Ferdinand Raimund

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Raimund, Ferdinand [ Jakob Raimann] (1790–1836), Austrian playwright and actor, a popular farce-player in Vienna from 1813 to 1823. Having decided that his unique combination of comic gifts needed a vehicle specially created to display them to advantage, he began to write his own plays. The first, Der Barometermacher auf der Zauberinsel (The Barometer-Maker on the Magic Island, 1823), was a great success, and was followed by Das Mädchen aus der Feenwelt; oder, Der Bauer als Millionär (The Girl from Fairyland; or, The Millionaire Farmer, 1826), which preaches, with the help of magical forces and a whole host of allegorical personages, the doctrine of contentment on small means. But perhaps Raimund's best play is Der Alpenkönig und der Menschenfeind (The King of the Alps and the Misanthrope, 1828), in which a kindly mountain spirit cures a misanthropist by assuming his shape and character, while the misanthrope, disguised as his own brother-in-law, has to watch the havoc caused by his suspicions and ill-will. Encouraged by his success, Raimund set about educating himself by studying Shakespeare and—typically for a Viennese playwright—Calderón. The result was a number of plays which were out of tune with the demands of his audiences and with his own essentially unreflective genius. It was not until he returned to his earlier style in Der Verschwender (The Prodigal, 1834) that he was again successful; but his last years were overshadowed by the rising popularity of Nestroy and he finally committed suicide.

Ferdinand Raimund , 1790-1836, Austrian actor and dramatist. From 1817 he was a popular comedian in Vienna, and in 1823 he began to produce his own plays. Raimund wrote fine comedies of Viennese life, among them Der Bauer als Millionär [the peasant millionaire] (1826), Der Verschwender (1833, tr. The Spendthrift, 1949), and Der Alpenkönig und der Menschenfeind (1828, tr. The King of the Alps, 1850). Blending humor with pathos, these plays raised the Viennese folk comedy to a high literary level. Subject to depression, Raimund shot himself at a time when his public favor had temporarily ebbed.

Bibliography: See study by D. Prohaska (1973).