Ludwig Tieck

Ludwig Tieck , 1773-1853, German writer. In his youth he led the transition from Sturm und Drang to romanticism, writing with W. H. Wackenroder Phantasien über die Kunst (1799), essays on aesthetics, and Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (1798), one of the first German romantic novels. His fairy tales and folk tales, notably Der blonde Eckbert (1796) and Volksmärchen (1797), illustrate the romantic refinement of these genres. Kaiser Octavianus (1804), a poetic drama, is an allegory of the rise of Christianity; it exemplifies the romantic glorification of the Middle Ages. Other works include Der Aufruhr in den Cevennen (1826), a fine example of romantic historical fiction, and Phantasus (3 vol., 1812-16; tr. Tales from the Phantasus, 1845), a collection of stories. Tieck also translated Don Quixote and completed, with his daughter Dorothea and her husband, Graf von Baudissin, the translations of Shakespeare begun by A. W. von Schlegel.

Bibliography: See studies by W. J. Lillyman (1979) and R. Paulin (1987).

Tieck, (Johann) Ludwig (1773–1854), German Romantic poet and dramatist, whose early plays, satirical fairy-tales—Ritter Blaubart (Bluebeard, 1796), Der gestiefelte Kater (Puss-in-Boots, 1797), and Die verkehrte Welt (The World Upside-down, 1798)—were followed by verse dramas, Leben und Tod der heiligen Genoveva (1799) and Kaiser Oktavianus (1804). In 1824 Tieck became Director of the Court Theatre in Dresden, where he insisted on clear diction and simplified staging, though a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream on a specially constructed Elizabethan stage, as Tieck imagined it to have been remained an isolated experiment. He became an influential critic, and his description of work at Dresden, collected as Dramaturgische Blätter (1826), reveals him as a man of insight and good taste. His interest in the Elizabethan theatre led him to translate several plays by Ben Jonson, and with his daughter he completed Schlegel's translations of Shakespeare, whose reputation in Germany he did much to further.