Christian Heinrich Spiess

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Christian Heinrich Spiess (April 4, 1755 – August 17, 1799), German writer of romances, was born at Freiberg in Saxony.

For a time an actor, he was appointed in 1788 controller on the estate of a certain Count Königl at Betzdikau in Bohemia, where he died, almost insane, the result of his weird fancies, on August 17, 1799.

Spiess, in his Ritter-, Räuber- and Geister-Romane, as they are called--stories of knights, robbers and ghosts of the "dark" ages--the idea of which he borrowed from Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen and Schiller's Räuber and Geisterseher, was the founder of the German Schauerroman (shocker), a style of writing continued, though in a finer vein, by Carl Gottlob Cramer (1758–1817) and by Goethe's brother-in-law, Christian August Vulpius.

These stories, though appealing largely to the vulgar taste, made Spiess one of the most widely read authors of his day. The most popular was a ghost story of the 13th century, Das Petermännchen (1793) among others were Der alte Überall and Nirgends (1792); Die Löwenritter (1794), and Hans Heiling, vierter und letzter Regent der Erd- Luft- Feuer- und Wasser-Geister (1798).

Beside numerous comedies, Spiess wrote, anticipating Schiller, a tragedy Maria Stuart (1784), which was in the same year performed at the court theatre in Vienna.

[edit] Bibliography

• Karl Goedeke, Grundrisz zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, v. 506 sqq.
• Müller-Fraureuth, Die Ritter- and Räuberromane (Halle, 1894).

[edit] References

•  "Spiess, Christian Heinrich". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.