August von Kotzebue

August von Kotzebue , 1761-1819, German dramatist and politician. He wrote some 200 plays, including Menschenhass und Reue (1789, tr. The Stranger, 1798), Die Spanier in Peru; oder, Rollas Tod (1795, tr. Rolla, 1797), and Die beiden Klingsberg (1801, tr. Father and Son, 1914). His comedies and operatic librettos remained popular throughout the 19th cent. Among those who set his librettos to music were Beethoven, Schubert, and C. M. von Weber. After a stay in Russia, Kotzebue returned to Germany as an agent of Czar Alexander I. He was detested for his reactionary propaganda; his assassination at Mannheim by a student led to the suppression of German student organizations through the Carlsbad Decrees.

Kotzebue, August Friedrich Ferdinand Von (1761–1819), playwright. Hailed briefly by some of his contemporaries as the German Shakespeare, he burst upon the American scene in Dunlap's translation of his Menschenhass und Reue, here called The Stranger. The play's tremendous success not only saved Dunlap's faltering fortunes at the new Park Theatre but also initiated the vogue of theatrical romanticism. The play retained its popularity for decades, as did his Pizarro. Before Dunlap's retirement in 1805, more than a dozen of Kotzebue's plays were premiered in New York and elsewhere, their increasing sensationalism precipitating the deluge of melodrama, much as The Stranger helped open the gates to romanticism. The American titles were Lover's Vows, False Shame, The Wild Goose Chase, The Force of Calumny and The Virgin of the Sun.