Kotzebue, August von (ou`g
st fən kôt`səb
), 1761–1819, German dramatist and politician. He wrote some 200 plays, including Menschenhass und Reue (1789, tr. The Stranger, 1798), Die Spanier in Peru; oder, Rollas Tod (1795, tr. Rolla, 1797), and Die beiden Klingsberg (1801, tr. Father and Son, 1914). His comedies and operatic librettos remained popular throughout the 19th cent. Among those who set his librettos to music were Beethoven, Schubert, and C. M. von Weber. After a stay in Russia, Kotzebue returned to Germany as an agent of Czar Alexander I. He was detested for his reactionary propaganda; his assassination at Mannheim by a student led to the suppression of German student organizations through the Carlsbad Decrees.
st fən kôt`səb), 1761–1819, German dramatist and politician. He wrote some 200 plays, including Menschenhass und Reue (1789, tr. The Stranger, 1798), Die Spanier in Peru; oder, Rollas Tod (1795, tr. Rolla, 1797), and Die beiden Klingsberg (1801, tr. Father and Son, 1914). His comedies and operatic librettos remained popular throughout the 19th cent. Among those who set his librettos to music were Beethoven, Schubert, and C. M. von Weber. After a stay in Russia, Kotzebue returned to Germany as an agent of Czar Alexander I. He was detested for his reactionary propaganda; his assassination at Mannheim by a student led to the suppression of German student organizations through the Carlsbad Decrees.Kotzebue, August (Friedrich Ferdinand) von
(born May 3, 1761, Weimar, Saxony—died March 23, 1819, Mannheim, Baden) German playwright. He helped popularize poetic drama, which he infused with melodramatic sensationalism and sentimental philosophizing. Prolific (he wrote more than 200 plays) and facile, he is known for works such as the dramas The Stranger (1789) and The Indian Exiles (1790) and the comedies Der Wildfang (1798; “The Trapping of Game”) and Die deutschen Kleinstädter (1803; “Small-Town Germans”). He was denounced by political radicals as a spy and stabbed to death.
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