Karl Leberecht Immermann

Karl Leberecht Immermann (born April 24, 1796, Magdeburg, Saxony—died Aug. 25, 1840, Düsseldorf, Prussia) was a dramatist and novelist whose works included two forerunners in German literary history: Die Epigonen as a novel of the contemporary social scene and Der Oberhof as a realistic story of village life.

The son of a civil servant, Immermann interrupted his legal studies in Halle (1813–17) to fight in the last phase of the Napoleonic Wars. While working in the military court in Münster (1819–24), he fell in love with Elisa von Lützow, the wife of the Prussian general Adolf, Freiherr von Lützow. Their passionate love affair ended 14 years after the Lützow divorce (1825) because Elisa unwaveringly refused to enter upon a second marriage. At the beginning of 1824, Immermann became judge in the criminal court at Magdeburg, moving to the provincial court at Düsseldorf three years later. In Düsseldorf he designed and built a “model” theatre where, in accordance with Goethe’s theories, he especially cultivated ensemble. In 1839 Immermann was married to the 20-year-old Marianne Niemeyer, and the new life and new happiness that his marriage gave him found expression in his epic Tristan und Isolde, which was left unfinished at his death.

Immermann’s writing is deeply marked by the transitional nature of his time. He was an eyewitness of the decline of the old aristocracy, the rise of the bourgeoisie, and the spread of industrialism and liberalism. His dramatic works include Das Trauerspiel in Tyrol (1828; remodeled in 1835 as Andreas Hofer); Merlin (1832); the trilogy Alexis (1832); and the comic epic Tulifäntchen (1830), a witty parody of the decline of the nobility and of romantic chivalry. Immermann’s novels, however, with their acute diagnosis of the period, are more important than his plays. Die Epigonen (1836) gives a cross section of the society of his own period, deploring both the nobility’s decay and the dangers posed by radicalism and money-worship. The convoluted tale is a pessimistic picture of society on the brink of a painful adjustment to industrialized mass society. The novel Münchhausen (1838–39) consists of two parts: a highly satirical and ludicrous portrayal of an idle and mendacious aristocrat, and a solidly visualized portrayal of peasants rooted in their work and in their countryside. In this latter section Immermann glorifies the sturdy respectability of the peasantry, in whom he saw the strength of the German national heritage and the means for its regeneration.