THEODOR GOTTLIEB VON

HIPPEL (1741-1796)  , German satirical and humorous writer, was born on the 31st of January 1741, at Gerdauen in East Prussia, where his father was rector of a school . He enjoyed an excellent education at home, and in his sixteenth year he entered Konigsberg university as a student of theology . Interrupting his studies, he went, on the invitation of a friend, to St Petersburg, where he was introduced at the brilliant court of the empress Catherine II . Returning to Konigsberg he became a tutor in a private family; but, falling in love with a young lady of high position, his ambition was aroused, and giving up his tutorship he devoted himself with enthusiasm to legal studies . He was successful in his profession, and in 178o was appointed chief burgomaster in Konigsberg, and in 1786 privy councillor of war and president of the town . As he rose in the world, however, his inclination for matrimony vanished, and the lady who had stimulated his ambition was forgotten . He died at Konigsberg on the 23rd of April 1796, leaving a considerable fortune . Hippel had extraordinary talents, rich in wit and fancy; but his was a character full of contrasts and contradictions . Cautiousness and ardent passion, dry pedantry and piety, morality and sensuality; simplicity and ostentation composed his nature; and, hence, his literary productions never attained artistic finish . In his Lebenslaufe nach aufsteigender-.Linie (1778–1781) he intended to describe the lives of his father and grandfather, but he eventually confined himself to his own . It is an autobiography, in which persons well known to him are introduced, together with a mass of heterogeneous reflections on life and philosophy . Kreuz- and Querziige des Ritters A bis Z(i 793–1794) is a satire levelled against the follies of the age—ancestral pride and the thirst for orders, decoration and the like .

Among others of his better known

works are Uber die Ehe (1774) and Uber die burgerliche Verbesserung der IVeiber (1792) . Hippel has been called the fore-runner of Jean Paul Richter, and has some resemblance to this author, in his constant digressions and in the interweaving of scientific matter in his narrative . Like Richter he was strongly influenced by Laurence Sterne . In 1827–1838 a collected edition of Hippel's works in 14 vols., was issued at Berlin . Uber die Ehe has been edited by E . Brenning (Leipzig, 1872), and the Lebenslaufe,nach aufsteigender Linie has in a modernized edition by A. von Ottingen (1878), gone through several editions . See J . Czerny, Sterne, Hippel and Jean Paul (Berlin, 1904) .