Karl Gutzkow

Karl Gutzkow (born March 17, 1811, Berlin, Prussia [Germany]—died Dec. 16, 1878, Sachsenhausen, Frankfurt am Main) was a novelist and dramatist who was a pioneer of the modern social novel in Germany.

Gutzkow began his career as a journalist and first attracted attention with the publication of Maha Guru, Geschichte eines Gottes (1833; “Maha Guru, Story of a God”), a fantastic satirical romance. In 1835 he published Wally, die Zweiflerin (“Wally, the Doubter”), an attack on marriage, coloured by religious skepticism, that marked the beginning of the revolt of the Young Germany (q.v.) movement against Romanticism. The book excited virulent discussion, and the federal Diet condemned Gutzkow to three months’ imprisonment and ordered the suppression of all his works. After his release he produced the tragedy Richard Savage (1839), the first in a series of well-constructed and effective plays. His domestic tragedy Werner oder Herz und Welt (1840; “Werner or Heart and World”) long remained in the repertory of the German theatres. Gutzkow also wrote Das Urbild des Tartüffe (1844; “The Model for Tartuffe”), a clever and topical satirical comedy; and Uriel Acosta (1846), which uses the story of the martyrdom of that forerunner of Spinoza to make a plea for religious freedom. By this time he had published the novel Blasedow und seine Söhne (1838; “Blasedow and His Sons”), a humorous satire on the educational theories of the time.

In 1847 Gutzkow went to Dresden, where he succeeded the Romantic writer and drama theorist Ludwig Tieck as literary adviser to the court theatre. In 1850 there appeared the first of the nine volumes of Die Ritter vom Geiste (“The Knights of the Spirit”), now considered the starting point of the modern German social novel; it also anticipated the Naturalist movement.

His final well-known work, Der Zauberer von Rom (1858–61; “The Magician of Rome”), is a powerful study of Roman Catholic life in southern Germany.