KARL LEBERECHT IMMERMANN (1847)

Dramatist and novelist whose work included two forerunners in German literary history: Die Epigonen as a novel of the contemporary social scene and Der Oberhof as a realistic story of village life.

The son of a civil servant he interrupted his legal studies in Halle (1813-17) to fight in the last phase of the Napoleonic Wars.

While working in the military court in Münster (1819-24) he fell in love with Elisa von Lützow the wife of the Prussian general Adolf, Freiherr von Lützow. Their passionate love affair ended 14 years after the Lützow divorce (1825) because Elisa unwaveringly refused to enter upon a second marriage.

At the beginning of 1824 Immermann became judge in the criminal court at Magdeburg moving to the provincial court at Düsseldorf three years later. In Düsseldorf he designed and built a model theatre where in accordance with Goethe´s theories he especially cultivated ensemble.

In 1839 Immermann was married to the 20-year-old Marianne Niemeyer and the new life and new happiness that his marriage gave him found expression in nhis unfinished epic Tristan und Isolde which was interrupted by his death.

Immermann´s writing is deeply marked by the transitional nature of his time. He was painfully conscious of being overshadowed by the Goethe period which seemed to deny any new, distinctive development to its posthumous sons. He was an eyewitness of the dissolution of the old social conditions through industrialism and liberalism and sought for some compensation. These problems are the more evident in his novels than in his plays.

His dramatic works include Das Trauerspiel in Tyrol (1828; remodelled in 1835 as Andreas Hofer) which was ridiculed by the critic A. W. von Schlegel and the poet and dramatist Graf von Platen-Hallermünde; Merlin (1832) a play richer in ideas than in drama; the trilogy Alexis (1832) and the comic epic Tulifäntchen (1830) a witty parody of the decline of the nobility and of romantic chivalry.

Immermann´s novels with their acute diagnosis of the period are more important. In Die Epigonen (1836) he gives a cross section of the society of his own period and thus in spite of his indebtedness to Goethe´s Wilhelm Meister created the first German contemporary novel. Münchhausen (1838-39) is a twofold novel: in the form of the hero he attacks the humbug of the time with grotesque satire, full of innuendo while in the realistic Oberhof part of the novel he sets against this the strength of the national heritage in which he sees the hope of a happier future. The story is noteworthy for its portrayal of peasants rooted in their work and in their countryside.