(pseudonym of Johann Paul Friedrich Richter). Born Mar. 21, 1763, in Wunsiedel; died Nov. 14, 1825, in Bayreuth. German writer. Son of a schoolteacher.
Jean Paul’s first works, notably Greenland Processes (1783), are sharp satires. His short story “The Life of the Very Contented Little Teacher Maria Wuz From Auenthal’’ (1793) and his novel Hesperus (1795) are idylls. In the novel Siebenkds (1796–97), Jean Paul creates a vivid picture of life in feudal Germany at the end of the 18th century. In the philosophical novel Titan (1800–03), the heroes remain abstract figures. In his unfinished novel Walt and Vult, or the Twins (1804–05) sentimental and romantic elements are whimsically interwoven with realism, and in his last novel, The Comet, or Nicholas Marggraf (1820), satirical tendencies again predominate. In his aesthetic treatise Preparatory Study in Aesthetics (1804), the sections on the novel and on humor are particularly interesting. Jean Paul’s treatise on education, Levana; or, the Doctrine of Education (1806), is written in the spirit of the Enlightenment and humanism.
V. G. ADMONI