Berthold Auerbach (February 28, 1812 – February 8, 1882) was a German-Jewish poet and author.
Moses (Moyses) Baruch Auerbach was born in Nordstetten (now Horb am Neckar) in the Kingdom of Württemberg.
On the completion of his studies at the universities of Tübingen, Munich and Heidelberg, he immediately devoted himself to literature. His first publication dealt with "Judaism and Recent Literature", and was to be followed by a series of novels taken from Jewish history. Of this intended series he actually published, with considerable success, Spinoza and Poet and Merchant. But real fame and popularity came to him when he began to occupy himself with the life of the general people which forms the subject of his best-known works. In these later books, of which On the Height is perhaps the most characteristic and certainly the most famous, he revealed an unrivaled insight into the soul of the Southern German country folk, and especially of the peasants of the Black Forest and the Bavarian Alps. His descriptions are remarkable for their fresh realism, graceful style and humour. In addition to these qualities, his last books are marked by great subtlety of psychological analysis. "On the Height" was first published at Stuttgart in 1861, and has been translated into several languages.
Auerbach died at Cannes shortly before his 70th birthday.
BERTHOLD AUERBACH (1812-1882), German novelist, was born on the 28th of February 1812 at Nordstetten in the Wurttemberg Black Forest. His parents were Jews, and he was intended for the ministry; but after studying philosophy at Tubingen, Munich and Heidelberg, and becoming estranged from Jewish orthodoxy by the study of Spinoza, he devoted himself to literature. He made a fortunate beginning in a romance on the life of Spinoza (1837), so interesting in itself, and so close in its adherence to fact, that it may be read with equal advantage as a novel or as a biography. Dichter and Kaufmann followed in 1839, and a translation of Spinoza's works in 1841, when Auerbach turned to the class of fiction which has made him famous, the Schwarzwdlder Dorfgeschichten (1843), stories of peasant life in the Black Forest. In these, as well as in Barfiissele (1856), Edelweiss (1861), and other novels of greater compass, he depicts the life of the south German peasant as "Jeremias Gotthelf" (Albrecht Bitzius) had painted the peasantry of Switzerland, but in a less realistic spirit. When this vein was exhausted Auerbach returned to his first phase as a philosophical novelist, producing Auf der Hohe (1865), Das Landhaus am Rhein (1869), and other romances of profound speculative tendencies, turning on plots invented by himself. With the exception of Auf der Hohe, these works did not enjoy much popularity, and suffer from lack of form and concentration.
Augereau Auerbach's fame continues to rest upon his Dorfgeschichten, although the celebrity of even these has been impaired by the growing demand for a more uncompromising realism. Auerbach died at Cannes on the 8th of February 1882.
The first collected edition of Auerbach's Schriften appeared in 22 vols. in 1863-1864; the best edition is in 18 vols. (1892-1895). Auerbach's Briefe an seinen Freund J. Auerbach (with a preface by F. Spielhagen) were published in 2 vols. (1884). See E. Zabel, B. Auerbach (1882); and E. Lasker, B. Auerbach, ein Gedenkblatt (1882).
|
<< Aue |
Categories: ATI-AUR | German writers
   | Works by Berthold Auerbach - Internet Archive Search: creator:berthold auerbach -contributor:gutenberg |
|
|
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
