Karl
Immermann
born April 24, 1796, Magdeburg,
Saxony
died Aug. 25, 1840, Düsseldorf, Prussia
dramatist and novelist whose works
included two forerunners in German
literary history: Die Epigonen as a
novel of the contemporary social scene
and Der Oberhof as a realistic story of
village life.
The son of a civil servant, Immermann
interrupted his legal studies in Halle
(1813–17) to fight in the last phase of
the Napoleonic Wars. While working in
the military court in Münster (1819–24),
he fell in love with Elisa von Lützow,
the wife of the Prussian general Adolf,
Freiherr von Lützow. Their passionate
love affair ended 14 years after the
Lützow divorce (1825) because Elisa
unwaveringly refused to enter upon a
second marriage. At the beginning of
1824, Immermann became judge in the
criminal court at Magdeburg, moving to
the provincial court at Düsseldorf three
years later. In Düsseldorf he designed
and built a “model” theatre where, in
accordance with Goethe’s theories, he
especially cultivated ensemble. In 1839
Immermann was married to the 20-year-old
Marianne Niemeyer, and the new life and
new happiness that his marriage gave him
found expression in his epic Tristan und
Isolde, which was left unfinished at his
death.
Immermann’s writing is deeply marked
by the transitional nature of his time.
He was an eyewitness of the decline of
the old aristocracy, the rise of the
bourgeoisie, and the spread of
industrialism and liberalism. His
dramatic works include Das Trauerspiel
in Tyrol (1828; remodeled in 1835 as
Andreas Hofer); Merlin (1832); the
trilogy Alexis (1832); and the comic
epic Tulifäntchen (1830), a witty parody
of the decline of the nobility and of
romantic chivalry. Immermann’s novels,
however, with their acute diagnosis of
the period, are more important than his
plays. Die Epigonen (1836) gives a cross
section of the society of his own
period, deploring both the nobility’s
decay and the dangers posed by
radicalism and money-worship. The
convoluted tale is a pessimistic picture
of society on the brink of a painful
adjustment to industrialized mass
society. The novel Münchhausen (1838–39)
consists of two parts: a highly
satirical and ludicrous portrayal of an
idle and mendacious aristocrat, and a
solidly visualized portrayal of peasants
rooted in their work and in their
countryside. In this latter section
Immermann glorifies the sturdy
respectability of the peasantry, in whom
he saw the strength of the German
national heritage and the means for its
regeneration.
