Biography Essay

Johann Paul Friedrich Richter created for his first published novel, Die unsichtbare Loge (1793; translated as The Invisible Lodge, 1883), a narrator called 'Jean Paul," and that name has been transferred to Richter himself. German patriots who considered Richter's work very "German" never liked this name and at least pronounced Paul in the German and not in the French way. "Jean Paul" is a clear allusion to Richter's great model, Jean -Jacques Rousseau. It is not really a pseudonym, since Richter never wanted to hide his authorship. But the creation of a narrator both identical and nonidentical with his author made possible a series of role-playing games in which fiction and reality merged. The narrator "Jean Paul" could meet the characters of his novels; on the other hand, Richter's audience, the women in particular, identified him as "Jean Paul" and carried the novels over into real life. Thus...