Biography Essay

Of the pioneers of the German Romantic movement around the turn of the nineteenth century, none was more daring—or more durable—than Ludwig Tieck. For more than five decades his name was virtually synonymous with German Romanticism; there was hardly a genre of this most multifarious of literary movements that he did not explore, if not actually inspire. Literary historians surveying the first half of the nineteenth century would be hard-pressed to name a German author who could not boast of a personal acquaintance with Tieck or who had not benefited from his conversation and counsel. Hailed by his youthful contemporaries as the founding poet of the Romantic movement, Tieck lived long enough to become its poet laureate as well. By the time he died in 1853 Romanticism had all but ceased to exist as a formal literary movement. Yet even to describe Tieck...