Friedrich Wilhelm Hackländer

He was attracted to military service and therefore entered the Prussian artillery at the age of 16, but found himself unable to make much of a career in that milieu either and therefore returned to the commercial world.

He resigned from court service in 1849 to become a war correspondent in Italy for the newspapers of the important German publisher Cotta, which also resulted in the book Bilder aus dem Soldatenleben im Kriege (1849-1850).

In the following year for his services he was raised to the hereditary nobility as Ritter von Hackländer by the Austrian Emperor and retired into private life in 1864.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, his writing is lively, adventurous and even romantic on occasion, but his range is narrow and the character-drawing feeble and superficial.

[2] Most of Hackländer's very numerous works have remained unreprinted, but a handful have lasted into, or been revived in, more recent times, including: two collections of fairy stories, Der Leibschneider der Zwerge and Weihnachtsmärchen; the travel book Reise in den Orient, as well as some pieces on the Rhine included with works by other authors in Rheinfahrt; and two of the many autobiographical works, Handel und Wandel, which describes in lightly fictionalised form his dissatisfied early life as cheap labour in a small shop, and Friedrich Wilhelm Hackländer, ein Preusse in Schwaben, which deals with his experiences in Württemberg.