Excerpt from Lichtenstein The desire to make available for class use one of the most charming historical novels of German liter ature must be the editor's apology for presenting an abridged edition of Lichtenstein. The method pursued has left all the essentials of this fascinating story in the author's own words, without additions or changes other than the insertion of a conjunction in several places and the alteration of the arrangement of words in a few sentences.
Author
Wilhelm Hauff was a German poet and novelist best known for his fairy tales. Educated at the University of Tübingen, Hauff worked as a tutor and in 1827 became editor of J.F. Cotta’s newspaper Morgenblatt. Hauff had a narrative and inventive gift and sense of form; he wrote with ease, combining narrative themes of others with his own. His work shows a pleasant, often spirited, wit. There is a strong influence of E.T.A. Hoffmann in his fantasy Mitteilungen aus den Memoiren des Satans (1826–27; “Pronouncements from the Memoirs of Satan”). Hauff’s Lichtenstein (1826), a historical novel of 16th-century Württemberg, was one of the first imitations of Sir Walter Scott. He is also known for a number of fairy tales that were published in his Märchenalmanach auf das Jahr 1826 and had lasting popularity. Similar volumes followed in 1827 and 1828. His novellas, which were collected posthumously in Novellen, 3 vol. (1828), include Jud Süss (The Jew Suss; serialized 1827).
