Ludwig Tieck

Prolific and well-traveled, Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) is one of the leading literary figures of German Romanticism, which he later did not hesitate to abandon in favor of realism. Beyond the literary value of his personal work, he made significant contributions to German letters as a scholar of medieval manuscripts, as the artistic director of the Royal Theater in Dresden and Berlin, and as an editor of works by his contemporaries, such as Kleist, Lenz, and Novalis. He also delved deeply into Shakespeare, translating his entire body of work. A founding member of the famous "Jena Circle," Tieck embodied in his work the tenets of early Romanticism, serving literature in the same way that Novalis did, and akin to what the Schlegel brothers and Fichte represented for the theory and philosophy of Romanticism, respectively.