He abhorred both
the democratic radicalism of the
Jungdeutschen (“Young Germany”) and the
escapism of the Romantics. From 1867 to
1870 he represented the national liberal
party in the North German Reichstag, and
he served at the headquarters of the 3rd
Army in the Franco-German War until the
battle of Sedan (1870).
His literary work was influenced by
his early reading of English novelists,
especially Sir Walter Scott and Charles
Dickens, and of French plays. His name
was made with the comedy Die
Journalisten (1854; The Journalists),
still regarded as one of the most
successful German comedies, and he
acquired an international reputation
with his widely translated novel Soll
und Haben (1855; Debit and Credit,
1857). It celebrates the solid bourgeois
qualities of the German merchants, and
the close relationships between people’s
characters and the work they do is well
brought out. The success of the novel
was such that its author was recognized
as the leading German writer of his day.
He attempted to realize a similar
intention with Die verlorene Handschrift
(1864; The Lost Manuscript, 1865), which
depicts Leipzig university life in the
same realistic manner, but the plot is
much weaker and the effect less
successful. His most ambitious literary
work was the novel-cycle Die Ahnen, 6
vol. (1873–81) which unfolded the story
of a German family from the 4th century
ad up to Freytag’s own time. His Bilder
aus der deutschen Vergangenheit, 5 vol.
(1859–67; partial Eng. trans. Pictures
of German Life, 1862–63) were originally
contributed to Die Grenzboten and give a
vivid and popular account of the history
of the Germans, in which Freytag
stresses the idea of folk character as
determinative in history. His collected
works, Gesammelte Werke, 22 vol.
(1886–88) were reissued, edited by H.M.
Elster (12 vol.) in 1926.
