Theodor Woldsen Storm

Theodor Woldsen Storm (born September 14, 1817, Husum, Schleswig [Germany]—died July 4, 1888, Hademarschen) was a poet and novelist whose novellas are among the finest in German literature. He is an outstanding representative of German poetic Realism, which had as its aim the portrayal of the positive values of everyday life. He took for his models the late Romantics and Eduard Mörike, who, along with Gottfried Keller, Paul von Heyse, and the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, was his friend and correspondent. Storm’s early lyrics (Gedichte, 1852; “Poems”) are songlike and characterized by their simplicity and beauty of form. Their main themes are love, nature, and an intense love of homeland.

Storm practiced law in Husum until 1853, when the Danish occupation of Schleswig forced him to move to Potsdam. His strong patriotic feelings are expressed in his poetry from this period. After living in Heiligenstadt, where he had been transferred as a magistrate, he returned to Schleswig when the Danish left it in 1864. A year later his wife died, occasioning the climax of his lyrics in the cycle Tiefe Schatten (1865). By this time, however, he had already begun to concentrate on writing novellas. One of his most important early works is Immensee (1850; Eng. trans., 1863), a moving story of the vanished happiness of childhood, which, like so many of his works, is coloured by a haunting nostalgia. As his writing matured his novellas displayed subtler psychological insight, greater realism, and a wider scope of themes—including class tensions, social problems, and religious bigotry—expressing his recurrent concern with man’s isolation and struggle with his fate. He retired in 1880 to Hadermarschen, where he wrote his last and greatest novella, Der Schimmelreiter (1888; The Rider on the White Horse [also published as The Dykemaster]), which, with its forceful hero and terse, objective style, shows vivid imagination and great narrative verve. Among his other major works are the charming story Pole Poppenspäler (1874), the historical novella Aquis submersus (1875), and the novella Im Schloss (1861).