Karl
Gutzkow
born March 17, 1811, Berlin, Prussia
[Germany]
died Dec. 16, 1878, Sachsenhausen,
Frankfurt am Main
novelist and dramatist who was a pioneer
of the modern social novel in Germany.
Gutzkow began his career as a
journalist and first attracted attention
with the publication of Maha Guru,
Geschichte eines Gottes (1833; “Maha
Guru, Story of a God”), a fantastic
satirical romance. In 1835 he published
Wally, die Zweiflerin (“Wally, the
Doubter”), an attack on marriage,
coloured by religious skepticism, that
marked the beginning of the revolt of
the Young Germany movement against
Romanticism. The book excited virulent
discussion, and the federal Diet
condemned Gutzkow to three months’
imprisonment and ordered the suppression
of all his works. After his release he
produced the tragedy Richard Savage
(1839), the first in a series of
well-constructed and effective plays.
His domestic tragedy Werner oder Herz
und Welt (1840; “Werner or Heart and
World”) long remained in the repertory
of the German theatres. Gutzkow also
wrote Das Urbild des Tartüffe (1844;
“The Model for Tartuffe”), a clever and
topical satirical comedy; and Uriel
Acosta (1846), which uses the story of
the martyrdom of that forerunner of
Spinoza to make a plea for religious
freedom. By this time he had published
the novel Blasedow und seine Söhne
(1838; “Blasedow and His Sons”), a
humorous satire on the educational
theories of the time.
In 1847 Gutzkow went to Dresden,
where he succeeded the Romantic writer
and drama theorist Ludwig Tieck as
literary adviser to the court theatre.
In 1850 there appeared the first of the
nine volumes of Die Ritter vom Geiste
(“The Knights of the Spirit”), now
considered the starting point of the
modern German social novel; it also
anticipated the Naturalist movement.
His final well-known work, Der
Zauberer von Rom (1858–61; “The Magician
of Rome”), is a powerful study of Roman
Catholic life in southern Germany.
