E. T. A. Hoffmann

Biography

At a masked ball in Posen in the winter of 1802, caricatures of the town’s generals, officers and nobles were handed out to the guests. The faces were easy to recognise, and the authorities quickly decided who had drawn them. Suspicion fell on a young official, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann.

Instead of the transfer to Berlin he had hoped for, he received a promotion and, with it, exile to the small town of Płock.

He was born on 24 January 1776 in Königsberg, the son of Christoph Ludwig Hoffmann, a barrister at the royal court, and his cousin Lovisa Albertina Doerffer. His parents separated in 1778: his father went to Insterburg with the elder son, and the boy settled with his mother in her family’s house. He was brought up by the Doerffer aunts and uncle. The uncle he nicknamed “O Weh” (“Oh dear”), as a joke. From 1782 he attended school in Königsberg, where he became friends with Theodor Gottlieb Hippel; the friendship lasted all their lives. The organist Christian Podbielski taught him music and a painter named Seemann taught him painting. In 1792 he entered the law faculty of the University of Königsberg, continuing a family tradition, and in his spare time he wrote, composed and drew. The manuscripts of his early novels have not survived.

His career first took him to Glogau, to his mother’s brother. There, together with the painter Alois Molinari, he decorated a Jesuit church. In 1798 he passed his second examination and moved to Berlin, where he took composition lessons from Johann Friedrich Reichardt and wrote the singspiel “Die Maske”. An attempt to have an opera staged at the Royal Theatre came to nothing. In March 1800 he passed his third examination and received a post as assessor in Posen. There he married Michalina Rorer-Trzcińska, whom he called Mischa, after breaking off his engagement to his cousin Minna Doerffer.

After the caricature affair he lived in Płock in seclusion, writing church music and piano pieces and studying the theory of composition. He kept a diary from 1 October 1803. His first publication, the essay “Letter from a Monk to His Friend in the Capital”, appeared in the journal Der Freimüthige on 9 September 1803. In Kotzebue’s competition for the best comedy his play “Der Preis” did not win, but it was singled out for praise. From the spring of 1804 he served in Warsaw, where he became friends with Julius Eduard Hitzig, his future biographer, and met Zacharias Werner. On the title page of the score of the singspiel “Die lustigen Musikanten” (1804) the name “Amadeus”, chosen in honour of Mozart, appeared for the first time; in official papers he signed himself Wilhelm all his life. A daughter, Cäcilia, was born in Warsaw. Hoffmann helped to found the Musical Society, painted rooms in the Mniszech Palace and conducted his own Symphony in E-flat major. When French troops entered the city in November 1806, the Prussian offices closed and Hoffmann lost his post.

The next months in Berlin were hungry ones. His wife and daughter were living in Posen, where Cäcilia died in August 1807. In September 1808 Hoffmann came to Bamberg as Kapellmeister of the theatre, but his debut as conductor in October failed, and he gave up conducting. He earned his living by lessons, theatre music, and work as a stage designer and dramaturg. In 1809 the story “Ritter Gluck” appeared in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, the Leipzig music journal, and this began his collaboration with it. There too Johannes Kreisler first appeared, a musician who was the author’s double. His articles on Beethoven were especially noticed.

In 1813 he became musical director of Joseph Seconda’s opera company in Leipzig and Dresden and witnessed the fighting at besieged Dresden. At that time he began “The Golden Pot”, finished in February 1814. Seconda dismissed him. “Fantasy Pieces in Callot’s Manner” helped him move to Berlin, where from September 1814 he again worked in the legal service. From April 1816 he was a judge of the court of appeal. The premiere of “Undine”, to a libretto by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, took place on 3 August 1816. The opera ran for fourteen performances and was lost along with the theatre, which burned down on 29 July 1817. In the same year, 1816, the book “Children’s Tales” appeared, containing “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”; then came “Night Pieces”, “The Serapion Brethren” (the circle of that name was founded on 14 November 1818), “Little Zaches”, “Princess Brambilla” and “The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr”. He spent his evenings in the wine cellar of Lutter & Wegner.

From October 1819 Hoffmann sat on a commission of inquiry into “treasonous associations”. His opinions called for the release of the accused, among them Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. In 1822 the police chief Kamptz sought his punishment over the story “Master Flea”, in which he saw mockery of officials and a breach of official secrecy. On 23 January the manuscript was confiscated, and the book came out in a cut version. To my mind, this episode shows how closely service and literature touched in his life. Hoffmann was seriously ill and the paralysis was spreading; he dictated his defence and his last texts, among them “The Cousin’s Corner Window”. His interrogation was postponed at Hippel’s request.

He died in Berlin on 25 June 1822, aged forty-six. He is buried in the Jerusalem Cemetery in Kreuzberg; the gravestone bears the initials E. T. W. and his title of judge of the court of appeal.