Wilhelm Hauff
| Wilhelm Hauff | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | November 29, 1802 Stuttgart, Germany |
| Died | November 18, 1827 (aged 24) Germany |
| Occupation | Poet, novelist |
| Language | German |
| Genre | Poetry, fiction |
Wilhelm Hauff (29 November 1802 – 18 November 1827) was a German poet and novelist.
Hauff was born in Stuttgart, the son of August Friedrich Hauff, a secretary in the ministry of foreign affairs, and Hedwig Wilhelmine Elsaesser Hauff. He was the second of four children.
Young Hauff lost his father when he was seven years old, and his early education was practically self-gained in the library of his maternal grandfather at Tübingen, where his mother had moved after the death of her husband. In 1818 he was sent to the Klosterschule at Blaubeuren, and in 1820 began to study at the University of Tübingen. In four years he completed his philosophical and theological studies at the Tübinger Stift.
On leaving the university, Hauff became tutor to the children of the famous Württemberg minister of war, General Baron Ernst Eugen von Hugel (1774–1849), and for them wrote his Märchen (fairy tales), which he published in his Märchen almanach auf das Jahr 1826 (Fairytale Almanac of 1826). Some of these stories are very popular in German-speaking countries to this day, such as Der kleine Muck (The Story of Little Muck), Kalif Storch (Caliph Stork) and Die Geschichte von dem Gespensterschiff (The Tale of the Ghost Ship)—all set in the Orient; as well as Der Zwerg Nase (Little Longnose), Das kalte Herz (The Cold Heart or The Marble Heart) and Das Wirtshaus im Spessart (The Spessart Inn), set in Germany.
While there, he also wrote the first part of the Mitteilungen aus den Memoiren des Satan (1826; Memoirs of Beelzebub) and Der Mann im Mond (1825; The Man in the Moon). The latter, a parody of the sentimental and sensual novels of Heinrich Clauren (the pseudonym of Carl Gottlieb Samuel Heun, 1771–1854), became in the course of composition, a close imitation of that author's style and was actually published under his name. As a result, Clauren brought and won an action for damages against Hauff, whereupon Hauff followed up the attack in his witty and sarcastic Kontroverspredigt über H. Clauren und den Mann im Mond (1826) and attained his original object: the moral annihilation of the mawkish and unhealthy literature with which Clauren was flooding the country.
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