Wolfgang Menzel

Wolfgang Menzel (21 June 1798[1] – 23 April 1873), German poet, critic and literary historian, was born at Waldenburg (Wałbrzych) in Silesia.

[2] He studied at the Breslau, Jena, and Bonn, and after living for some time in Aarau and Heidelberg finally settled in Stuttgart, where, from 1830 to 1838, he had a seat in the Württemberg Diet.

[3] His first work, a clever and original volume of poems, entitled Streckverse (Heidelberg, 1823), was followed in 1824-1825 by a popular Geschichte der Deutschen in three volumes and in 1829 and 1830 by Rubezahl and Narcissus, the dramatized fairy-stories upon which his reputation as a poet chiefly rests.

In 1851 he published the romance of Furore, a lively picture of the period of the Thirty Years' War; his other writings include Geschichte Europas, 1789-1815 (2 vols.

In 1866 his political sympathies again changed, and he opposed the particularism of the Prussian Junkers and the anti-unionism of south Germany.