Ernest Theodor Wilhelm Amadeus Hoffman

ERNEST THEODOR WILHELM AMADEUS HOFFMAN

German author (1776-1822)

Biography:

Ernest Theodor Wilhelm Amadeus Hoffmann was born in 1776 on Konigsberg. He is one of the main figures of German Romanticism, both as a writer and a music composer. His works are ecclectic and his characters show his fantastic world of imagination but also his concerns for everyday life. His first tales were about supernatural experiences, madness and music (Ritter Gluck, 1809, Don Juan, 1813, Councillor Krespel, 1816, and Der Kampf der Sänger, 1818).
His literary stories inspired many musicians: The Tales of Hoffman, by Offenbach or The Nutcracker, by Tchaikovsky.
Hoffman died in Berlin in 1822

As far as his musical carreer is concerned, his most important opera Undone (1813-1814), which was first represented at The Royal Theatre of Berlin, was the precursor for works by Weber and Wagner and thus, it was considered the basis of German Musical Romanticism. A remarkable essay on Mozart's Don Giovanni established him as a serious critic and his articles on Beethoven (Beethovens Instrumentalmusik, 1813) are excellent.
As a writer of fiction, his tales became famous worldwide: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816), Elixir of Devils (1816), Hoffman's strange stories (1817), The Serapion Brethren (1819-1821) and Princess Brambilla (1821).
His tales, which weave the fantastic closely into real world, had enormous influence particularly in the United States, where his works affected the writings of Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.