Auerbach, Berthold

Auerbach, Berthold (bĕrt`hōlt ou`ərbäkh'), 1812–82, German novelist. He fought in the Revolution of 1848 and in the Franco-Prussian War. As a result of his Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten (1843–53, tr. of Vol. I Village Tales from the Black Forest, 1846–47), somewhat stylized pictures of peasant life that were much imitated, he became the virtual founder of the peasant-story genre in German. Typical of his use of the novel are Die Frau Professorin (1846, tr. The Professor's Wife, 1850), Diethelm von Buchenberg (1852), and Barfüssele (1856, tr. The Barefooted Maiden, 1857). Of his longer works (some of them stories of Jewish life), the best known is Auf der Höhe (1865, tr. On the Heights, 1867).

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Auerbach, Berthold 

Born Feb. 28,1812, in Nordstet-ten; died Feb. 8, 1882, in Cannes. German writer.

Auerbach was born into the family of a Jewish petty merchant. As a young man he took part in a student movement and wrote for Rheinische Zeitung. Auerbach’s first novels, which were written in the 1830’s and dealt with Jewish life, were united under the title of The Ghetto. In 1837 he published the novel Spinoza (Russian translation 1894). In the novel Black Forest Village Stories (1843–54; Russian translation Povesti i derevenskie rasskazy, 1871), Auerbach created brilliant pictures of the life of the people. He also wrote the novels The Villa on the Rhine (1869; Russian translation 1869–70, foreword by I. S. Turgenev) and On the Heights (1864; Russian translation 1867).

WORKS

Werke, new ed., vols. 1–12. Stuttgart, 1911.
In Russian translation:
Sobr. soch., vols 1–6. Moscow, 1900–01.

REFERENCES

Turgenev, I. S. “Roman B. Auerbakha Dacha na Reine,” Sobr. soch., vol. 11. Moscow, 1956.
Koeppen, A. Auerbach als Erzieher. Pyritz, 1912.
Dietz, W. Weltanschauung und Reflexion bei Berthold Auerbach. Würzburg, 1925. (Dissertation.)