Wilhelm Schäfer

He gained a scholarship to study in Switzerland and France through the Cotta-Verlag publishing house, and in 1898 became a freelance writer in Berlin.

His work (drama, novels, and short prose pieces) were naturalist in style and marked with "völkisch" and national elements.

In 1930 he published a novel about the shoe-maker Wilhelm Voigt with the title Der Hauptmann von Köpenick.

Important novellas were "Die unterbrochene Rheinfahrt" (1913) und "Hölderlins Einkehr" (1925).

Schäfer's folksy language and mystification of the "German soul" made his work popular with the Nazis.