La Motte-Fouque, Friedrich Heinrich Karl de

La Motte-Fouqué, Friedrich Heinrich Karl de 

Born Feb. 12, 1777, in Brandenburg; died Jan. 23, 1843, in Berlin. German writer.

La Motte-Fouqué first published his works in 1804, under the pen name Pellegrin. During the years 1813–14 he edited the romantic journal Die Musen. His anti-Napoleonic Poems of 1813 betray nationalistic motifs. In the novel The Magic Ring (1813) and in the cycle of heroic dramas The Hero of the North (1808–10), La Motte-Fouqué celebrated the feudal and chivalric life of the Middle Ages. Themes from folklore are evident in The Mandrake (1810) and in Undine (1811; Russian verse translation by V. A. Zhukovskii, 1837), which served as the basis of the first German romantic opera, by E. T. A. Hoffman (1813).

WORKS

Ausgewählte Werke, vols. 1–12. Halle-Saale, 1841.
In Russian translation:
“Rozaura i ee rodstvenniki.” In Rasskazchik, ili Izbrannye povesti inostrannykh avtorov, izdannye N. Grechem, part 2. St. Petersburg, 1832.

REFERENCES

Bykov, A. “Tvorets ‘Undiny.’” Zhivopisnoe obozrenie, 1893, no. 3.
Schmidt, A. Fouquéund einige seiner Zeitgenossen. Karlsruhe, 1958.